Help with a craped out LapTop

Hello all,

I Have in my possession an 1100$ Paperweight.

My compaq laptop SOMEHOW managed to change its BIOS password all by itsself. I know this because it has been sitting in my living room for the past 3 months doing the same thing it has always done... sit there and let me surf the net while i am watching TV. I am SURE that noone has gotten on it and manualy changed the password. So some how it erased my old bios password, and changed it to a new one... HOW IN THE HECK CAN THIS HAPPEN? From the last time I was able to boot it until the password change NO ONE has had access to it but me, so I am sure this is not a prank done by another human being.

I need some serious help here people PLZ! Can anyone tell me how to fix this, and BTW the screws to open the lap tops case are a special 7 sided star shape... BAH!!! I HATE COMPAQ...
ok i feel better now im sorry.

im not to good with BIOS passwords but iv seen posts herebefore where they recommended calling Compaq and telling them about it and they can help you out with what to do, if all else fails i think there are BIOS password crackers in the AO file archives and also a google for this problem can also help.

You should be able to get the proper screwdriver from a hard ware store but if you are lucky some laptops have semi easy acess to the cmos battery (if they have one at all) see if the keyboard comes off, and make sure you pull the main battery. Another option would be to contact compaq, when I was an IBM tech IBM laptops had a key initiated bios resest that reset the box to factory defaults (HP at one point did this via floppy), you may be able to get this from compaq.

Here is the the problem with a BIOS Cracker,

The laptop will not read ANY diskdrive, or accept any keyboard commands untill the password has been given... I cannot even get into bios by pressing the f2 key. Could this be a virus that did this or what? BTW my laptop is more then a year old so compaq is gonna charge me an arm and a leg + 200$ to attempt to fix this.

Thats a problem, can you remove the laptop battery? Sorry, I don't know much about laptops. Always use a home or office PC, cause it's easy to open and resetting the BIOS is not a problem( remove the battery). It may be possible to find 7 sided screw drivers, but are you sure it is seven and not six? If it is six it should be easy to open with a hexagonal screwdriver. Good luck!!!

Ahh, i forgot about ripping the keyboard off :)

thanx b

ummm how do you pull the keyboard off?

Its a seven I have worked with laptops...you should be able to get a bit set at a local hardware store..if not there then at a computer show if you can wait for one to come around (blue star productions runs one of the major ones in the US). But that may do you no good as some laptops have long term capaceters insted of cmos batteries....if you can get it open and find the cmos battery pull the main battery also

[QUOTE] Originally posted here by blunuke420
Ahh, i forgot about ripping the keyboard off :)

thanx b

ummm how do you pull the keyboard off? [/QUOTE
feel around the edge of the key board on the old IBMS there was a relase lever (new IBMS dont have this)or occasional he mouse buttons would push down and up or down and out.

I think your best bet would be to try to open up the laptop and find the cmos battery. Remove the battery then turn the compute on. Turn the computer back off then put the battery back in and it should of cleared the password.

well if you do have the problem with capacitors you could always jump the positive and negative sides with a peice of wire or a screwdriver and that will/should drain the stored energy.

PeacE
-BoB

Quote:

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Originally posted here by fl34bit3
well if you do have the problem with capacitors you could always jump the positive and negative sides with a peice of wire or a screwdriver and that will/should drain the stored energy.

PeacE
-BoB

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just make sure you are not holdng the wire with something conductive...a capaciter is low volts but hi amps when it releases (I amy have that backwords), and it hurts like hell if it has any juice to it. I have grabed live 120, and grounded a laptop capaciter to myself the capaciter hurt much worse. Now never mess around inside a monitor the capaciter on a 14'' monitor knocked me out when i accidently brushed it.

Ok a very small flat head screw driver will work on a 6-7 side star screw... Thats the good part

the bad part is that i have no idea where the hell the cmos jumper or battery is, can anyone throw me a bone on this one. It is a compaq presario 700.

Ok guys I found the battery Now this is VERY important!

Do i have to power up the laptop while the batter is out or is just pulling the battery out then putting it back in then replaceing everything enough.

Reason why: I DONT WANT TO HAVE TO TAKE THIS DAMN LAPTOP APART TWICE!

Thanks

it should be ok to just pull the cmos battery, and the main battery, then let the system sit for a good 5 min to let the cmos die (5 min should be more then long enough). then put the thing back togeher and power it on. (make sure no power source is connected ot the laptop while letting it sit.) Thanks for the info onthe screwdriver, good to know

There is an easy solution to your problem. First, it's not a virus. Most bios manufactuers do have master passwords for such a situation. I believe that compaq laptops use the award bios. Go to their site with the bios version number, you can obtain that from compaq's website, then get the master bios password. If all this is too much trouble, then get a torx screwdriver, open the laptop and remove the bios battery for a few. Problem easy solved. Thread closed.


PuRe

Thanx for the tip pure ex, but I tried all the default passwords listed FOR every type of bios I could google for and NONE of them worked. This includes award, ami, and various other.

I KNOW you cannot get a bios virus but from my 13 years of dealing with computer hardware, I have never once had a bios password change itself. They have reset to nothing from a faulty battery but never changed all by themself. Seeing as no other human could have had contact with this computer besides me I can see no other option. My laptop did have the Kazaa trojon/back door, whatever you want to call that P2P program and that IMHO is a very good clue as to where a "bios virus" could come from.

Now
I know you can update bios with a floppy disk...
I Know viruses can come through floppy disks...

So why can a virus not infect bios...

Common sense tells me that if I can do it to my computer, then someone else can do it with a program/batch file. Meaning if i can run a program from a floppy disk that will patch my BIOS
then why can a virus not do the same thing. Only diffrence is the virus patches bios with a new password. Can anyone tell me with a straight face why this cannot happen?
And if you can i would like you to explain to me WHY?

This has nothing to do with this subject, but since you guys are laptop experts, can you tell me what the difference between a 40 GB Hard drive and 60 GB Hard drive is? I currently have a compaq persario 2525US and saw the 2 availabe options on hard drives and was just wondering if i put the 60 GB hard drive on my laptop, what changes would occur?

The difference between a 40GB and a 60GB is a 60GB has 20GB more capacity then the 40GB, but it's going to be a fresh harddrive, so you will need to install a new OS (Operating System, meaning "windows 2000, XP, etc.."), unless compaq has it installed already, and you will lose all previous information on your 40GB, because you replaced it with a 60GB. So I would recommend burn/backing up all important information onto a CD. (If possible)

Or, if you where talking about adding an additional harddrive (which I didn't know you could do with a laptop), the 40GB would be your master and the 60GB would be your slave, so you would have 60GB extra.

later,
Dru

You just need to give more information about what you mean. The straight up facts are, as Clone said, the 60 has 20 more gig than the 40.... but that's a no brainer. Are you asking about differences between an internal 40GB drive and an external 60GB drive (or vice versa)? Give us a little more detail so we can better answer your question...

Just a thought..
~ AciD

matrixlu as clonetheplanet and AciDriveHB mentioned, a 60 gig has 20 gigs more than a 40 gig.

You can always get the info on the 40gig copied to the 60gig through backup or direct copy depending on what you have available to you. Also your defrag and scan time is going to increase, since the smaller the drive the faster the scan.

If that's what you are asking, I hope that helps. If not, provide more info.

Guidance...

DO NOT short the positive and negative leads of a capacitor together! If the capacitor is CHARGED it will blow up in your face. Assuming it has enough voltage in it, but either way you could definitely damage it. These make good firecrackers if you have a power supply and old circuit cards around, btw. ;)

What you can do is short both leads to ground, just not two each other. Sure a laptop is not going to have huge capacitors and they will most likely not blow up, I just don't want people later in life finding an amplifier capacitor and deciding to short them. BAM. You wouldn't short the positive and negative leads of a battery together, I am sure some people have seen what happens when you do that to a 12 volt car battery. A capacitor is just a sophisticated voltage storage device designed to charge/store/ and leak of voltage using predetermined tolerances.

I have had similar problems with a Dell laptop. I ended up having to get a utility from Dell after sending in copies of my Company Name and Laptop serial number. None of the default passwords worked for me either, some motherboards have a bios reset jumper. Have you tried that?