Bios Password

[nebuluswonderer]

Have a customers PC whose OS is shot. I need to get into there Bios but they do not remember their Bios password. I know I could take the battery out and reset the defaults, but that does not work all the time and is a bit of a hassle.

I was wondering if anybody knew of a good bios cracker program. Now I can't get pass boot up so I don't know how I would run it. Some suggestions would really help. Thanks...

[xmaddness]

Well, I think the only way to do it is to reset the bios thru kiling the power. Usually taking the battery out for a minute or two will do the trick. You can also check the boards manufacturer and see if they have a built in reset jumper on the mother board. A bios cracker? I havn't really heard of anything like that. You would need some type of a hardware interface to crack it I would think.

Anyway, I've never run across a bios that hasn't reset after taking the battery out long enough. You could always have the option of replacing the bios chip (if its removeable) and order a new one. Good luck.

[Cicatrix]

Dude , there are alot of bios pass crackers but it depend on what kind of BIOS it is , also you can do it by some debug commands , but the problem is that the crack programs works when the pc is booted !

[Tedob1]

there’s a couple of good ones that can be found at packetstorm security and although i havn't looked their may even be a couple in AO downloads, look for the one that is most for the type of machine your working on. Put a copy on a boot disk and run it from there.

One of our franchisees called me last week with the same problem, I sent his tech there and it worked for him, although I don’t know which one he used.

[whitedragon]

what cicatrix said is true only will work if the pc is booted, I'll say most of the boards have jumpers that will do the trick and that always work I never heard that didn't work, and is simple like is only three jumpers 123 and is conected 1 and 2, if i'm wrong somebody can correct me but u just need to connect 2 and 3 and them put it back in 1 and 2.
luck!

[phishphreek]

Here are some links to the crackers you want. Easily found by doing a "bios cracker" search in google.

Link

Cicatrix is right (as far as I know), these only work if the computer is booted.

Like xmaddness said, most of the time if you take out the battery, it will reset the bios. If not, you have to move the jumpers that should be labled "bios".

If all else fails... take out the hard drive, and hook it up as a slave on another pc. You will be able to recover the data there. If it is NTFS, you have to make sure you OS can read NTFS (eg, NT family... 2k or XP). If the file system is FAT or FAT32, a win9x or linux pc will work just fine.

Tedob1:

I thought that the bios passwords comes up before it tries to boot to cd or floppy? This has been my experience. I have only worked on newer pcs that were like this. I'm not sure about the older ones.

I think at one time you used to be able to do this, but people were using your method, so they changed it... ?

[Tedob1]

Im thinking hes asking about the password required to change the bios setting, like to detect a new hard drive. i haven't seen a password to boot up in ages.

but of course i am assuming...

[The Old Man]

Had a strange one the other day; a m-board with no battery, zip, zero, nada, no battery, not on the top and when i unmounted it from the case there were none on the bottom and none remote to pins on the mboard, and the BIOS was wanting a real pwd, not just an 'enter' for 'none'. This mboard had been unhooked for a year. finally pried off the BIOS chip, counted to twenty, put it back in and it booted the drive. Never did figure that one out, but it worked, and it was the first mboard that i've ever seen that didn't have a battery of one type or another, and brother, i've got some OOooooollllllddddd motherboards...

[Infernal_Cheese]

Well if you don't want to go to the trouble of reseting the bios a la jumper switching, most companies have generic backdoor passes.

AWARD BIOS
AWARD SW, AWARD_SW, Award SW, AWARD PW, _award, awkward, J64, j256, j262, j332, j322, 01322222, 589589, 589721, 595595, 598598, HLT, SER, SKY_FOX, aLLy, aLLY, Condo, CONCAT, TTPTHA, aPAf, HLT, KDD, ZBAAACA, ZAAADA, ZJAAADC, djonet

AMI BIOS
AMI, A.M.I., AMI SW, AMI_SW, BIOS, PASSWORD, HEWITT RAND, Oder

Other passwords you may try (for AMI/AWARD or other BIOSes)
LKWPETER, lkwpeter, BIOSTAR, biostar, BIOSSTAR, biosstar, ALFAROME, Syxz, Wodj

I have tried these before and have always found one that works. Hope this helps.

[x acidreign x]

Infernal cheese, nice name, and you're right, back when computers came with little more than bios, alot of people used passwords, and alot of people LOST passwords too, so manufacturers made backdoor passwords, which they distributed to resellers for doing repairs and what-not, there is a script-kiddieish hacker tool in the ao file archive called STC3 that lists the different bios passwords for the different versions of bios, one of the larges collections I've come across so far, you might check that out.