All, I inherited a Dell Inspiron 7000 from a friend who died from cancer last year. I just now hooked up the machine, and I must admit my naiveté when it comes to laptops. There is a BIOS password (Supervisor, not User), and I have no clue how to disable it. Anyone with any helpful suggestions, PLEASE EMAIL me...I'm not requesting that anyone reply to this post. Thanks..

Hi Jennifer,

Will it boot?

M2

If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

Yep. It boots. I just can't access the BIOS, to view (and obviously make changes.)

This may (or may not) be helpful - it's little different on a notebook

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

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Try this:

Kill CMOS

M2

If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

Thanks guys..

WARNING ---

I got a Virus Warning from AVG when extracting the zip file at that "Kill CMOS" link.

hi! Kev100.My antivirus caught a trojan when i clicked on that link by Mechanix -Kill CMOS this is what it said i had KillCMOS.C Trojan,and that it was distructive.I wonder if Justin,or Kevin is aware of this.My Av company said it was very bad.I hope someone jumps in to find out whats going on.

Hi kev100 and sexylexi,

It's not Mechanix's doing; he has been here for a long time and he's trustworthy. As an FYI, Majorgeek has this Editors Note about KillCMOS:

We occasionally are informed that programs like KillCMOS are infected with a virus. Note that the operating system system requirement for this program is DOS. This means you need to be able to boot from a floppy or CD to DOS and execute the program. If you are running this program from Windows, then you did not read the directions. Any good anti-virus program will detect an attempt to access the bios and inform you it is a virus.

Hope this helps.

i_XpUser

Hi XpUser,

Thanks for that.

There was a thread several days ago where the OP got his prob solved with KillCMOS.

OP never did make clear whether it worked with XP running or whether it needed to be booted in DOS.

XP/NT will generally not "allow direct access to hardware".

And typically, AV will see any prog which writes to BIOS as "dangerous"

Of course it should becuase in the normal day in- day out run of things, you don't want any SW to affect the BIOS.

Similarly, if the BIOS "AV protection" is on, you will get a warning anytime a process attempt to write to the boot sector.

M2

If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.