Hi Guys, I have a rather difficult situation. My brother moved out some 8-9 months ago, and left me his laptop to use. Well up until last week, it was packed away in a cupboard and untouched. Here's the problem: I turned on the laptop to use it and there's a password lock on the CMOS/BIOS settings and another that prevents the machine from booting up. Unfortunately my brother (idiotic as he is!) cannot remember the passwords! This leaves the thing pretty much useless. What do I do to unlock it? My brother said the best thing to do was open it and remove a battery... but I don't know which battery/where it is etc... He also said the laptop may break if I dismantled it... so I'm not too keen on doing that, but if it's the only way I guess I'll have to... If anyone has any advice etc, I'd be grateful.

Which BIOS? AMI, Award,...?

It's Pheonix I think.

With Phoenix-BIOS master passwords don't work (as far as I know) like they do for Award. Phoenix itself says: "There is no "backdoor" password unless the computer manufacturer modified the BIOS to have one. The password is stored in CMOS. Take these steps: 1.First, enter into BIOS System Setup and record the settings. 2.Clear the CMOS (remove the CMOS battery until POST displays a "CMOS checksum bad" message) 3.Re-install the CMOS battery 4.Run the BIOS Setup program 5.Load default values by pressing F9 and set whatever configuration is needed. NOTE: It can take several days for the CMOS to go bad without a battery. This is caused by capacitance in the circuit. This charge can be safely discharged by using a 10k-ohm resistor, touched to the battery connectors for a few moments (while the battery is removed). If this procedure does not work, the system manufacturer may have a procedure that does work."

Jolly? Are you still there?

1.First, enter into BIOS System Setup and record the settings. Where is this? Everything is passlocked. So I can boot into the machine, and where you would press... say F2 when the machine starts, that's passlocked too. I am a little unsure about opening it up because it looks easy to break (don't wanna break it). Also: "NOTE: It can take several days for the CMOS to go bad without a battery." Bad? Doesn't sound healthy to me, or do you mean for the password to reset? Thanks for the tips anyway :)

DD- This is just some information for you. Jolly was right when telling you what to do, but he/she didnt know that you had a password to enter the setup program as well. As to your other question, the CMOS runs off a small circular battery and it stores different little things (such as time and in this case your password). I dont know about laptops, but most desktops have a jumper you can move if you forgot your password and then just boot the computer and it clears the thing and puts it back to the way it was when you first bought it. Again, this is desktop motherboards, not laptops. Anyway, the removal of the battery method works also, i just tend to use the other method because it is quicker and the motherboard manual mentions it. Anyway, if it is worth it, you can check out this site: http://www.pwcrack.com/BIOS/bios.html They seem pretty expensive, but maybe the default password thing will work for you or something. Hope this helps. -Ryan