My Dad has an older laptop that he wants to get some stuff off of, but the last time he used it was 2006. It has a startup password, that he forgot, like you would set in BIOS. Is there anyway to reset that, or should I just pull the HDD and access it that way? Thanks
http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/
Download that, boot to it, and do work.
EDIT: It’s the BIOS password. My bad. You can try taking it apart and taking the CMOS battery out (may be accessible if you just remove the keyboard) and see if that works. I believe Ultimate Boot CD (google it) may have a BIOS password resetter…
Yeah I started searching as soon as I posted this. But we havent actually found the laptop yet… Anyways I am pretty sure it is a Toshiba, and supposedly they have a “backdoor” BIOS password. The other option was exactly what you said, pull the little battery and wait. Thanks I will try that when we find it tho.
pull cmos and wait.
Pull battery and wait as been said.
Do laptops have jumpers on them for resetting internal memory? I know my Dell’s (Optiplex) do at work, but I don’t recall ever having to do it on any kind of laptop.
If the battery fails, perhaps googling to see if said motherboard has a jumper would be another thing to try…
What I was reading, some do, it depends on the brand mobo really.
To be honest I never really paid attention when i take apart a laptop but whenever ive had to reset a bios password on one removing the battery does the trick… where on dells and a few others (desktops) you have to use a jumper…
Guessing most manufactures figure its not as “easy” as it is on a desktop plus the constraint of room so it not worth doing a jumper.
Yeah, that’s what I figured. I don’t recall ever seeing one, but I work on Dell’s like 99% of the time unless it’s a machine custom built by me. I hate taking apart Sony’s or HP’s since they have WAY more stuff to take apart and more screws. Love Dells, even if they do break a little more than people want. But hey, that’s how I get paid lol.
HP’s depending on the model arent to bad
Sony’s/Toshibas make me want to slit my wrists… I’ve taken apart 3 vaios and like 6 tosibas in the past 2 weeks to do jack repairs…
While I loev dells, some of their new inspirons are a pain in the dick to dissassemble.
Yeah, I had a tech come in for the first Sony we bought and he wanted to kill himself. He actually called his boss in front of us and told him not to ever send him on a Sony call again lol. We :rofl’ed.
We use Latitude and Optiplex. Maybe the business class machines are designed with ‘ease of disassembly’ in mind.
Anyway, try the battery dude. You should be good.
I work on everything from grandmas old Packered bell POS… to some D-bags alienware whos watercooling setup is leaking and needs to be replaced…
FML
Hey, I have an Alienware… I love everything about it, besides it seems to run hot, but it has never overheated or anything. Had it over three years, still going strong!