computer question

Some Relatives of mine in Ireland picked up a Dell latitude cp , laptop computer at an estate auction , but the laptop seems to have come with a bios password for security purposes, so they cant even tell us what O/S is loaded.

IT people , this has probably happened before , is there a utility that will crack a bios password ?

Other than that , we can get no help from the dell folks ,as they are assuming that the laptop was obtained through nefarious means.

Any replies would be appreciated

Declan

Check out newsgroups. Lots of solutions to this, involving removing the battery or using a loopback connector on the parallel port. I’m assuming what you’re doing is legit and the laptop didn’t “fall off the back of a lorry”.

Apologies, this link should work better.

At the moment , I am going by what the relatives say , so who knows , they never lie do they :slight_smile:

But so far groups.google actually does not have anything on this , I got more information out of ebay with some dell tech selling knowledge stuff under the table.

Thanks anyways

Declan

List of Master Passwords for various BIOS types

According to this, you’re screwed:

I did find some sites which claim to sell replacement security chips, which I will not link to. You can find them on your own with Google, like I did. No guarantees that would work, though.

I was researching laptop security and I asked Dell how an owner gets into a machine with a forgotten bios pw. Calling support with the tag number and info to indicate you are the owner will get you an override pw you can use.

I asked if each of these override passwords is unique per machine. Answer from tech support was no, and they implied that anyone with one legit dell laptop could call and get the override and thereby be able to defeat the password on all dell laptops. Possible they’ve improved this since I spoke with them a couple of years ago.

The Dell one is too easy , lol
Anyways , thanks all for the replies , thank god its not my comp, I just have my mom raggin me cause “your good with computers”

sheesh , who uses a bios password anyways

Declan

I do. But it’s a desktop and has a jumper reset procedure should I forget it, which is unlikely. I like the security.

At work we have a BIOS password on all the lab PCs. Students can touch them.

Dell has a forum too, you could ask there. I’m sure it’s been asked before on their forum.