Here's the story. One of the few things I have retained custody of in my pending divorce is a PC that is several years old. It wasn't used much. Basically it was hooked up to the cable modem and wireless router for the other computers in the house. My wife put a bios password on the start up. My stepson was a teenager and tended to go to bad websites on computers that were not protected. Problem is that my wife says she does not remember what the password was. I never knew.
How do I remove the password and be able to use this computer again? It is a Dell Dimension 4700. I know nothing more about it.
OK, imagine a jumper cable. It is used to connect the poles of two batteries.
A PC jumper serves much the same function. It is a little plastic cap that goes over pins on the inside of a computer. The insides of the cap are conductive metal and thus “jump” the gap between the pins closing the circuit. Different patterns of jumpers create different circuits. Basically you are going to temporarily break the CMOS circuit and create an erase CMOS settings circuit.
Yes. The jumper is a small black plastic thing with two holes that contain metal inside. It is currently pushed onto and electrically connecting two of a row of three metal pins sticking out of the computer’s motherboard.
You will be pulling it off the two pins it’s on, the centre and left ones, and pushing it back in the other position, onto the right and centre pins. There are only two ways the jumper can be on the three pins, and still have both its openings filled by a pin.
Placing it in the new position is only temporary. Ypu will then return it to the original (default) position, because the new connection has done its job. It was only momentary, and merely provided a short signal to tell the computer to erase the BIOS password.
The same could be done with a switch on the case, but they want to make sure this is a difficult last resort that requires access to the hardware, as it unlocks the guts of the machine when everything else is locked.
So:
[ul][li]Turn off the power to the computer.[/li][li]Disconnect power cords.[/li][li]Open the case.[/li][li]Locate the password jumper.[/li][li]Pull the jumper from pins 1 and 2.[/li][li]Push the jumper onto pins 2 and 3.[/li][li]Close the case.[/li][li]Reconnect power cords.[/li][li]Turn power on.[/li][li]Wait for system to boot.[/ul]The BIOS password is now disabled and cleared. If you want to enable it again, do the same things again, but move the jumper back into its original position:[ul][*]Turn off the power to the computer.[/li][li]Disconnect power cords.[/li][li]Open the case.[/li][li]Locate the password jumper.[/li][li]Pull the jumper from pins 2 and 3.[/li][li]Push the jumper onto pins 1 and 2.[/li][li]Close the case.[/li][li]Reconnect power cords.[/li][li]Turn power on.[/li][li]Wait for system to boot.[/ul][/li]
Be careful not to lose the jumper. They’re easy to drop, and often hard to see once they’re dropped.
I’ll second this, if you don’t need it right away (which I assume since you posted here). Removing the battery, which is normally a round silver thing, and keeping it out for 30 min to an hour will reset the BIOS, and will remove any passwords.
And while you’ve got the cover open on this computer that is several years old and not used much, clean out the dust & dirt that has accumulated there.
And before you touch anything inside the computer, make sure you’ve grounded yourself by touching bare metal on the computer case with your feet on the ground so that any static electricity buildup won’t short something out.