Help unlocking BIOS locked up laptop !!

[naulgo]

Hi guys,
a customer brought us a laptop that belonged to his brother that passed away. It's a Dell XPS M1730 and is BIOS password protected. I tried unlocking it by removing the CMOS battery and tried some backdoor passwords but none of these 2 worked. Does anyone know a way to pass the BIOS password ??

 

[NYJimbo]

...a customer brought us a laptop that belonged to his brother that passed away...

Why is it that whenever we get one of these BIOS password protected laptops the story almost always is that the person is dead or that they cannot be reached for some reason ?

I mean, who protects their laptop with a BIOS password in the first place ? I have never seen a normal person protect their machine with a BIOS password, its always some weird story.

ANYWAY, did you google this, there are websites that offer to take a tag or serial number and provide possible passwords.

 

[smashedbotatos]

Have you tried removing the CMOS battery and resetting the CMOS all together?

 

[altrenda]

I mean, who protects their laptop with a BIOS password in the first place ? I have never seen a normal person protect their machine with a BIOS password, its always some weird story.
.

The only ones I ever see are either rental computers or corporate ones that are enabled for security reasons.

Oh, and for some reason, stolen ones.

 

[NYJimbo]

Oh, and for some reason, stolen ones.

True. I am amazed how many times someone who looks like a poster child for "Faces of Meth" walks into my shop trying to sell me a password protected computer that they got from their "sister" or left to them by their dead "cousin" or something.

 

[naulgo]

Have you tried removing the CMOS battery and resetting the CMOS all together?

tried romoving the CMOS battery .how do you reset the CMOS all together on laptops ? trough clr cmos pins ?? do laptop have these pins?

 

[smashedbotatos]

tried romoving the CMOS battery .how do you reset the CMOS all together on laptops ? trough clr cmos pins ?? do laptop have these pins?

Remove the laptop battery and CMOS battery, and on some models there is a reset switch too.

I don't know if that will work, but it is worth a shot. I mean the password is stored in the CMOS...from my understanding resetting it shoudl wipe it out.

 

[CLC]

Most are reset by pins, just fine the configuration for your model.

 

[johnrobert]

If you leave the cmos battery out all night that should reset it
but I dont think it will help, if it did it would be too easy to defeat.

 

[Xander]

I mean, who protects their laptop with a BIOS password in the first place ? I have never seen a normal person protect their machine with a BIOS password, its always some weird story.

Eleven years and I've not seen a single computer using a BIOS password.

 

[mike_tech]

Yeah I hear these stories all the time, someone died or I bought it on the Internet and it came like this..

As people mention above removing the CMOS battery, but this does not always work.

The best way would be to reset the pins via a flat head screwdriver (basically shorting the motherboard). Somewhere on the motherboard are 2 gold pins.

Check the manual for the location of these pins, usually these are accessible from the rear panels of the laptop.

I use a bios password on my expensive laptop, not by choice tho, as the bio metrics set one as a backup

 

[KompuKare]

As people mention above removing the CMOS battery, but this does not always work.

It's not just that it does not always work: on TPM type systems (mostly business grade laptops) resetting the CMOS battery can make things worse.

For instance, a Thinkpad X41 which 'only' had a supervisor password, resetting the CMOS changed that to a BIOS lock password. On older models the password can be recovered by soldering a serial cable to the ATMEL chip but I believe with more recent models you also have to get hold of a new TPM chip (surface mounted) and replace it.

Unsure whether Dell XPS have anything that complex since they're not Dell's business line.

 

[lcoughey]

Have you removed and verified that the hard drive itself isn't locked too? Are you trying to simply re-use the laptop, or do you want access to the data on it too?

 

[nlinecomputers]

Here is an obvious question. Have you called Dell Tech Support. THEY should know if you can get into it or not.

Also have you verified that the person presenting the laptop actually owns it? I never do password resets without proof of ownership.

 

[naulgo]

Have you removed and verified that the hard drive itself isn't locked too? Are you trying to simply re-use the laptop, or do you want access to the data on it too?

I have access to his data but the customer wants to use the laptop as well.

 

[Spartan PC Services]

Here is an obvious question. Have you called Dell Tech Support. THEY should know if you can get into it or not.

Also have you verified that the person presenting the laptop actually owns it? I never do password resets without proof of ownership.

Out of genuine curiosity, what are your procedures to prove ownership? A suprising number of folks don't keep boxes with serial numbers on them.

I know one method to weed out possible scammers is to make a copy of their driver's license and the S/N from the machine for this type of service.

 

[lcoughey]

Out of genuine curiosity, what are your procedures to prove ownership? A suprising number of folks don't keep boxes with serial numbers on them.

I know one method to weed out possible scammers is to make a copy of their driver's license and the S/N from the machine for this type of service.

If the data is easily accessible, it should be pretty simple to see if the data on the drive is theirs or not. When it isn't accessible, it becomes a lot more complicated.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Out of genuine curiosity, what are your procedures to prove ownership? A suprising number of folks don't keep boxes with serial numbers on them.

I know one method to weed out possible scammers is to make a copy of their driver's license and the S/N from the machine for this type of service.

Depends. If he claims he just bought it then I ask to see the reciept and DL. If the claim is a dead person then I ask for the Death Certificate to copy and put on file.

Most every case I get the DL. I've had a couple walk away when I asked for that.