Armada 1750 bios password reset or crack?

[John Prophet]

A company I do a lot of work for has acquired an old laptop....a Compaq Armada 1750

the dude who owned it is now overseas in the service and they cant get in touch with him...

ends up it has a bios password......they have a piece of paper with the supposed password on it but it doesnt work, lol...I tried it, they tried it

another guy tells me that when he picked up the laptop that he DID get in it with that same password....but I have tried it and the others have tried it with uppercase/lower case etc..no luck


how do I get around this?

is there a battery on the motherboard like a regular PC?

what about some kind of bios password crack?

what about "backdoor" passwords....I have found lists of those such as http://www.pwcrack.com/bios.shtml

for example




"Some BIOS’ have pre-installed backdoor passwords that enable access to the system if you have lost or forgotten your password. Attempting to regain access to the computer by using one of the following backdoor passwords should be your first step if you have lost or forgotten your BIOS password and cannot boot your computer. If you are able to regain access to your system by using a backdoor password, you can then use a password cracker to reveal the stored password or enter the BIOS setup to change the password. These backdoors are more likely to work on older desktop systems. We are not aware of any name brand laptops or notebooks that have backdoor BIOS passwords. "


At boot-up note the BIOS provider (Award, AMI, Phoenix, IBM, etc.)


For Award BIOS’ try these backdoor passwords:

AWARD_SW
j262
HLT
SER
SKY_FOX
BIOSTAR
ALFAROME
Lkwpeter
j256
AWARD?SW
LKWPETER
syxz
ALLy
589589
589721
awkward
CONCAT
d8on
CONDO
j64
szyx


etc




Any ideas??


Anyone know what brand of bios is on a compaq armada? award, AMI, Pheonix??


Thanks, JP

[KAknight]

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Prophet

is there a battery on the motherboard like a regular PC?

Yup. They are usually hidden pretty well though. Once you pop that out and the laptop battery out wait a few minutes. That should clear it out.

[vikeor]

or look for a jumper that would clear the CMOS

[John Prophet]

uggh...

any ideas where the battery would be? any such luck as it being inside one of the back panels...or are we talking about taking the whole thing apart?

[vikeor]

taking the whole thing apart...

[eagle1]

I think it's a custom Phoenix BIOS but I'm not sure.

[eagle1]

I don't know if this is what you have but:

http://h200005.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/s...03_rev3_us.pdf

[DanU]

I had a similar situation with an old Toshiba. Removing the CMOS battery cleared it out. The problem is getting to it! To get to the CMOS battery I had to remove some screws from the back and pop off the keyboard. Still not too tough but a pain the the butt.

[John Prophet]

ok....the bios battery is easy to get to....I unplugged it for a couple minutes...but the password is still there...

do I need to leave it out for like 30 minutes or something?

(yes the laptop battery was out and it was unplugged etc)


Thanks, JP

[John Prophet]

lol...I tried just for kicks to boot it without the bios battery...the password is still there, lol