I have a very old Dell Precision M4300 and I need to change some Bios settings however there is an administrator password and I don't know it Any help appreciated thanks Bios version A17
Thanks Tito but now I have a new problem while waiting I disconnected the Bios battery for 2 min re connected and now it wont even boot up to Bios screen just black screen and flashing A led
Well that flashing led is error code you need to look in to the documentation of your mb to find out what the error code may be.
Maybe I should explain what setting I need to change SATA Operation from ATA to AHCI mode as it won't recognize any SSD drive or is there another way around resetting the password like modding the Bios ? would it have come from Dell with password ? would removing the comos battery reset the password ? Date and time needs to be reset now so I think removing the Bios battery did not remove the password, The last 4 digits of service tag is : 3A5B
well you can try to remove bios battery on some mb's it work.. on the other way i think you locked out you can resolder a new chip to mb or try to call dell support and prove that this pc is yours they should then help u. there is one stupid think you can try i can't guarantee that it work but try to upgrade your bios on some mb's it just override and delete everything reinstalling the new bios with a factory settings. if thats not gonna work try to do again without the bios battery. well either way this may not go well so try to be careful of what u doing.
Had updated Bios from v 12 to v 17 password still stayed I'm a bit cautious about trying this without Bios battery connected from my previous non boot problem after removing battery for 2 min Tomorrow I think I will talk to Dell and see if they can help Thanks very much markokk88 and TITO for your replys
Sorry for very late reply The owner decided to forget the idea as the Laptop is too old really to bring back to modern day Windows 10 etc working Pc Would still like to know the answer from Dell though but not sure if they would help as I don't think they caused the problem in the first place
unplug the laptop, remove the battery and then remove the cmos battery, leave it out for a couple hours and then see if it re-sets back to the factory defaults (no password). If it does re-set, you'll notice the date has changed back to an earlier time. 2 minutes really isn't much time for the bios to re-set if you did not jumper any other pins on the board to short out