Hello everyone, brand new here. I need some help! I have a customer unit that is totally locked up. This guy is a college kid, has very little money, and I want very much to help him. He put a PW on his BIOS, and can't remember what it was... he says that someone stole a machine from him b4, and he wanted to make damned sure thaty if someone took this one, they would not be able to use it... I guess he got his wish in a left handed sort of way! I have seen these macines b4, it is a Dell Vostro 1000, and the ones I have looked at were running (I believe,) Pheonix rev. 2.6.3 Is there any way to work around this, or do I have to flash an entirely new BIOS? How can this even be done if I can't get the thing to even start to boot? Honestly, I have never seen anyone screw themselves this badly sorta on purpose... I really would like to help him, and it would make me look good in the college community (Alfred State, SUNY) we are a small community here in upstate NY. Any help/ info/ advice would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanx in advance, Chris
Thank You, Admin for setting me up a new thread, that should help. I thought it might seem a bit presumptuous to start a new thread with my very first post. I am sure someone out there knows what to do... Thanks again, Chris
Omdhar, Thank you very much for the tip, however, I am unable to deactivate the antivir, or even get a command line. It does not boot at all. I get the option to change boot sequence, and start options, but all are blocked by the PW it is demanding. I cannot get into this machine at all. Dan Taylor (CEO, T-G Embedded Systems) said to Google C-MOS reset for the model of machine, and I may find something out there- I will post results... (I guarantee results...) But- if you could enlighten me on what I am missing about what you said, that might help. All I get, no matter what I ask it to do is "Enter Password" and a field with a blinking underscore- ya know what I mean... Thank you for the reply, Chris
You always have the option to take the machine apart and remove the CMOS battery! Some machines have a jumper to cross connect and reset the bios. You may need a magnifying glass to see the reset pins though. GL
If you can boot from USB key or floppy you can use the tool that omhar mentioned above. I have used both 'cmospwd' and 'KillCMOS' before with positive results. When you are downloading the file, extracting the archive, and copying the contents to USB/floppy (on a functional PC) you will want to have the anti-virus disabled or it will get nabbed.
Urie Nice! Do we have the bios master pwd keygen based on the servicetag for newer dells lurking around? Thanks. )