Long story short. 6 months ago, I got retrenched by my company. As part of the retrenchment "benefit" we get to purchase our laptop for a price. I got my HP 8540w laptop for $400 given that it still has another year of warranty left. Now, 6 mths later I wanted to upgrade to Win 8. But after running upgrade assistant, the result is incompatible and outdated BIOS. After downloading the new firmware from HP support site, it doesn't allow me to flash the BIOS due to admin password which I have no clue of. The admin password must have been set by the tech support guys who have all been retrenched too. I wasn't even aware of the existent of such a BIOS password until now. Called up HP, provided proof that I own the laptop and they told me they don't have master password for this laptop model. They asked me to send in my laptop for replacement of the motherboard for $800+. That is crazy... I tried searching the web for a method to reset the BIOS password but it seems the CMOS battery removal method will not work. This is getting depressing... Had wanted to try out Win 8 due to the attractive $15 upgrade price but looks like no luck... Would really appreciate any advice or anything that can upgrade the BIOS... many many thanks...
try bios recovery method.. just a shot. on some laptops it resets the pwd but this one is EFI so im not sure if it does MASTER not USER pwd
Would you please dump your BIOS using [thread]9856[/thread] and upload it to a filesharing site and post the link here?
Thanks mate. I tried searching for the steps to perform recovery and only found this for HP bios: forums.mydigitallife.net/archive/index.php/t-35272.html But the steps seems really technical and couldn't understand a bit of it.
Hi, does it mean HP ROMPAQ bios can have some sort of master password? If true, may I ask where can I find it?
Thank you so much for your help! I'll go download the tool immediately and will provide the link in a short while.
Hi Drewb95, here's the link. Sorry had to break it down since I am restricted by the 20 posts limit. h t t p : // datafilehost.com/download-d0927d19.html Its a large file, about 3mb. Thank you once again for your help!
Sadly...none of my friends has got a floppy disk to try out this method. Would appreciate if there is any other suggestion. Thank you ALL in advance!
Hi mate, does this dump tells anything? What program can be use to open such .rom file? I could try viewing it for any clue if someone can tell me how to view this. I tried using a hex editor but could not make up anything meaningful...
Can you not just Buy a USB floppy disk drive cost about $11 lot cheaper then the alternative buying a motherboard. and if doesn't work you have not really lost that much.
Indeed, and I've finally found a shop near my place that sells a floppy drive. Now, let me try if that works.
Hello, unfortunately I have the same problem. I changed the bios password to a new one and I forgot to write it down. My fault. I made a dump of the Bios with the tool Universal BIOS Backup ToolKit 2.0. The link for the dump is ul.to/1wgt06vi I’ll be very happy if somebody is able to help my in this case.
Is your username in your BIOS Kermit by any chance? If not then try that as the password, but I doubt it. If you look at that file, then write 0x00's to the following ranges: HP_TempBIOSAdminScancode 15215738 TO 15215757 ;20 BYTES HP_BiosUser00BIOS-Administrator 15215884 TO 15215904 ;21 BYTES HP_BIOSAdminScanCode 15215979 TO 15215998 ;20 BYTES The actual password is probably stored in the middle range, but I wrote 0x00's to similar places on my HP 4530s and that removed the password successfully. The data in the middle range is actually: Code: 54 DB D9 E5 01 2C DF 90 99 E0 72 E4 6D E0 49 B4 B6 29 EB 2F 01 It is meaningless in ASCII, but maybe somebody knows how to decrypt the password from that data. You will need a way of putting the bios file back into the chip, but look at the thread titled: forums.mydigitallife.net/threads/29885-HP-Probook-6550b-BIOS-fullflash-exposed-and-need-to-be-edited
Thanks Tony for your help, but this way is a little bit to tricky for me. I`ll try to use a hypnotism to get back me password
Hey there is an HP tool to do this that I got from the on-site tech when he was at my office. I can share it with the OP if you would like, just PM me.