Batboard

A friend of mine bought a older desktop window's 95 computer at a computer fest and gave it to me, and when I powered it up to get into the bios the 'bios was password protected' Doe's anyone know how to 'by pass the password' so I can get into the bios to set it the right way to program my radio's? Thanks Mike[KA3OLA]

There's many ways around most BIOS passwords. The most basic is to remove the jumper which supplies the Lithium battery voltage to the BIOS chip. It's usually labeled 'bios reset' or 'clear CMOS' or similar on the board. Leave it off for at least 10 minutes, then replace & power up the unit. The BIOS should be set to default, with no password.

If the above doesn't work for you, check out this link:

http://labmice.techtarget.com/articles/BIOS_hack.htm

Or type "bios password" into google & check out the millions of sites that come up for more information.

Todd

Some older systems actually required the system to be booted while the jumper was in place. Once you booted it, you were greeted with something like
"CMOS Jumper in place, settings will not be saved"
And then you could shut it off again and remove the offending jumper, to restart it and get things going again.

There are a few oddball exceptions, but most older boards will clear the password if the battery is removed for a little while. Find the battery, and remove it. LEAVE THE SYSTEM OFF AND UNPLUGGED. It sometimes seems to clear faster if you short the battery terminals, draining any caps.

If you have an old system which does not have automatic hard drive detection, you'll probably have to pull out the hard drive, write down the specs, and reenter into the bios.

Check out the site that Wavetar mentioned - but first open the case and see if you can tell what make and model the motherboard is.

Everyone's posts are correct but not every board is the same. There are even some manufacturers who switch this capability. Some ned the jumper removed, come need it switched to another set of pins, some need the battery removed, come don't...you see where I am going?

If you want to PM me or post it here I can track down the procedure for your specific baord. I have a pc side business and I keep the most common manufaturers bookmarked or keep the specific board info in a binder. My customers never seem to have the orignal disks or manuals so I go searching.

The hardest prcedure to do is to jump 2 solder beads. Yes this is one of the ways to remove them. Instead of a nice jumper or pins they just give you 2 solder points, where the jumper should be, and you have to short them for a number of seconds.

Have fun.

I always use KILLCMOS, boot from a floppy say yes and reboot, gone done and move on.