emergency assistance required

scenario, friend has old computer, was son's and son set password in bios..

son is unavailable and we desperately need to bypass the password to reformat and fix PC.

any idea on how.

before you ask, no its not stolen, its an old 233MMx, who would want to..

anything useful, would be appreciated.

Try just removing the battery for a while... Or else find the jumper setting that resets the bios.

For the latter, look up the specs on the board, and find the proper jumper. Move the jumper so that it is in the correct position, power the board on, then power it off (I don't know if this is necessary, but it can't hurt), then reset the jumper and power up again.

What kind of BIOS and version is it? Many of them have hidden backdoor passwords.

Battery is best bet, it only need to be premoved for a few seconds to kill the password and reset the BIOS. Most computers will automatically fill the BIOS in so you don't have to fix it or anything.

old poem runs through noggin

how do i love thee, let me count the ways..

my gratitude, knows no bounds..

thanx monkee.. fiz

the battery removal.. worked the trick..

let me know how i can repay you..

jon

Next time, the easier solution would be to find the jumper. Taking out the batery requires more effort :wink:

BIOS is what starts the computer, and that information is stored in memory on the mobo called CMOS. There should be a jumper close to the batery or BIOS chip. It has 3 pins, 2 of which are in a jumper. Turn the computer off, and the PSU, and flip the jumper, and after a few seconds, but it back and turn your comp on. Now your BIOS is set to factory defaults.

I had a password for the bios on my old pc but I couldnt remember it
and I tryed removing the batterey I removed it for about 2 hours one
time and the only way I could get past it was to switch the jumper
settings.

i think the makers usually recommend not powering the board when you have the jumper on the bios reset pins, Monqui.

they say bad things can happen. things that will invalidate your warranty.

You don't need to power it on and usually shouldn't when you've got that jumper switched. Sometimes the board requires a little more than just the jumper to reset to defaults. Mine needs to have the insert key held down before pressing power and up until the POST comes up.