Trying to get into the BIOS

What version? CmosPwd says it works for Award 4.5x/4.6x/6.0 - also look at their readme for some backdoor passwords to try.

6.0, I think - when I run it from DOS, cmospwd says something about be sure to use the numerical keypad, but I haven't yet figured out what or when to do that... as for the back door passwords, I've tried alot of 'em, but not all of them in their possible forms WRT caps, underscores, spaces, etc...But, I do still wonder about the keypad thing, and the numbers listed for version 6.0, I'll try a few things next I spend some time with it.

Thanks, Mike

Sorry - no idea.

Have you tried this one for Jetway spooml

If removing the cmos battery did not work, the other place with non-volatile memory is the RTC (clock) chip. Some of them have internal battery so a momentary short is required across a couple of pins to wipe the memory. The is a table on this page giving the pin numbers for 3 common RTCs:-

Muddled stuff - sorry that did not come out as I intended - it is unlikely you have an external battery /and/ an RTC+CMOS with an internal one - best ignore the post.

Yep, tried it, and I'll probably try it again a few more times before its over :)

I'll have a look at that, thanks.

In article , mike writes

boot DOS run debug. '-' is the debug prompt, you don't type this.

- o 70 10

- o 71 0

- q

that's "oh, seventy, ten / oh, seventy-one, zero"

reboot.

with a bit of luck, password will be gone.

--
(\__/)   
(='.'=) 
(")_(")

All right, thanks! I'll give that a try probably this evening.

Failing that, locate a copy of KILLCMOS, a small utility that writes to cmos RAM and *causes* a checksum error there. The result is that on a subsequent bootup you will be directed to setup (without requiring a pswd) where you can clear the pswd requirement.

Guess my luck is lacking, I tried entering a few different values in DEBUG as found here and there, to no effect so far...

All right, I got a copy of it, will try that later today. Thanks

Walking in late, and not having a clue as to what computer you are talking about, desktop PC's since 1990 have batteries to keep the CMOS RAM intact. There was a brief flirtation with clock chips with batteries built in, some which also had the CMOS RAM on them, but they are long obsolete.

Modern ones use lithium coin cells in little holders. PC/AT computers and most 386/486 ones used external batteries which pluged into the motherboard and the later 386/486 had NICAD batteries (all of which must of leaked and died 10 years ago).

If it has a lithim coin cell, the easiest thing to do is to remove it and wait an hour. You can also find a "clear CMOS" jumper on the motherboard, you set it, turn on the power, wait until BIOS text appears on the screen, turn off power and remove the jumper.

If it's a laptop, you can often find a clear CMOS jumper hidden inside or take out the battery and let it sit overnight. Modern laptops use capacitors to hold the CMOS settings for a few hours with no battery.

Some of the BIOSes have "backdoor" passwords in them, you should google the exact model of your laptop/desktop motherboard for more information.

You can also google BIOS password, or BIOS backdoor.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to misquote it.

...

...

This made me curious: In my experience with BIOS the system will run through a list of boot devices to try to boot. Is it common to set a system up to rely on one device only?

Not that I know of. The BIOS usually lets you select the order. I set mine to CD, floppy, HD.

The "Press F8 for a boot menu" option did not appear until around 2002, and as late as 2005 some BIOSes did not have it.

Before then, you could set the boot order and whether to try other devices in the BIOS.

It was probably an office computer and was set to prevent people from booting CD/DVD's and floppies.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to misquote it.

g

If you read the first post in the thread that info will be revealed to you.

desktop PC's since 1990 have batteries to keep the CMOS RAM intact.

me

rd

d

, turn

ors

he

I usually DAGS first these days, don't want to look like an idiot, don't ya know :)

It's long since rolled off my system.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to misquote it.

On 4/19/2011 10:59 AM Geoffrey S. Mendelson spake thus:

Is *everything* in Israel as piss-poor as you say it is? Retention time of 2 days? Sheesh ...

--
The current state of literacy in our advanced civilization:

   yo
   wassup
   nuttin
   wan2 hang
   k
   where
   here
   k
   l8tr
   by

- from Usenet (what's *that*?)

Cut me a break. It's a private news feed sent to a private system. I set it up over 10 years ago when I had a dial up and 2g hard drive and it has worked fine for me ever since.

I'm sure there are plenty of news servers out there (or out here) with much longer retention and many more groups, but I've never had a need to change.

I probably should up the retention, but since I'm the only one who uses it, and USENET is full of crap, I don't see much of a reason. By two days, almost every posting on every group has befallen Godwin's Law or Mendelson's corollary (change calling someone a NAZI in Godwin's to reference to the Wikipedia).

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to misquote it.

Current BIOS will generate a list of boot devices; it is possible to remove devices from the list. Given the application - Firewall - restricting the eligible boot devices to the hard drive is an elementary precaution.

PlainBill

Oh, now I see - quoting from 1st post:

"Does anybody out there have some clues for getting into a password- protected BIOS On a 5 or 6 year old Jetway motherboard? Background follows:

I found it at the scrapyard a while back, and recently scored a processor for it, only to find that it's set up to boot from hard drive only. I can't get in to change the boot order since the BIOS is set to have a password.

It won't boot from a floppy, nor a cd, but will boot from a hard drive that has DOS on it, and also one that has Ubuntu on it, as well as the one that came with it, which is a 40 Gb drive that has, I think, Mandrake on it.

All I get when I boot with the 40 Gb one is a login prompt, but, not having any login info or passwords I can't really get any where by booting with it; but, I can kind of poke around in it's file-system if I boot with the drive that has Ubuntu set as the primary master.

I think it may be pretty well secured by IT pros, as it came in a rack-mount enclosure with BarracudaNetworks logo and markings, and was formerly used as a spam firewall or some-such thing. "

"In searching the web I've managed to secure the motherboard manual and the latest drivers and a BIOS update for it, but when I try to flash the bios (it's Award bios and I'm using the flash program from the Jetway site) it looks like it's working until the end, when it gives a message "flash rom is write-protected, make sure all jumpers is set to proper" or some such slightly mangled English, and I've followed the manual's instructions on clearing the cmos and I find no other jumpers that deal with write-protection. I also tried removing the battery for several days and jumpering where the battery contacts are, but I guess there must be some non- volatile memory somewhere that is defeating my efforts.

I've emailed Jetway a couple weeks ago, so far no response. I haven't tried BarracudaNetworks, other than to poke around on their site, but technical info there seems mostly about selling systems and not how the systems work (except for IT speak, which I'm not very conversant in).

It has the bios contained in a PLCC-32 package which fits into a socket. I found some pin-out info on the Winbond site:

APPnote 21 has a table, but not much in the way of instructions.

Sorry to be so long-winded, I've tried a couple other things but the one I'd most like to learn more about I ran into in a few different places, where from a Dos prompt you go into DEBUG and supposedly change the values in some register that will make the bios lose the password requirement - so far it hasn't worked, don't know if I'm following the instructions correctly or not.

TIA for any info,

Mike "

So, at this point I've still yet to try KILLCMOS , still trying to figure out what's with the values assigned to different flavors of BIOS as listed in the program Cmospwd.exe

Anyway, thanks for your thoughts, Mike