Trying to get into the BIOS

In article , mike writes

Try the ctbios utility from here:

the output is in German, but not hard to follow. That may show you what the password is.

I had the same problem with an HP Vectra VL420 motherboard last week. This uses a modified Asus P4B-MX board. An unknown password was set on the BIOS setup so I could not configure the machine.

The debug trick worked to deliberately cause a CMOS checksum error, but it didn't get rid of the password. Googling found me a link with a tip to set a certain jumper to clear the passwords and that worked.

I tried the ctbios utility above but that didn't show me anything that looked like a password.

If you google for "BIOS backdoor password" or "BIOS master password" you'll get a lot of hits with lists of different passwords to try.

There will be a way to do it, just persevere.

On 4/19/2011 11:44 AM Geoffrey S. Mendelson spake thus:

Heh; I do agree that that is an excellent reason for swift thread termination!

Bingo! Geoff, your google-fu is incredible, I never would have thought to try that.

I got right into the bios, disabled write protect and the passwords, then was able to go flash the board into the most recent bios version. Sure was nice to see the flash program complete like it was supposed to.

Many thanks! Mike

When I tried out KILLCMOS I guess it really did kill it cause the computer shut down all on it's own - had a few minutes there I thought I was SOL, but it came back on when I cycled power to the 'puter - whew!

I think that somehow the flash memory was being refreshed after each onslaught against the checksums or whatever it was that those debug routines do.

Thanks for the link, I'll be checking that out tomorrow, but in my leisure, as Geoff M. was able to come up with the right password - what a great group!

Thanks to you all, Mike