Date: Fri, 07 Jul 2006 00:40:03 +0000
From: "Matthew Hanson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: [LIB] Removing boot password in BIOS
Shoot... I skipped a step in the procedure of editing the HEX values that I
wrote out in the last message. Here's the full procedure:
From: "Matthew Hanson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I found this procedure for clearing the password in the archives. Is this
the only way you can removed the thing after it's been set:
================================
This is what you need:
1. Your notebook
2. An empty formatted diskette (720 kb or 1,44 mb)
3. A second computer (e.g. a DOS desktop PC)
4. A hex-editor (e.g. Norton DiskEdit or HexWorks)
This is what you have to do:
1. Start the desktop PC and start the hex-editor
2. Put the disk in drive A:
3. Change the first five bytes of sector 1 (boot sector is sector 0) to: 4B
45 59 00 00
4. Save it! Now you have a KEYDISK
5. Remove the disk from drive A:
6. Put the disk in the notebook drive
7. Start the notebook in Boot Mode (push the reset button)
8. Press Enter when asked for Password:
9. You will be asked to Set Password again. Press Y and Enter.
10. You now see the BIOS configuration where you can set a new password.
================================
After many failed attempts, I finally got the above procedure to work, but
only once. I haven't been able to duplicate the success twice. This is
what I did:
* Did a full format of a FD in my L110 running W98.
* Put the FD in the desktop and edited Sector 1 start to 4B 45 59 00 00
* Put the FD back in the Lib FDD
* Shut W98 to the DOS mode with the FDD attached
* Pushed the reset button.
* After reboot, entered the existing password
* I was in fact finally presented with a prompt to enter a new password.
* I just hit ENTER without adding any characters
* I was returned to the same prompt.
* Hit ENTER again and I think the system restarted
* Was presented with the same prompt for a password
* Entered the old password, and the system booted
But for some reason I was only able to get that process to work once.
Usually I get an "Invalid System Disk" error message after entering a
password when the system tries to boot off of the floppy. That because it
was never made bootable. It just had those HEX values modified to read
'KEY' in ASCII.
I tried making the disk bootable and then modifying the HEX values, but the
system fails to boot off of it complaining that it can't find a file.
The behaviour of being asked for a new password, just hitting ENTER, and
then hitting ENTER again as described above, is the same behaviour I see
when trying to change the password when booting into BIOS/Setup.
Sure could use some feedback on this.
Thanks,
Matt
