Re:Defeating a Laptop's BIOS Password
by blkhawk on Tuesday February 25, 2020 @01:24AM
(#22411298)
There is a guy in hungary that offers unlocking services for about 50EUR. He is a bit difficult to work with (insists on a NDA) but the procedure is as follows: you dump the bios via SPI and send it to him. Afterwards you get a patched image back you flash onto the bios chip. Then you boot and you need to enter some numbers he also sends you (I assume some type of copy protection) and it will unlock and reset the bios password. After that you just reflash the bios image you made earlier.
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If you don't mind physically opening the laptop, you open it and take out the CMOS battery, boot it up without it then shut it down and put the CMOS battery back in and boot. The BIOS password will no longer bet set. I don't know if this still works but it used to on older laptops.
Modern UEFI uses Flash Storage and CMOS is only relevant for the computer time keeping (though some UEFIs have a full CMOS to emulate BIOS behaviour)
Doesn't work anymore. The data is no longer stored in CMOS.
Re:Defeating a Laptop's BIOS Password
by AstralStorm on Tuesday February 25, 2020 @05:18AM
(#22412097)
Sometimes it is the same chip but not the same range, so it's not cleared ever.
Re:Defeating a Laptop's BIOS Password
by woodrowbarlow on Tuesday February 25, 2020 @10:20AM
(#22413826)
i used this method on an old t520 with success.