TLDR; remove battery.
Sadly (or fortunately?) that stopped working around 2006
Defeating a Laptop's BIOS Password
61–70 of 100 posts
Re: Defeating a Laptop's BIOS Password
#62Does this also hold for Macbooks?
Edit: A more precise question would be: What is the analogy to Secure Boot and the hardware being locked on a Macbook?
Re: Defeating a Laptop's BIOS Password
#63TL;DR but why not "open laptop, disconnect BIOS battery for 10 sec, reassemble, done"
I think the article explains that the state they needed to change was stored in flash.
Re: Defeating a Laptop's BIOS Password
#64Does this also hold for Macbooks? Edit: A more precise question would be: What is the analogy to Secure Boot and the hardware being locked on a Macbook?
Is there anything actually different? A Macbook is a relatively standard Intel laptop that happens to run MacOS.
The only additional complication might be the T2 chip in the same way that TPMs might be an additional issue in other business laptops.
Re: Defeating a Laptop's BIOS Password
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 bio…
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)
Re: Defeating a Laptop's BIOS Password
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Doesn't work anymore. The data is no longer stored in CMOS.
Sometimes it is the same chip but not the same range, so it's not cleared ever.
Re: Defeating a Laptop's BIOS Password
#67can someone tell me which flash programmer is used here? I also want to play around with UEFI.
Re: Defeating a Laptop's BIOS Password
#68I "cracked" my father's laptop's password when he passed away 15 years ago by buying a similar, broken laptop on eBay for cheap, and unsoldering and switching the ROM/EEPROM containing the BIOS.
Probably one of the coolest things I've done as a teenager.
Re: Defeating a Laptop's BIOS Password
#69Re: Defeating a Laptop's BIOS Password
#70I "cracked" my father's laptop's password when he passed away 15 years ago by buying a similar, broken laptop on eBay for cheap, and unsoldering and switching the ROM/EEPROM containing the BIOS. Probably one of the coolest things I've done as a teenager.
fearless comes to mind