Need a Geek

[DoggyDaddy]

I need the advice of a computer geek. I'm sonewhat of a geek myself, but apparently not quite geeky enough. Last night when I got home from work, I turned on my computer like I always do to see what I've missed on all day. I have Windows 7, and I have to enter a password to get past the initial startup screen (which I hate, but that's another story). No matter what I tried, I kept getting a message that my user profile could not be loaded. After restarting a few times, still no luck, so on one of the start ups, I hit my F2 key to get into the BIOS setup screen. After fumbling around in there, I found some places where I could set a password for my hard drive. "Aha! This must be where I can change my password", I thought. So I entered and confirmed what I thought was a "new" password. Well, that was NOT the place to do it. Eventually, after a few more restarts, I finally got a screen that said my computer couldn't start properly and asked me if I wanted to repair Start Up. I chose "yes". Then it (eventually) asked me if I wanted to Restore. I chose "yes" again, it did its thing, and voila'! Password (at the start up screen) worked, and everything comes up as normal.

Here's my dilemma... How do I get rid of that password that I set in the BIOS? It says that I can create, change or delete my password in there, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to delete the password. I reset everything to the default settings, but it didn't change that particular setting. It's not really hurting anything, but it's now just an additional password that I have to enter when starting up the machine. Any help is greatly appreciated! And remember, I'm only a semi-geek, so please try to dumb it down for me.

 

[ddavidson]

You might try changing the password but leaving it blank when it asks to enter the new password.

 

[hoosierdoc]

Remove CMOS battery it appears. It's the watch battery.

How to Bypass or Remove a BIOS Password - Technibble

ibios software can do it too

 

[Maximinus Thrax]

Depending on which BIOS you have you may also be able to reset to factory defaults. Removing the CMOS might do it too but I prefer to use the software rather than bully the hardware if at all possible.

Which BIOS are you running? I have gotten a decent amount of experience with ASUS's UEFI in the past couple of years and might be able to find how to do it.

 

[churchmouse]

My laptop did the same thing not long ago. I had to stumble through the "Safe" start up in the windows operating program and scale it up from there. After I ran all the housekeeping programs it runs OK.
I have no idea how to remove the password you are referring to.....

 

[hoosierdoc]

Also, do you back up your hard drive data?

 

[eric001]

I second the motion to remove the motherboard's battery. That *should* clear that pesky password for you.

Also, I have noticed in the last few months that some of the Windows updates seem to trigger this issue where the computer loses your user account somehow. I would definitely recommend cloning the drive, backing it up, or at the very least ensuring that you have recent restore points set on a regular basis. Remember, a good external hard drive with a cloned copy of your computer's HD is your friend!!

Which reminds me--it's been about a month since I cloned mine. I now know what I'm doing later today!

 

[DoggyDaddy]

Remove CMOS battery it appears. It's the watch battery.

How to Bypass or Remove a BIOS Password - Technibble

ibios software can do it too

I'm not confident enough to take this thing apart, as simple as it may be...

 

[DoggyDaddy]

Thanks everyone. I do back up my hard drive to an external drive fairly regularly. Oddly enough, while in the BIOS, I tried to set it so it would boot up from that drive, but had no luck. Apparently the back up doesn't back up everything? Maybe I'll try "blanking out" the password as ddavidson suggested. I'm just nervous about taking this lap top apart to remove the battery.

 

[chezuki]

Thanks everyone. I do back up my hard drive to an external drive fairly regularly. Oddly enough, while in the BIOS, I tried to set it so it would boot up from that drive, but had no luck. Apparently the back up doesn't back up everything? Maybe I'll try "blanking out" the password as ddavidson suggested. I'm just nervous about taking this lap top apart to remove the battery.

Laptops usually have a switch rather than jumper to clear the CMOS password. You can often get to the switch without too much dis-assembly through one of the access panels on the bottom of the laptop.

Google your specific model and "clear CMOS password" for more info.

 

[DoggyDaddy]

Laptops usually have a switch rather than jumper to clear the CMOS password. You can often get to the switch without too much dis-assembly through one of the access panels on the bottom of the laptop.

Google your specific model and "clear CMOS password" for more info.

I found this... Spare Time for Fish: HOW-TO: Bypass BIOS password on Toshiba P755 Satellite

And after reading it...

 

[chezuki]

I found this... Spare Time for Fish: HOW-TO: Bypass BIOS password on Toshiba P755 Satellite

And after reading it...

It reads like it's much more difficult than it actually is.

Side bar: That article contained the phrases "pair of dikes" and "reach around" and I giggled at both because I have the comedic appreciations of a third grader.

 

[DoggyDaddy]

It reads like it's much more difficult than it actually is.

Side bar: That article contained the phrases "pair of dikes" and "reach around" and I giggled at both because I have the comedic appreciations of a third grader.

I saw the "reach around" but I missed the pair of dikes!


You're probably right... maybe I'll try it this weekend if I'm feeling adventurous. (fixing the computer... not the reach around or the pair of dikes!)

 

[chezuki]

Lol, I'd try a pair of dikes.

 

[danbb]

Don't know if you ever got it, but if you set a hdd password, clearing the CMOS is useless, you need to get rid of that hdd password, which is stored in the firmware, or a firmware-only section of a platter of the hdd. Best idea would be to set it to blank, if not, put it in another computer that will let you set it blank. If the HDD does indeed have a password, the bios should prompt you for it before trying to boot windows

 

[DoggyDaddy]

Don't know if you ever got it, but if you set a hdd password, clearing the CMOS is useless, you need to get rid of that hdd password, which is stored in the firmware, or a firmware-only section of a platter of the hdd. Best idea would be to set it to blank, if not, put it in another computer that will let you set it blank. If the HDD does indeed have a password, the bios should prompt you for it before trying to boot windows

This is exactly the situation. As soon as I turn the computer on basically, I'm prompted for the HDD password. I'll give setting it to blanks a try. Thanks!

 

[DoggyDaddy]

Update! Setting the passwords to blank did the trick! Thanks for all the input everyone. I'm just happy I didn't have to get inside this little beast. God only knows what I could have screwed up if I did that!

 

[chezuki]

Update! Setting the passwords to blank did the trick! Thanks for all the input everyone. I'm just happy I didn't have to get inside this little beast. God only knows what I could have screwed up if I did that!

Congrats! I swore you said in the OP that you had set a BIOS password, but apparently my reading comprehension skills are weak. +1 to danbb for catching that. Clearing a known HDD password is as simple as setting it blank.

 

[DoggyDaddy]

Congrats! I swore you said in the OP that you had set a BIOS password, but apparently my reading comprehension skills are weak. +1 to danbb for catching that. Clearing a known HDD password is as simple as setting it blank.

Well that was probably my own ignorance to blame for the misunderstanding. While I was in the BIOS (if in fact that's where I was!), I set 3 different passwords. One was definitely the HDD, but I'm not sure what the other ones were. They were passwords, they let me set them, so I did. I think it was just the HDD one that was giving me trouble, but just in case, I reset them all to blank.

 

[indyblue]

It sounds to me like you inadvertently encrypted your HDD and it asked you for a password to decrypt it for mounting.