Toshiba Tecra 8000 BIOS p/w forgotten

[rdaniels]

Anybody out there know how to bypass, disable or otherwise get around the BIOS password on a Toshiba Tecra 8000? Everything is okay now, but just wait till I have to change my HDD.

[Randy_tx]

As long as it isn't a laptop.....you can just pull out the cmos battery for a few minutes and it will clear the bios settings (returning to default) and the password.

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"As hard as a rock & dumb as a brick"...Windows CEMeNT

[rdaniels]

Originally posted by Randy_tx:
As long as it isn't a laptop.....you can just pull out the cmos battery for a few minutes and it will clear the bios settings (returning to default) and the password.


It is a laptop. Will pulling the batteries on a laptop accomplish the same thing, however difficult they are to reach?

[Paleo Pete]

If you mean pulling the battery pack that powers the computer for operation, no. The CMOS batery inside, however, will do that. If you can get to it. Laptops are an entirely different animal and usually difficult to get into.

Often a generic password will work, it's a safeguard built into many BIOS's so factory techs can still get into BIOS no matter what. Sometimes it's the name of the BIOS company, sometimes something off the wall, and I don't have any links handy to find out. You might try calling Toshiba, they might be able to help...or check with a computer shop that might have some experience with them.

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[mjc]

Tweakfiles have a couple of utilities that may help CMOSPwd2.8 (http://www.tweakfiles.com/bios/cmospwd.html) the accompanying text file has some interesting info on how to kill passwords, or BIOS (http://www.tweakfiles.com/bios/bios.html), it will show passwords for some BIOS and can find "universals" for Award BIOS.


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mjc
To ME or NOT to ME....

[This message has been edited by mjc (edited 03-08-2001).]

[rdaniels]

Thanks MJC. These look promising.

[andyb]

OK - I know this one - I'm a Toshiba Service engineer.

Answers - Yes you can reset the BIOS by pulling the CMOS battery - but we have ways of telling that you have split the casing and this will unvalidate any remaining warranty on the unit.
Tosh. use a device called a parallel loopback connecter. Basically you plug this into the parallel port and reboot the machine. The password resets itself automatically. Tosh usually charge around £50 for this service though.