Dell BIOS Password Removal

maybe unrelated problem, maybe not

ive taken apart and put back together my laptop for the second time now trying to find this chip but now i get this message before the gray password screen appears. "Invalid configuration information - please run Setup program" this appears right after the dell screen at the start. does this mean something bad?
 
It probably just means you need to enter F2 BIOS setup and reset your clock/Date and your personal choices for other settings like your boot order. Disassembly of some models disconnect the CMOS Battery; that resets BIOS defaults, but on Dells, it does not alter password settings which are stored on the EEProm Chip, not the BIOS chip
 
Dell Dimension 2400 - How do I reset the BIOS password?

I've got a Dell Dimension 2400. I need to reset the BIOS password, but can't seem to get it to reset. Vigilante asked the same question on a 01-09-06 post, but I couldn't find a reply to his post. Does anyone have any info on reseting this password.

I tried using the jumper setting. All that did was reset the BIOS settings, but not the passwords. As did removing the CMOS battery over night.
 
Your approved Email list

I have had 2 people who have asked for my free files and software, and want me to apply for their approved Email list by filling out their forms, for the privilege of sending my files to them. Talk about Unmitigated gall and paranoia!! You will wait a long time before I cater to your whims; look for the stuff elsewhere because it will not be forthcoming from me. I am posting this in here, as your filter or whatever, will not take even a simple Email, let alone one with attachments
 
If you start your Dell Latitude and you can't get anywhere because a screen comes up saying enter Administrator Password than try this, Latitude_MasterPW.exe. Here is the link https://www.techspot.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=1529 You get on another computer and put in the Service tag # off your laptop than press enter and it will give you a master password that will allow you to access your laptop BIOS. It will not erase the admin password, but it will give you a master password that will let you into the BIOS and even Windows (if already loaded). It may not work for you but if you have spent half as much time as I have trying to get past this password it is definately worth a try. I am by no means a computer tech and I got past the Admin. password and I was able to change the Boot sequence to read from CD ROM first, then I put in Windows 2000 and installed it. Now everything works normal but I still have to put in the master password everytime I re-start my laptop. I spent many hours online trying to find a way to get past the Admin. password and none of them worked because you have to access the floppy or CD ROM first, but this one worked for me and it only took about 10 minutes with no soldering or replacing parts. I have a Dell Latidude C600. By the way if anyone knows how I can now change that Admin password, Please let me know.
 
d505 admin password

Paragon,

I sent you an e-mail with my model number. I get the grey screen that does not let me proceed. Any help you can provide is much appreciated.

Thanks
xMaDxPeNgUiNx
 
Sir Paragon, I tip My Hat


Thanks for the Posts. After glazing thru, I found the MasterPW.exe and it worked perfectly (once i figured you needed to enter the support code in CAPS.) I entered it all in lower case and got a completely different key.

My only hurdles now are reinstalling windows, and all that fun stuff, i'll have to figure out a way to externally mount a CD rom as the Latatude CP m233st doesn't have one installed (and i dont have an external, but i do have an internal spare and a USB external HD kit i can jimmy-rig). It has a floppy, and a USB. There is not even an ethernet jack, i'll have to fish out the good ol' pcmcia card!!!

The things we do for unsung glory!!!

Thanks Again,

JediKiah :cool:
 
Put your CDROM in the bay instead of the floppy. On any PC with a burner and running Roxio, you can make a Boot Disk Emulation of a W98 Boot disk that you will think made your CDROM into an A:\ Drive in DOS, has all the familiar DOS drive prep Tools, and when ready to Install W98SE, it will boot the CDROM-if you select Start your Computer with CDROM support-for another CD and then allow a hot swap to the W98SE CD to start your install. I still use floppy drives, but not for this purpose, and no external cables or coneections are required.
When you entered your Service Tag into Latitude_MasterPW, EXACTLY what did you type in, what did you type in for the Prompt at the grey screen and what keys did you press to start the ball rolling?
 
There should be a jumper in the dell's motherboard where you can be able to reset the CMOS, no need to take out the Battery. Resseting the CMOS let's you get inside again to the BIOS.

Also try to find if you can get acces to the TECHNICAL MANUAL or TECHNICAL REFERENCE MANUAL for that Dell laptop. Most of the times these companies spread these PDF documents for an economical charge but if you keep on looking sure that you will maybe find one free or copyright free.
 
Paragon33 said:
1) Put your CDROM in the bay instead of the floppy.

2) When you entered your Service Tag into Latitude_MasterPW, EXACTLY what did you type in, what did you type in for the Prompt at the grey screen and what keys did you press to start the ball rolling?
Click to expand...

Answer to #1) The cdrom i have is for a desktop, not a laptop so i cant swap it. It didnt come with a cd player, or docking station, or a modem either!

I do have a USB external HD enclosure i was gonna try to access the laptop by hooking up an internal full sized cd rom drive to the external HD enclosure. I tested this on a newer PC and it works. Then connect that thru the USB port on the back of the laptop. I found a few usb_cd for DOS apps out there, but none of them are working. I cant get the usb_cd DOS boot disks to work. i've tried editing the original bootdisk that came with the laptop to encorporate the usb_cd access into what was working, also with no luck.

Answer to #2) In MasterPW I typed the 5 digit Service Tag from the back of my laptop. The problem there was the first time I had entered it in lower case and it generated one #. I would enter in that result, and it would fail.

Thinking i had the wrong service tag sticker, i entered in the other sequences on alpha-numeric clusters i could find on the back. It wasn't long befort I discovered you cannot use more than 5 letters/numbers, and no characters either. Then it hit me, DUH, try using CAPS to enter the service tag, and The first attempt using CAPS worked fine.
(that part was ALL user error!!!<shrug> :unch: )

Once i can access the HD to reimage, i have win98 to put on, i'll need to find all the drivers for it.

Thanks again for your posts, they have made the learning curve for this task a lot easier, and FUN!!!

Regards,
JediKiah :cool:
 
ephod said:
There should be a jumper in the dell's motherboard where you can be able to reset the CMOS, no need to take out the Battery. Resseting the CMOS let's you get inside again to the BIOS.

Also try to find if you can get acces to the TECHNICAL MANUAL or TECHNICAL REFERENCE MANUAL for that Dell laptop. Most of the times these companies spread these PDF documents for an economical charge but if you keep on looking sure that you will maybe find one free or copyright free.
Click to expand...
For about the dozenth time in this thread, THERE ARE NO JUMPERS ON A DELL LAPTOP!! PULLING the CMOS battery will only work on a LS and L400 to clear the Password; none of the other models are so blessed. Dell makes its manuals available by download for FREE!!. Stop posting this garbage; you only confuse people looking for answers.
 
The USB 2.0 External Floppies will only work with the later models after the C series Latitudes and contemporary Inspirons. USB 1.1 does not support DOS Booting. You need to get a Dell CDROM for the Modular Bay; any C-series Modular Bay CDROM will work. You can make a Bootable CDR Emulation of a W98 Boot Disk on a PC with a "burner" and Roxio EZ CD Creator. It will give you all the DOS Tools for Drive prep, then boot the CDROM and allow a hot swap in DOS for the W98 CD. It eliminates the need for a floppy for W98 installation; you will probably still need one for driver and utility Installations
 
Dell support did it for me

Hello everyone,

I'm new here and had the same problem with a Dell Latitude D610 (our boss').

The main problem was that it was lost for more than a week, and then was found back again and brought back to us by two honest people (yes, such people still exist!).

However, we got to ask Dell support for both the admin password AND the disk password - which, after two days harrassing them, they actually DID. The admin pass the first day, the HDD pass the second day. So now, the computer is indeed unlocked. Entering the BIOS after having those passwords, I now see there's no admin password, however I had to set the disk password to blank.

There were no such password prompts before the loss, and the computer has not been tampered with (the data is still intact on it). Would this be due to the total battery discharge, which would have triggered the CMOS to set those passwords back or something?

Also noteworthy, the HD is a Toshiba on this laptop. As I have another laptop (an HP) here, I swapped disks: the Dell could boot on the disk (an IBM), but the HP couldn't boot on the Toshiba... I tried and booted the HP with a Knoppix CD, which couldn't read the disk at all: even reading the partition table triggered an I/O error... I think I hate the so-called "ATA security feature".

All the more that there is (was?) a HUGE BUG with HDD passwords and Dell BIOSes: when setting the HDD password, Dell BIOSes let you enter characters such as [, ], (, ), : and others which are ILLEGAL wrt that ATA security spec!
 
Inspiron 1150 How to reset bios password?

Hello all,


I'm new to this forum and I wanted to ask a question. Everybody seems to know alot of information about removing or resetting the password for the latitude series, but is there a sure fire way to reset the bios password for an Inspiron 1150 series?


Thank you in advance.
 
TooDrkPark said:
Hello all,


I'm new to this forum and I wanted to ask a question. Everybody seems to know alot of information about removing or resetting the password for the latitude series, but is there a sure fire way to reset the bios password for an Inspiron 1150 series?
Thank you in advance.
Click to expand...
Been there, done that
email removed
 
Any way of re-installing windows?

Hi there, i have a dell latitude D505, it has windows xp pro on it and i have full admin privaliges over windows, but i want to reinstall because i feel like starting from a clean slate, bit slow crashes a lot ect.., so i got out my windows xp pro cd and inserted it into he cd-rom drive, rebooted, but it wouldnt boot from the disk so i went into the bios to change the boot order but there is a stupid config password and i can't change the boot device order, it is permanently on "Internal Hard Disk" i haven't a clue what the password is and the person who gave me it hasn't a clue either, i rang dell and no luck they wont give me the PW plz help!!!
 
josh8178 said:
Hi there, i have a dell latitude D505, it has windows xp pro on it and i have full admin privaliges over windows, but i want to reinstall because i feel like starting from a clean slate, bit slow crashes a lot ect.., so i got out my windows xp pro cd and inserted it into he cd-rom drive, rebooted, but it wouldnt boot from the disk so i went into the bios to change the boot order but there is a stupid config password and i can't change the boot device order, it is permanently on "Internal Hard Disk" i haven't a clue what the password is and the person who gave me it hasn't a clue either, i rang dell and no luck they wont give me the PW plz help!!!
Click to expand...


There ares 2 ways round this, if your lucky enough to have the right service tag you can use the master password generator to generate the master password with this you can to disable the config setting and change the boot order, your service tag must end in D35 if it ends in 595B this software wont work, from what I have read when using the software you must enter the tag exactly as it appears on the machine, case is sensitive.

If the software doesn't work then you will have to download Paragons tools and create a bootable Floppy/CDrom to reset the service tag,

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/judslat/paragon/

Good luck and let us know
 
I have a 595b service tag

I have tried that latitude.exe and Master_PW.exe but it doesn't work coz i have a 595b service tag, how am i supposed to boot from a floppy when i can't even change the boot order or enable any other boot device other than "Internal Hard Disk"?
 
I tried using the MasterPW.exe, but mu desktop won't run the program for some reason. If someone who can run it wants to do it for service tag FDYSI I would be super appreciative. Thank you.
 
Thank you so much! It didn't work (I guess that the configure password is different than the admin password :() but thank you anyway. I guess I'll have to find another way around this.
 
josh8178 said:
I have tried that latitude.exe and Master_PW.exe but it doesn't work coz i have a 595b service tag, how am i supposed to boot from a floppy when i can't even change the boot order or enable any other boot device other than "Internal Hard Disk"?
Click to expand...


If you remove the Hard disk it may force the laptop to boot from the CD rom, if not you will need to reset the EEPROM using the paper clip method, the instructions for doing so are at the website I gave in my last post

And to Josh8178 instead of multiple posting try just editing your post and putting a comment about the edit rather than post 3 times, the edit button appears at the side of yourt post. not moaning just being helpful..
 

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