How prevalent is this cmos pw problem?

[aclsr]

hello... i am new to this post, but i am not new to computer repair, so i pose this to my fellow community members.
a friend of mine brought her cousins latitude c600 to me to repair,for the cousins son had a password on the computer, but could not remember it. immediately i see that it was not for the os, but for the cmos pw. my initial reaction was that a minute fraction of 10 year olds would even know what cmos is, an even fewer would find cmos and set a pw. am i in the minority in thinking that, or not? and of course the cousin is not the original owner and hassling w/dell over ownership, i will leave for the cousin.
what percentage of passwords were set by children? or were a lot of these models, and similar others, dumped on other buyers, or were bought from crackheads or other nefarious sellers and now many people have useless laptops.
i truly became concerned when i went to two of my friends that repair computers also and they have dells that were brought to them to repair with the same problem, and i live in a very small town.

thanks

 

[kimsland]

Well according to this post, I'd say thousands have similar issues.
As for kids (possibly) putting passwords on. I'd say it's more likely that these were (mostly) corporate laptops, that had the harddrive wiped, but the password was left on.

 

[raybay]

The C600 series and the D600 series have been major problems in regard to mysteriously appearing passwords that make repair impossible.
There are fixes that sometimes (very few times) work that are posted on this forum. You can find them with a seach through the posts.
But you likely will find that only replacing the motherboard will work. They usually sell on Ebay, new in box, for $100 or so... but you should verify the part number of the board you need with Dell.

 

[Tedster]

This is a daily problem. Just go to the appropriate forum (mobile computing) and read the FAQs as well as the threads.