HELP! Have forgotten hard drive password of laptop

**BASS-TREBLE** · 26th February 2009, 18:29

I stuffed up real bad.
I have an Acer Aspire One laptop.

I was having a looksie around the setup thing (f2 when its booting) and decided to make a password for the administrator and hard drive.
All good, click save and it reboots. I'm sure that I have entered the right password. Have tried with caps lock etc for the last hour but nothing.

The Acer support guy reckons it cant be bypassed so $140 for the full service to get it fixed.

Does anybody know tricks or should I just Be generous with $140?

Cheers

**birdhandler** · 26th February 2009, 18:45

but here us a link that will probably convince you

have fun

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000235.htm

and be nice to the compurt geek at work in future

Cheers

**BASS-TREBLE** · 26th February 2009, 18:50

Originally Posted by birdhandler

and be nice to the compurt geek at work in future

Cheers

Huh?

Cheers though.

**xwhatsit** · 26th February 2009, 19:21

You mean a password on the BIOS?

Normally you can just pull the battery out and leave it for a while (don't know how long, surely a few hours would be plenty). Resets the BIOS settings.

On a laptop might be difficult to get to though.

**BASS-TREBLE** · 26th February 2009, 19:24

Originally Posted by xwhatsit

You mean a password on the BIOS?

Normally you can just pull the battery out and leave it for a while (don't know how long, surely a few hours would be plenty). Resets the BIOS settings.

On a laptop might be difficult to get to though.

The link that birdhandler had says that too. Its a matter of taking out the keyboard etc so I'm still thinking of doing that.
Has anyone had experience with this on a laptop?

**Mully** · 26th February 2009, 19:24

One of these - twice daily.

**3umph** · 26th February 2009, 19:31

Originally Posted by Mully

One of these - twice daily.

Thats to small... this would be better...

**riffer** · 26th February 2009, 21:29

To the head?

Tried it.

Didn't work too well.

**3umph** · 26th February 2009, 22:14

Originally Posted by xwhatsit

You mean a password on the BIOS?

Normally you can just pull the battery out and leave it for a while (don't know how long, surely a few hours would be plenty). Resets the BIOS settings.

On a laptop might be difficult to get to though.

Serious now....

I'm sure it will be more then a few hours... usually they have a battery that keeps the bios memory alive.

If you can remove the battery which is usually not to hard then leave it off if possible over night and see... if not then try a couple of days...

**jeffs** · 26th February 2009, 23:03

Something of note.

Quote from another Acer aspire one user.

To set a BIOS password on the Acer Aspire One, hit F2 at the boot screen, go to the Security tab and set the Supervisor Password. I did this after I installed Ubuntu so that I could secure the machine a little better. Then at some point later I wanted to change a BIOS setting. I restarted my netbook and entered the BIOS password. It returned 'Enter Current Password:?' I did this until I got locked out and had to do a hard shutdown (by holding down the power button until it powered off). Had I forgotten my password? I didn't think so.

Then I discovered two very important points regarding the Supervisor password on the Acer Aspire One.

1. No matter what you entered for the BIOS password, it gets set to all CAPS, and
2. No matter how long your password was, it only uses the first eight characters.

So, if you entered "thisisatest" for your password, the BIOS would convert this to "THISISAT". If you are locked out like I was, turn on Caps Lock and enter the first eight characters of your password. That should let you in. Then change the password to one that is all caps and only eight characters. This should minimize the chances of trouble in the future.

Try this before putting the laptop in the fridge ( new one on me after 20years in the HW biz ) . As the aser uses a capacitor not a cmos battery, pulling the battery is unlikely to work.

**The Pastor** · 26th February 2009, 23:12

Originally Posted by 3umph

Serious now....

I'm sure it will be more then a few hours... usually they have a battery that keeps the bios memory alive.

If you can remove the battery which is usually not to hard then leave it off if possible over night and see... if not then try a couple of days...

no really? ANOTHER BATTERY? gtfo nigga. wtf will they think of next.

**xwhatsit** · 26th February 2009, 23:20

Originally Posted by 3umph

usually they have a battery that keeps the bios memory alive.

That's the one I was talking about -- not the laptop's main power supply battery lol.

**Slyer** · 26th February 2009, 23:28

Yeah, to do a full reset you'll need to remove both batteries, use a jumper on the clear cmos connector or the other 99% of the time just short out the battery connector with a screw driver or something.

Or you could just disconnect all power and then wait several years for the internal battery to run out.

(This is how it works with PCs anyway.)

No passwords will keep your computer safe, they can always get in. Passwords only keep out honest people.

**jeffs** · 26th February 2009, 23:28

Sorry Bass just read your first post. You say you tried with cap lock on, so you have already probably tried the CAP suggestion. But on re-reading your post, did you set the Bios password or the hard disk password ? Because if it was the Hard drive password your screwed

This is held on the disk platters and no amount of battery tugging will rest that one. Taking up Acers $140 option may be your only way as data recovery companies may charge more. But I would ask aser " will I loose data if you reset my hard drive password" before you cry because they did remove data. If it was just the bios password then yes removing the battery and waiting for the onboard CMOS backup cap to discharge "MAY" work. Or just go to the factory default bios setting and hope that clears the password. ( did on some old pc's ).