Dell BIOS Password

I have a Dell 5100 laptop donated to me. The hard drive was shot. I replaced the hard drive, when I started up to boot the OS CD I was asked for an admin password. No good in cracking the code, it keeps shutting down on my third attempt. I checked to see if there was a motherboard battery, but didn't see any--so I could clear the cmos. Any thoughts? Many thanks!

 

Your laptop probably has a cmos chip instead of a battery, only problem is finding it. Once you find it, there should be a way to reset it with jumpers or something of that nature.

 

The battery keeps power to the CMOS, where the BIOS settings are stored. I think you are confused.

It has a battery, but how to get to it...I know not.

 

Please rethink this, have some white lightning first if it helps.

Studio T

 

Excerpt from Dell manual

Security
Kensington Lock, secures notebook with a single point of attachment
Boot password
Hard drive (HDD) password

BIOS
Compal Phoenix Based BIOS
Flash ROM enabled
ACPI Compliant
SMBIOS 23
Support for Dell Service Tag
BIOS bootblock protection
BIOS and Keyboard flash support
Supports boot from
CD
FFD
Internal NIC
hard drive (HDD)
On-board Diagnostic support in HW and BIOS


Note the hard drive password.
The hard drive serial number may be locked into bios as well.
Good luck.

Studio T

 

You could try this very long thread: http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-18780.html there may be a few tips there. The closing entry says all information needed is contained within.

***********
With the old HD installed can you change the BIOS password?