HP Laptop Bios Password Locked...

I have a chance to buy a laptop from where I work that was a display model on the floor till a customer put a password on the bios and locked it out. Its an HP Pavillion and I can get it for $50 but I want to know if what I heard is true as far as resetting the bios. I have been told all I need to do is remove the battery on the motherboard for a an hour or so and it will reset the bios to factory specs. Is this right?? Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanx

 

I think you can however it doesn't take an hour it takes about one minute.

 

Thanx!!! I've heard different time frames so far. I hope this is as easy as everyone says it is. And I hope I get it for the price my manager gave me. Im going to wind up with a sweet deal if everything go's ok!!!!

 

Just remove the battery for 1 minute and you will be fine. please note though that due to it being a laptop the battery may be soldered to the motherboard.

 

Yep, youre only worry.

Just remove the battery and wait a few mins, if this doesnt work,

Just remove the battery (CMOS) and the laptop battery (standard one), unplug it from the mains and press the power switch to drain all the internal capacitors.

 

Just to add to the above comments, there is the possibility that the customer also locked the hard drive at the same time! If so, this can be expensive to fix.

 

Thanx for all the comments. If the hard drive had been locked as well would it still start the boot sequence??? It will show the early stages of booting such as basic pc info before going to the bios password screen. The manager of the store told me he has to check and see if the store can get credit for it before selling it to me for the $50 we agreed on. I found out today that the laptop has been in store for over a year like that and cannot be returned for credit. So Im stoked!!! But I wont believe it till I put it in my car tomorrow either. A $650+ laptop for $50. Cant go wrong no matter if I have to put a little money into it.

 

If you have to buy a new hard drive they aren't very expensive

 

Ok so what do you consider expensive??? Several others told me hard drives arent that much.

 

A new hard drive (Which will not fix the BIOS issue) should be around £60-70 for a 250GB 2.5" model.

 

You could try downling the lates BIOS from the HP website. If you can and I includes a flash utility that may reset the password.

 

If you can boot into a live cd (try "puppy" linux), then just replace the hdd and then like davios says, try flashing the bios.

 

Actually on this particular model I took the hard drive cover off and the bios battery had a plug to the motherboard. I unplugged it...held the power button in for a few seconds... waited a minute and plugged it back in and problem solved. This was after I split the case and felt like an idiot once I realized I didnt have to do that in the first place!! LOL!! Thanx for all the info and advice. I will say this also... The back door bios passwords for Pheonix did not work. I tried them all with no success and this was a Pheonix bios machine.


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