problem accessing bios

Hello everyone,

Just so you have a little bit of info on what is going on. My uncle has a co worker who purchased a gateway all in one zx4250g from a pawned shop. everything was fine, she was using the computer and her nieces was using it as well to play games. I am assuming one or the other might have turned off the computer incorrectly, since the boot file is now corrupt. She asked if I wold fix it for her which normally wouldn't be a problem. I have a windows 8 computer also and have already created a usb boot and repair for it. However, upon attempting to go into bios I found that it is password protected. I am assuming the previous owner might have password protected the bios. I have already tried the standard passwords such as password, admin, owner, cmos, administrator, etc. I have been doing some reading and found some articles speaking of getting the hash code and finding the password this way. Is there anyway of doing this? I know I could flash the bios, but I am still learning, so I did not want to attempt this yet. Is there anyway of getting the hash code, or a work around to gain access to the bios? I cannot boot via usb or disk right now.
So far I have contacted the pawned shop and tried the password they told me, have tried to remove cmos battery to reset, and have looked for jumpers. I have not seen any password jumpers for this computer, and right now I am at a loss. I did contact gateway support, but they wanted me to send them the computer along with $100 + shipping. I would like to figure this out. Any help would be greatly appreciate.

 

Who is the vendor of the bios?
Don't see Gateway, so they must use Phoenix??

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/cmospwd.html
http://www.majorgeeks.com/mg/sortname/bios_cmos.html


http://dogber1.blogspot.com/2009/05/table-of-reverse-engineered-bios.html

http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/reference/biosp.htm

 

I am not sure of the vendor but would p11 help Identify it? Could the p stand for phoenix?

 

I am not sure about the vendor, but does P11 help? Could the P mean pheonix?

 

I have tried that. The problem is I have UEFI and the data is store on chip via flash, at least from what I have learned.