compartment or from a hotel room, you can at least hope that your private
data is secure.The bad news is that if you forget a password, it can be very difficult and
sometimes expensive to fix the problem. Most manufacturers require you
to send the laptop to an authorized repair facility — along with proof that
you’re the device owner — to have the passwords reset or removed. Another
bit of bad news: Most password schemes present a pretty weak wall against
a thief removing the hard drive from your laptop and installing it in another
machine to retrieve its contents. Some laptops truly lock away the contents
of a hard drive, including some of the IBM ThinkPad line.If I were talking about a desktop computer here, I could give some advice
about trying to locate the BIOS reset button or jumper on the motherboard;
the same sort of reset exists on most laptops, but access isn’t very easy.You might want to try a few of these things before shipping the machine to an
authorized repair facility because of a lost password:Ask the laptop maker if it will provide a back-door password to access
the BIOS. These codes exist, and some manufacturers of laptops or the
BIOS are freer with revealing them than others. You may be (in fact, you
should be) asked to prove you are the owner by providing a customer or
invoice number from the original seller.
If the laptop has a CMOS backup battery (accessible through a com-
partment on the bottom of the case), remove the battery for at least
an hour.This should result in the BIOS returning to its default settings.
Most modern laptops, alas, no longer have a user-accessible CMOS battery.
Check the instruction manual or consult the maker to find out if your
machine has a CMOS battery or instead uses flash memory (which does
not require a continuous source of electrical power to hold information).Troll the Internet in search of published lists of backdoor passwords.
Be aware, though, that some systems shut down after repeated attempts
to use the wrong password. You are no worse off than you were at the
start, except that now you definitely have to get the machine to a repair
facility to have the BIOS reset.
Believe it or not, some of the backdoor passwords are very obvious:
Toshiba for Toshiba machines, Dell for Dell machines, AMI or A.M.I. for
laptops using AMI BIOS chips, and PHOENIX or phoenix for Phoenix-based
machines, and so on. There’s no guarantee these will work, but they’re
worth a try. Note that these workarounds are aimed at the User or BIOS
passwords; the Supervisor password may be more deeply locked away.Consider using password-cracking services or software.This may or
may not solve the problem. Some of the companies are on the up-and-up
while other companies or programs exist in or near the netherworld of
hackers and virus writers. Be careful out there. By my way of thinking, if106 Part II: Explaining What Could Possibly Go Wrong