Reset Password Bios

[Hayley Sweigard]

Thisarticle was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Jack Lloyd. Jack Lloyd is a Technology Writer and Editor for wikiHow. He has over two years of experience writing and editing technology-related articles. He is technology enthusiast and an English teacher.

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This wikiHow teaches you how to reset your Windows computer's BIOS password. You can do this by trying a master BIOS reset password, or you can attempt to remove your BIOS' memory battery. Keep in mind that not all BIOS manufacturers include a master reset password, and not all computers allow you to access the battery. If none of these methods work for you, then you'll have to take your computer into a tech repair shop or contact the manufacture.

BIOS is an acronym for Basic Input or Output System, also known as system setup or UEFI. BIOS or UEFI is a firmware that is embedded on a small memory chip on the computer's system board or motherboard. It acts as an interface between the computer's hardware and the operating system. The BIOS or UEFI also contains instructions that the computer uses to perform basic instructions such as date, time, whether to boot from a hard disk drive, USB drive, or the network, and so on.

BIOS passwords cannot be recovered. If you have forgotten one of the passwords that is set in the BIOS, contact Dell Technical Support to obtain a password release code. The password release code is based on the unique password prompt that is generated using information from your Dell laptop.

BIOS passwords cannot be recovered. If you have forgotten one of the passwords that is set in the BIOS, resetting the CMOS or NVRAM helps reset the BIOS to factory default settings and remove the passwords from the BIOS.

If this does not work, Call back HP and provide them the case number that has been given to you and mention that the smc file is unable to remove the password. They may have to replace the system board of your PC.

GUy i bought this one , has another one , and that another one has the same problem . So this looks like BIOS microcode issue, that was there from the factory. I believe case is resolved, topic can be closed.

Hello. i have the same problem with a hp 2570p that i have bought from the internet whitout cdrom and hdd. I need Bios administrator password to enter into the bios. help me please to resolve my problem.

I must inform you that these services are not endorsed by HP, and that HP is not responsible for any damage that may arise to your system by using these services. Please be aware that you do this at your own risk.

I need assistance with my HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9 server. We do not know what the bios password was set to, so we need to reset it. I have already tried to reset it by removing the CMOS and by booting with position 6 of the maintenance switch set to 'on'. All other documentation I have found online about this issue is in regards to other gens / models. Is the process any different for this specific model? Nothing I have tried has worked thus far.

Thank you for your response. Unfortunately clearing the NVRAM did not resolve the issue. I followed the instructions exactly, got the confirmation screen that the system was being default configured, powered off the machine when prompted, flipped switch 6 back to off, and powered the machine back on. I have tried this multiple times, but the bios password has not been removed. Any additional assistance would be greatly appreciated

This should work, but if it doesn't, see the articleHow To Remove, Clear, Reveal, Unlock or Reset BIOS Security Passwordfor useful utilities: PC CMOS Cleaner, CmosPwd by CGSecurity,!Bios by eleventh alliance and invalidating the CMOS checksum manuallywhile booting from FreeDOS.

Quite often, the password will be set (either in plaintext or hashed) in a separate EEPROM in the computer, so that the ROM for the BIOS has no effect on it. This also means that you can upgrade or reinstall the BIOS and keep your password and settings on there. This is a huge convenience for businesses, who do not disclose BIOS passwords to employees, yet can still remotely upgrade them. You may have to decrypt or re-flash the security EEPROM or another chip to reset the password, as you might have seen in older style Thinkpads for example.

To answer your question, you should research how to clear the password on the specific model you have - that is, of course, provided you own the machine or have full permission to do so by the owner. It may not (and frankly, shouldn't) be possible any more to do so by simply removing the CMOS battery, but neverless its something to try anyhow. In the worst case scenario, you could learn how to reverse engineer the BIOS chip and inject code to reset it for you, if you are not able to do so manually. This is overkill and it much easier said than done, but then again, if you are willing to decompile the binary from the BIOS you might as well get it commercially done for you or just get another board. All the personal examples I've seen of BIOS disassembly have been done for one's own interest, and simply isn't worth the time to learn (especially since, from your question, it appears you want a quick and easy way of wiping the password).

I just had to deal with this same issue yesterday, I was not able to log into my SuperMicro IPMI web interface because I had not used it frequently and forgot the password. The command in Insyte's answer did not work for me but it was close. This command worked to reset the ADMIN account's password:

Thank you to Insyte for pointing me on the right track of using ipmitool, after a few searches online I was able to find this working command. Hopefully it will help someone else that stumbles on this question.

Supermicro IPMI BMCs can be fairly erratic and troublesome. You should always use the utilities and tools provided by Supermicro before attempting a fix with universal tools such as IPMITool.

Note: If you already have Windows or Linux installed on your system, then you can skip steps 1, 3 and 4 and merely execute the commands in steps 5 and 6 using the appropriate executable from the Supermicro toolkit downloaded in step 2. If you are using Linux and you encounter kcs_error_exit messages when invoking ipmicfg commands, then you need to install the OpenIPMI library and enable the ipmi_devintf kernel module.

You'll have to configure the IP/Netmask/Gateway again with the same tool, but this is the only way I could make it work.

OpenIPMI and IPMITools did not work for me on Debian Squeeze. I've tried resetting the password, cold resetting BMC, to no avail. However, they are good for setting IP and reading sensor data.You can get the appropriate version for your OS from SuperMicro FTP:

Boot a thumb drive with the proper IPMI firmware file and the proper flashing utility for your motherboard from SuperMicro's website. We use a dos based one for simplicity. If you already have the current IPMI firmware Simply flash it with the same version you already have.

Interestingly enough, leaving off the -c option does not cause IPMI static addressing to be reset in the BIOS. It only affects settings within the IPMI environment, such as LDAP, NTP and any alert notifications you have configured.

These steps were performed on ipmitool version 1.8.19 on Debian 12. The Debian package version used is 1.8.19-4. I know about the 'IANA PEN registry' error, but ignored it at the time as I was using a temporary installation left over on a spare SSD from a different task. The mainboard used on has IPMI ROM version 01.35 dated 14/3/2014 and BIOS version 3.0a dated 21/12/2015 (d/m/y). The tool has to be run as the root user, but I decided to just use sudo instead.

With that, I tried just creating a separate IPMI user, which failed due to a typo ('username' when it should just be 'name') but did trigger a help prompt showing me that I can still just list the users.

From there, I was successfully able to access the Web interface, where I changed the username and password for the other user account, though I could also just do it in the command line. I also found through there that user ID 1 is used for a hidden 'Anonymous' user, which I think was not present on older versions of AMI MegaRAC from prior to 2014 or thereabouts.

Problem is, I went into bios menu with the goal of removing the password so my machine would boot right to windows menu, and that's where the trouble began. I stupidly (so maybe I am an idiot after all) clicked the first google link which advised you just need to enter your old password then click enter and the bios menu will prompt you to "disable" or make "inactive" the administrator password "inactive". The bios menu even reflected that i'd change the admin password from "active" to "inactive" (or something like that - I can't remember the exact verbiage used in the bios menu.

This brings me to part 2 of the problem: My original password no longer works, but there is still a password box prompt. I tried simply leaving said box empty thinking maybe that's how to bypass (i.e. I thought perhaps I reset my password to be nothing/blank so it'd just let me press enter once and then move me to windows menu... no such luck).

Problem 3: Pressing/Holding/spamming DEL won't take me to bios (that's always been what I use to get into bios in the past). Tried F2, F8, F12...then figured what the heck: i'll try all the F#s...nothing. CTRL+ALT+DELETE...nothing. Anyone have any insight here other than: "You should contact AMD support"? Although if that is the only way to navigate this, someone confirming that for me would still be helpful though it's not gonna be news i'm thrilled to receive... should've just left well enough alone, but instead here I sit with a tremendous amount of regret wondering what my password could be if I didn't enter a new password when deactivating (or so I thought) the original.

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