Toshiba Portege Z30 Bios Password Reset

[Heike Fallago]

Ihave a toshiba c655d-s5518, on that computer there is a jumper labeled xxx just above the DDR3 memory modules (towards battery), if you short the jumper while powering on it clears the BIOS password. on Some other C655D the jumper is labeled B500.

there are 2 pins next to either the ram or the cmos battery. mine was next to the ram. youll see them next to the ram all alone. turn the computer off. take a flathead scredriver and touch the two pins. hold it there while you power on the computer. the computer should turn on and then shut down. now power it on normally and the password should be gone. ive done this in a dozen c655 and c855s

pull out the bios ic name with winbond with 8 pins put it in the programmer download the bios file from toshiba webste extract the file there will be file with extension rom or bin try to make me picture i will guide you then programme the ic it will be claire i am very familiar with this

1. Starting with the computer fully off, turn it on by pressing and releasing the power button. Immediately and repeatedly tap the Esc key, until the message "Check system. Then press (F1) key" appears on the screen.

For some reasons it could happen that no PC Serial No. and Challenge Code will displayed instead of "Not Certified" appears. In this case remove the AC-adapter and the battery for a short time and try it again.

It works, I've had to do that on a Toshiba Libretto 50CT and a Toshiba Tecra 8000. The toshiba maintenance manuals have the pinout listed, I think it's called a Parallel Port Wraparound Connector in there, with the pinout listed in the wiring diagrams section.

Laptop generally save security data in a separated separated from nvram values in an eeprom chip. Sometimes you can hard tamper that eeprom short circuiting its pins to erase its contents or soldering a new blank eeprom, but sometimes... If the BIOS doesn't find certain expected data or checksums in them it will never let you boot. That's the case with Thinkpads. Dunno about Toshibas (with Toshiba BIOSes).

Am I missing something as I've watched the video and it shows the laptop being fixed as the device has done what it is supposed to do and remove the BIOS/CMOS password as it no longer requests a password but instead reports that the BIOS/CMOS configuration settings are not set and you need to go in to the BIOS and set them?

ANYWAYS, was going to build a parallel port bypass device (soldering/twisting wires) but read somewhere about someone just tying some wires together that made me think.... Why not just jumper the port directly?

Using paper clips, a right angle wire cutter (to clip the paperclips shorter/cleanly where needed); I was able to wire it up and get it working. I made a video but need to edit it... The only tricky one was the 1-5-10 triple cable which I wired by having a 2nd wire/paperclip touch the one in the 1-10 port.

Glad I found this thread as I've been trying to reset the BIOS password on a recently acquired Satellite 320CDT. The eBay seller neglected to mention this, but to be fair it was sold as Spares/Repair.

I had tried various things including generic passwords and a "key disc" but that hadn't worked. I had heard about the parallel port hack, but was sceptical. kleung21's photol inspired me to give it a try with paper clips and can confirm it worked for this particular model.

For future reference note where pin 1 is located. Above pics worked perfectly. First time I mirrored it the wrong way as I looked at another guide without pics. No harm was done but it didn't work of course.

It started normally with a Toshiba splash screen and then a password prompt. I knew the user password but not the supervisor password. After messing around with some Toshiba tools (trying to clear the password) I was locked out completely so needed to do this "hack" to use this laptop again. But even then it will show the password prompt but it will turn the laptop off after 3 incorrect passwords.

Thanks! Ive got relatively dead toshiba (batteries removed etc but external power) thats gives me nothing. Ive tried this but thought I may have wire pins wrong. Thanks for confirming your experience.

Hi All

I was given a Toshiba 1800 laptop Model No. PS181A-009S9 Serial No. 71013280J dating from around 2002 but in excellent condition.

I think this would be a good candidate for an upgrade to Puppy, however there is a problem.

The computer is protected by a bios password.

On power up, there is a brief TOSHIBA splash screen then a request for a password.

The password has space for up to 10 characters.

Pressing F2 while powering up has no effect, does not get into bios, just the password screen.

I did find that pressing F12 while powering up brings up a screen saying:

"Ready for bios update. Place bios update disk in the drive and press any key when ready to proceed'.

I thought this may be an entry into the computer by re-flashing or updating the bios, but I can not find any bios updates on line for the Toshiba 1800 series and am not sure even the brand of bios used.

The other thought was to disconnect the bios battery for a while and maybe the bios would reset to the factory settings. I did this but to no avail. The bios battery was dead anyway.

I also searched for a bios reset jumper or for bios reset pads that can be bridged on the mother board to reset the bios, but found nothing.

If resetting the CMOS doesn't work, then your next bet is to try using a backdoor password. A backdoor password is basically a password that manufacturers include with the BIOS so that technicians can access the computers that people send in for repair. An example of a Toshiba backdoor password is, unsurprisingly, "Toshiba." When the BIOS prompts you to enter a password, entering "Toshiba" may allow you to access your PC and clear the old BIOS password. Another option is to hold the left "Shift" key down while booting.

Thanks for the suggestions.

The idea of a backdoor password was one I had heard of, but have been unable to find one that works.

"Toshiba" does not work either in upper or lower case or with a capital T.

Nor does holding down either the right or left shift key while powering up.

The user manual suggests taking the laptop back to a Toshiba Service Centre if the password is forgotten, so the idea of a technician's backdoor password sounds correct.

Must be some smart people out there who know how to get around this problem.

John

Yes, removing CMOS battery is generally not going to remove BIOS password since these are normally stored in a non-volatile (no battery required) flash RAM chip of some sort. They can often be re-programmed if you have special software and some old laptops were resettable in that way via some hacked software solution some geniouses provided - but never easy. That DB25 may well be a solution by the looks of it. Reminds me of my own removal of an Android tablet pin on a machine I bought that no battery removal or reset button helped with: viewtopic.php?p=17814#p17814

But, no, don't take a knife to any chip inside your laptop - that Android was a special case and I researched exactly what pins might work (and just lucky really that it did).

Hi All

Well the DB25 plug solved the problem!

Booted straight into Windows ME.

Now I can also get into Bios and see if I can remove the Bios password or change it to my own password.

Then I will clean out Win ME and install a version of Puppy.

Thanks Wizzard.

I will carefully check out what is the appropriate version of Puppy to suit the hardware.

The Toshiba 1800 model I have with the model number ending in 009S9 indicates it is the base model with an 800MHz Celeron cpu with 64mb of memory, but this seems to have been upgraded to 120mb.

The model numbers ending in 00WFX indicated a Pentium III 850 MHz cpu.

On which puppy version to try, the 4.12 you are using on the other laptop may be best choice, the P-III and the 128MB of memory does not give a lot of walking around room. You will probably need a full install due to limited memory, along with some kind of swap.

Thanks All

I have just dug out my Puppy 4.3.1 from 2009. Have it on floppy and CD.

However I was keen to see if I could use a later version that would support a wifi usb dongle.

The Toshiba 1800 in some configurations did have a wifi card (but not mine).

Meanwhile I will see if I can upgrade the memory. I have another NEC Versa P570 that has a dead hard drive that I may be able to source some memory from.

Actually the Versa may be a better candidate for Puppy as it has wifi already. I could source a solid state drive for around $40 to see if I can get it going.

So many options!

John

Well here's the long version. Years ago I worked with a non-profit group that refurbished donated computers and then re-donated them to schools and other non-profits. Our agreement with the companies who donated equipment was we would wipe the hard drives. Most of the systems originally had some version of MS Windows (95 or XP). We contacted Microsoft explaining what we did and they told us they would charge us $5 US for each new XP license (how generous of them). That's when I found Puppy Linux. We quickly learned that the users didn't really care what the OS was, they just wanted to be able to use their apps to get task done. If it looked different and played to different they didn't like it (most people are resistant to change). So, I took Puppy and re-themed it, XP theme for XP users and Mac theme for Apple users. The adoption rate went way up.

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