HP Bios passwords

KGhaleon

ugh, so I've run into a real headache. My coworkers put a pair of passwords on my HP desktop(dc7700) and I can't get rid of them. I believe they are a power-on password and a setup password. I immediately pulled the cmos battery out along with the power cable and punched the computer button a few times to clear the power. I waited(even an hour) before reinserting it and no luck as I still get hit by a password. I found a yellow button on the motherboard which should reset the bios, but that didn't get rid of it.

I believe I managed to guess one of the passwords, as I was able to boot into windows. However if I attempt to boot into the bios, it will promt me for a password or two...or it forces me to reenter that same password when I try to get back into windows.

Looked up manuals for the machine and I'm coming up empty...anyone have experience with these HP BIOSes?

jibbajabba

KGhaleon wrote: »

ugh, so I've run into a real headache. My coworkers put a pair of passwords on my HP desktop(dc7700) and I can't get rid of them. I believe they are a power-on password and a setup password. I immediately pulled the cmos battery out along with the power cable and punched the computer button a few times to clear the power. I waited(even an hour) before reinserting it and no luck as I still get hit by a password. I found a yellow button on the motherboard which should reset the bios, but that didn't get rid of it.

I believe I managed to guess one of the passwords, as I was able to boot into windows. However if I attempt to boot into the bios, it will promt me for a password or two...or it forces me to reenter that same password when I try to get back into windows.

Looked up manuals for the machine and I'm coming up empty...anyone have experience with these HP BIOSes?

For how long did you press the yellow button ?

To reset the bios you have to unplug the PC from its power and press the button for AT LEAST 5 seconds. Then after you plug it back in it should be reset.

Edit: If all fails : http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/CmosPwd

aordal

You probably need to use the reset jumper on the mobo. Look up your mobo model on google and try to find a manual for it. Somewhere in there there's a cmos jumper and you just move the jumper over for 1 minute and then move it back and the pwords will be gone.

jibbajabba

aordal wrote: »

You probably need to use the reset jumper on the mobo. Look up your mobo model on google and try to find a manual for it. Somewhere in there there's a cmos jumper and you just move the jumper over for 1 minute and then move it back and the pwords will be gone.

that is what the yellow button on HP motherboards is for .. the button is the jumper ...

tiersten

I've reset the BIOS settings via the button before on generic HP SFF boxes. Didn't do anything special. It should wipe the password.

KGhaleon

Yes, I tried pushing and holding the yellow button...even for over a minute, but nothing.
It seems as if the bios is being cleared, but the password is actually stored somewhere else...perhaps in firmware?

Confused as hell. Didn't see any jumpers on the motherboard aside from the yellow button.

KGhaleon

KGhaleon wrote: »

Yes, I tried pushing and holding the yellow button...even for over a minute, but nothing.
It seems as if the bios is being cleared, but the password is actually stored somewhere else...perhaps in firmware?

Confused as hell. Didn't see any jumpers on the motherboard aside from the yellow button.

^oh, and yes...I did remove the CMOS battery and power cable. I even tried booting up without the cmos battery, but it still prompted for a password.

tiersten

I'll have a look at the manual for the HP desktops we've got.

win2k8

Have you tried flashing the BIOS? I've tried this on a Dell that had a BIOS password and it worked great.

win2k8

KGhaleon

Don't know if I want to go that far. I just want to wipe the password.

KGhaleon

Finally got it.

There was a jumper, it was just cleverly hidden in the bottom right-hand corner of the motherboard, inbetween some SATA cables and LED power cables. The jumper was green and shaped strangely, so I removed it and rebooted to go into the bios...and success.
I put the jumper back after changing my password.

Bokeh

Now go break their fingers for messing with your machine and putting you through all sorts of aggrevation.

KGhaleon

Familiar with the backdoor trick involving Vista's accessibility options? My coworker has a personal laptop running Vista, so...

KGhaleon

Actually I got him back today by disassembling his HP laptop and removing the CMOS battery, changing the password to "never gonna say goodbye" and closing it back up.

Later I came back from a meeting and he just gave me a nasty look. I sat there with some other people and watched him pull the battery out. Major lulz

skrpune

so is this some sort of ongoing booby-trapping, practical-joke war??

KGhaleon

Yes, it's been going on for a month or two. It started with some little rick rolls here and there, then became an all out war with him making changes to my registry prompting rick roll videos to be called when opening the command line, running apps, messing with startup scripts, making my windows background a rick roll video, scheduled task rick rolling, me exploiting the vista accessiblity button to gain admin access to his personal laptop, replacing the hard drive with blank ones, deleting his computer from AD, etc.

With group policies, bios passwords, etc we've managed to keep each other out. However it seems even the bios passwords aren't enough now.
I had to hide my hard drive before going home for the weekend.