BIOS problems

oh the enter spaces didn't come out....

The easiest solution might be to ask the former owner what the supervisor password was.

Otherwise, if there is an operating system currently on the computer in which you have or can obtain administrative privileges, you can usually dump (i.e., discover) or overwrite (i.e., reset) the BIOS password using a utility for that purpose.

What utility you could use for this depends on the installed operating system and the brand of BIOS. The brand of BIOS can usually be discovered either by examining the boot screen carefully or looking around in the BIOS settings themselves (if they are read-only for you, you may be able to find something that specifies the brand...perhaps a copyright notice for the firmware in the lower-right corner of the screen, or something). If you cannot discover the brand this way, you can use a (different) utility to discover that, but usually it's not too hard to figure out what brand of BIOS you have. You can often also look it up, if you have the exact brand and model name/number of the computer (or, if it was custom-built and is not of a specific brand, then with the exact brand and model name/number of the motherboard).

If you can provide this information, I can continue helping you with this--with that information, you may also be able to search the web for a suitable utility.

If you do not have and cannot obtain administrative access to an installed operating system, then you have two choices:

(1) Remove the hard drive and either install and operating system on it or modify the system currently on it, so that you have administrative privileges. Put it back in, and then you can run a utility as described above.

(2) Remove the "clock battery" on the motherboard, wait a minute, then put it back in. On some systems, there might be a jumper on the motherboard you can use (but not all, and this is not necessarily the same as a jumper used to reset the BIOS firmware).

Oh don't worry! One time when I was in an administrators account (in XP) I changed the administrator's password itself so that I could do the "run as" as an administrator and nobody would know that I had admin privleges.... and if you run "explorer" as an admin then explorer just opens everything up as an administrator :)

Sounds good then--you should be able to run a utility to discover, eliminate, or change the BIOS password. If you need help finding such a utility, please post the information relevant to that, as detailed above. If you have any other problems, please also free to post again to ask for additional assistance.

On the other hand, if you have solved the problem (or when you have solved the problem), please mark this question as Solved.

(To clarify, the above post is not intended to express approval for inconspicuous privilege elevation for your accounts on other people's systems, nor to pass any sort of judgment about anything. Rather, what "sounds good" is that now that they've given the machine to you, you have the means to circumvent the BIOS lockout relatively easily.)

dude I don't think THAT much

+ My dad was FINALLY going to give me admin privleges anyway... he just hasn't gotten around to doing it or even knowing how to do that

Yeah I said that mainly because it was mildly amusing. I have no personal objection to assisting you fully with this. But I also thought this computer had been given to you by a school or something. My comments are also not intended to be interpreted to support the use of family hierarchy to restrict your access to a computer that is practically speaking your own (and thus access to information as well). ;-)

Anyway, as I said, please post again if you need additional help with this, or mark this as Solved if it is (or do nothing to this question, if you plan to try a solution but have not yet done so).

K so my BIOS version is "INTEL-f1d" it says...... but that doesn't make that much sense. So I used Belarc, that was more helpfull.

I forgot to tell you what it said:

 Board: Intel Corporation D945GCZ AAD10307-504
Serial Number: AZCZ63104161
Bus Clock: 200 megahertz
BIOS: Intel Corp. NT94510J.86A.3869.2006.0519.1533 05/19/2006

If it is a BIOS password, at best you can move a connector at card to reset the BIOS, at worst you can do nothing.

@delance
Just about any BIOS password can (at least theoretically) be reset, and even read, with software. For many BIOSes, there is software already written to achieve this. For some, there has not been, so then using a jumper, or cutting power to the motherboard and removing the clock battery, is necessary.

@Connor Sinclair
I'm not aware of any software that will do it for this BIOS, but considering that you have an administrator account on a Windows system, I'd recommend you at least try http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/CmosPwd, and perhaps also the programs listed at http://www.i-hacked.com/content/view/36/70/.