Panasonic Toughbook BIOS Password

[NooNoo]

Welcome to Windrivers rikandsheila

Alot of these older laptops have the bios on a partition on the hard drive instead of a chip. When you upgrade the ram, this partition has to be rewritten and possibly increased - yes this does mean having to completely reinstall everything!

Panasonic have some great support, but unless you register (free) you cannot access the downloads or the faqs.
here is the toughbook support

Sign up and get the user manuals and search the faqs for upgrading ram. You will also find bios and driver updates there.

[rikandsheila]

Thanks for the info, the chip is in and working! Next trip is abigger HDD. I can't get it to recognise yet but i've downloaded the First Aid disk and hopefully this will help.

[confus-ed]

Thanks for the info, the chip is in and working! Next trip is abigger HDD. I can't get it to recognise yet ..

There may be trouble ahead .. (sing along ! - like as in Nat King Cole) Hard Disk Size Barriers may prove useful to you..

In a pc the 'escape clause' is pretty easy, add an aditional pci IDE controller card without these bios constraints, but in a laptop, your maximum disk size is much more rigid, as you can't do this, as there isn't anywhere to fit such a thing.

I'm not so sure that the toughbook documentation is gonna identify these limits for you, but be aware at least that the maximum size of disk you are adding will be limited by the bios on your toughbook .

[mayfield]

I have a Panasonic CF-29 here with supervisor password set in BIOS that I can't seem to crack. None of the default passwords work, and taking out the battery doesn't clear it no matter how long it sits....any help would be greatly appreciated! mail adres: [email protected] :

[3fingersalute]

I have a Panasonic CF-29 here with supervisor password set in BIOS that I can't seem to crack. None of the default passwords work, and taking out the battery doesn't clear it no matter how long it sits....any help would be greatly appreciated!

Have you tried contacting Panasonic customer support? - We're not in the "cracking" business here so-to-speak (please see this sticky thread), although Panasonic support may be able to help you reset the BIOS password.

Also, no need to include email addresses in posts, besides feeding the SPAM-bots, answers communicated via email aren't viewable to people searching the forums with similar problems later. - Any replies should be communicated here for all to see.

[street1]

We recently ran into this problem with a Panasonic Toughbook CF-47. The laptop was set to boot from C: but the NT4 OS was missing kernel files, effectively rendering the computer useless. The way we eventually got around the problem was to unplug the hard disk. This forced it to boot from the A: drive, then ran KILLCMOS (a google search will find several sites that have this program). Once KILLCMOS was run, the bios defaulted to A: as the boot drive and the password was gone. Hope this helps.

[wgervais]

I have a cf-29 striped to the main board.can't pick out the eprom , (****in NATO standards) had bios failure while flashing ,$5000 paper weight now,only get power on light every thing else ****ed

if any one has ever reprogramed there chip please message me

[Georgi1]

I can do it.
If you need it e-mail me [email protected]

[Candy14]

HI my name is candy i need help..well recently my dad past away and he left me his belongings and in those belongings he left me his panasonic toughbook cf-18
he didn't leave any user name or password so im totally locked out any body that can help i would be so happy please help.

[NooNoo]

Welcome to Windrivers Candy14
Have you read Street1's post above?

[Candy14]

yeah i did but i talked to one of my friends and he said to just buy a new hard drive can anybody point me to a cheap on for my comp...?

[NooNoo]

This is a tough book, you have to look up the specification and get the right one and tough and cheap are rarely in the same sentence!

Use the links to panasonic and download the manual and specification. Changing the hard drive, however, won't affect the password unless this is a windows only password - in which case a reinstall of the operating system will sort the problem.

If it's the bios or boot password you are after, that's a different set up altogether. You should contact panasonic to find out exactly what you need.