Dell Latitude D620 Bios Problem

[Zonie]

Have a clients laptop with a bootup problem. Theree is a possiblity the hard drive could be bad. I thought I would do a diagnostic on the drive. I went to the bios to make sure it would boot to CD. I found the hard drive would boot before CD so I went to change the boot order and I was advised I need to put in a password under Security/Setup Changes to make changes. I called the client for a password and was advised thisa was done quite a whils back and he does not remember the password. I thought I would remove the CMOS battery in hopes everything would be reset.

My question is, where is the CMOS battery located and how do I get to it? I have removed the keyboard thinking it was under it. Found the memory andfans bou no battery. Tried a google search without much luck. More like I have a handfull of problems coming up since there is a lot of articles concerning the removal of this password without success.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Draggar]

When you power on the laptop near the beginning you should see "Hit F12 for boot sequence" (or something like that) and you should be able to select the boot device.

Select the CD-ROM drive and then "hit any key" when it asks you to.

To answer your question the CMOS battery is usually accessible from underneath the keyboard - you don't need to remove it, just unplug it from the motherboard.

[Matridom]

http://support.dell.com/support/edoc....htm#wp1111212

One must be wise of the ways of Dell

On a side note, if you can prove ownership, dell can give you a "default" bios password based on your serial. Just call them up.

[Zonie]

http://support.dell.com/support/edoc....htm#wp1111212

One must be wise of the ways of Dell

On a side note, if you can prove ownership, dell can give you a "default" bios password based on your serial. Just call them up.

Thank you Matridom, did the trick for finding it. I unplugged the battery and will let it set for the night and see if this works. Otherwise I will call Dell to see if I can get assistance on the problem.

[Zonie]

When you power on the laptop near the beginning you should see "Hit F12 for boot sequence" (or something like that) and you should be able to select the boot device.

Select the CD-ROM drive and then "hit any key" when it asks you to.

To answer your question the CMOS battery is usually accessible from underneath the keyboard - you don't need to remove it, just unplug it from the motherboard.

Thanks Draggar for the tip, I did know about the Select boot device. I just wanted to get the BIOS problem resolved so I can make some neccessary changes in the BIOS.

[Guts3d]

I believe that if you hit the F12 key and the CDROM is not specifically listed, it will ask for the password anyway.

[Zonie]

Well after letting it set last night, time and date are messed up and it still has the password for the bios and bootup. Was able to start the cdrom to test the drive any way. Back to the drawing board, will have to see what Dell says I need to jump through what hoops to get this removed.

[Matridom]

Well after letting it set last night, time and date are messed up and it still has the password for the bios and bootup. Was able to start the cdrom to test the drive any way. Back to the drawing board, will have to see what Dell says I need to jump through what hoops to get this removed.

It's an internal tool that is used, it's web based and takes like 5 seconds to process the info, it takes longer to get the right serial string (yes it's case sensitive). Most techs won't have direct access, but their tier 2 guys should, so expect some delays in regards to that. They will put you on hold, get the tier2 guy to create the password then give it to you.

What I should make clear, once you have this bios password, it will *always* work, regardless of the existing password.

When reseting the bios password, you will need to make sure that you can confirm all information of the owner and they may require the owner to get on the phone to confirm these details, a 3 way call will be a good solution.

[MobilePCPhysician]

Might help: http://www.tech-faq.com/reset-bios-password.shtml

[Matridom]

Might help: http://www.tech-faq.com/reset-bios-password.shtml

Be carefull, I was going to test their solution for a Bios master password generator found here http://www.tech-faq.com/dell-bios-password.shtml

Turned out the exe was a virus.......

To be safe, I would recommend calling Dell regardless