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Unable to clear CMOS password

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by qballrail 2 views

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A colleague of mine recently purchased a Compaq EVO N1000V which has a CMOS password programmed into it. We have tried all known conventional means of removing it but nothing seems to work. We have tried removing the CMOS battery but no reset jumper, or any jumpers on the board, for that matter. There are dip-switches, however. Even random switching produced no results. No documentation came with the unit and nothing online at HP/Cpq's website. Even flashing the BIOS has produced road blocks. Short of paying thru the nose and holding for an eternity, anyone have any viable suggestions?

6 replies

by cg it

Not on Compaq laptops. Unless the CMOS is hardwired in, you could pop the chip out and put a new one in. Thats about it. [you could try low wattage shorting but then might as well pop the chip out and replace it]. Next hurtle would be if they masterpassworded the hard drive. If they did, forget it. Hard drive is unuseable. Period!

by cg it

just take the thing to a compaq authorized service tech. He's got a code to use to get in. However, if there is a user and master drivelock password problem, the harddrive is perm disabled. without em nothing will get the harddrive to run and no compaq tech can undo it.

by qballrail

No socket, chip is hardwired.

To be honest, don't want to invest any more money into fixing this,nor do we want to pay a tech for something that we PROBABLY could fix with a little help.. Besides, both of us are pretty competent techs and shouldfind the answer, if not here then someplace.. not to mention, learning something. :) thanks for trying

by joseph moore

Well, I found the "Maintenance and Service Guide, Compaq Notebook Series, Evo N1000 and Presario 1500" document.
On page 1-16 it says to do the following:
1) prepare the computer for disassembly (refer to SEction 5.3 for more info).
2) Remove theRTC battery (refer to Section 5.7).
3) Wait 5 minutes.
4) Replace the RTC Battery and reassemble the computer.
5) Connect AC power. Do not reinsery any battery packs at this time.
6) turn on computer.
"All passwordsand all CMOS settings have been cleared."

Ok. Section 5.7 calls the battery a "CR1220 lithium disk cell battery". Basically, it is a battery used in millions of PCs throughout the world.
And as for disassembly of the laptop, they want you to unplug it from the AC, remove thebattery, and yank out all removable devices, including RAM. Ok, massive overkill there!

The URL to this 10MB PDF is here:
ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/supportinformation/techpubs/maintenance_guides/279372-001_rev1_us.pdf
(please remove any spaces)
I don't think this is gonna be real helpful, but it couldn't hurt to read the manual first.

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