DIYbanter - View Single Post - "Service Manual" CAUTION via eservicemanual.info

mike[_22_]

On 1/5/2013 7:49 AM, wrote:
Hi,

Here is the reason I wanted the Service Manual. I wanted to
find the location of the RTC/CMOS battery.

When I recently turned on my HP Pavilion N3390 laptop, I get an ERROR:
"0271: Check Date and Time Settings" during power up with the option to press
F1 to continue or F2 for Setup. Also F10 diagnostics is available. No mater
what I select, I must enter a password!!!! Note: I never set a password on
this laptop, and I never had to enter a password in the past when I entered
(F2) setup. I have no clue what password I should enter.

John

The whole idea of the password is to make it so you can't defeat it.
In the old days, you could remove a jumper and reset it.
Then, there were sometimes master passwords, but you'd find nobody would
divulge them.
Then, they switched to a backdoor password that was calculated from some
machine number...serial number, some number on the boot screen, etc.
But nobody would give you the program. Sometimes, you could get someone
to do the calculation for you, but that was rare.

With today's emphasis on security, I think you're pretty much screwed.
If you find anything, let us know. I've got a Toshiba lifebook with
the super password thingie that won't even turn on the screen
until you put in the password. I called Toshiba and they just
laughed...guess they musta thought I'd stolen it.

Don't suppose you left it unattended and got pranked?
I used to take computers to swapmeets and demo them.
Some asshole put a password on it. Fortunately, it was
old enough that I could remove the jumper and fix it.

There's also the possibility that some glitch caused it to think
it needed a password, or that the first boot after fixing the battery
always asks for a password and instead of pressing enter, you banged
on the keyboard and that got accepted as the new password???

I don't think there's any chance of finding a usable password recovery
in published data...certainly not the manual.