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

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.

It looks as if you'll have to reinstall the operating system on another drive.

Windows 7 (and other operating systems, I assume) have a feature that lets you
restore the password from a thumb drive (or possibly other storage devices).
This should, I think, protect you from password corruption.

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


There may be a default password that the machine goes to - this would
likely be mentioned in the owners manual where it talks about initial
setup process.

Try the serial number too...

As for the web site without the proper manual, send a note, they may
refund your money. I have had that happen for me when a downloaded
purchased schematic was incorrect.

John :-#)#

--
(Please post followups or tech enquiries to the newsgroup)
John's Jukes Ltd. 2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 3C9
Call (604)872-5757 or Fax 872-2010 (Pinballs, Jukes, Video Games)
www.flippers.com
"Old pinballers never die, they just flip out."

On 05/01/2013 16:38, mike wrote:
On 1/5/2013 7:49 AM, wrote:

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.

A few business laptops from around the Pentium III series, moved on to
storing BIOS passwords in non volatile eeprom devices. Previously some
used a private area of flash memory where the BIOS firmware lives,
though I've rarely able to reset that by simply updating the BIOS.

However I've hacked into some identifiable eeprom's using i2c, and been
able to read the password in plain text! But that was sometime ago, I'd
expect the devices now are well hidden and integrated - and the
passwords stored encypted.

The OP's laptop is of the Pentium III era. I'd say keep searching (maybe
a battey, maybe not), and be aware the machine is in the N3300 series,
so many similar variants to match. There are sites in vietnam (of all
places!) that have a wide collection of detailed schematics beyond
what's available in an official service manual! (I don't have links at
present)

Also many BIOS related recovery tutorials on youtube.

--
Adrian C

On 1/6/2013 2:24 AM, Adrian C wrote:
There are sites in vietnam (of all
places!) that have a wide collection of detailed schematics beyond
what's available in an official service manual! (I don't have links at
present)

Schematics links would be very useful to the community.

On 06/01/2013 13:28, mike wrote:
On 1/6/2013 2:24 AM, Adrian C wrote:
There are sites in vietnam (of all
places!) that have a wide collection of detailed schematics beyond
what's available in an official service manual! (I don't have links at
present)

Schematics links would be very useful to the community.

I've posted before

(googles me own 2011 post in sci.electronics.repair)

Ahh, here....

There is a vietnamese web forum that has full schematics for many laptops.

Paste the following into google

site:kythuatvitinh.com inspiron 1545

You'll have to join the forum to download taking care to practice 'safe
hex' with documents you may get.

Yup, it's still going

--
Adrian C

On 1/6/2013 6:42 AM, Adrian C wrote:
On 06/01/2013 13:28, mike wrote:
On 1/6/2013 2:24 AM, Adrian C wrote:
There are sites in vietnam (of all
places!) that have a wide collection of detailed schematics beyond
what's available in an official service manual! (I don't have links at
present)

Schematics links would be very useful to the community.

I've posted before

(googles me own 2011 post in sci.electronics.repair)

Ahh, here....

There is a vietnamese web forum that has full schematics for many
laptops.

Paste the following into google

site:kythuatvitinh.com inspiron 1545

You'll have to join the forum to download taking care to practice 'safe
hex' with documents you may get.

Yup, it's still going

Thanks,
Kind of a scary site. Think I'll go find a live linux CD and turn off
everything
on the network and cross my fingers ;-)

On 05/01/2013 15:49, wrote:

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.

If you fail the password check, does it display a failure code after a
System Disabled type message? What is it?

--
Adrian C