Xtra News Community 2

If you've come stuck and need some help with anything PC - ask away in here and I'll try to help.

 ;)

Okey Dokey then , well I have a curly one for you .

My daughters Asus F5 laptop was working just fine till recently .

Now when you power it up it doesn't go past the Bios page and is demanding a password [which she doesn't have ] ....it comes up with  "Hard drive locked , enter password"

I have searched the net to no avail , and have to conclude the only option is a new hard drive [even though the comp is less than 12 months old ] ......any thoughts ?

OOoooo... that is a tricky one!

Try this first off and let me know who you get on and what happens...

---

At boot-up note the BIOS provider (Award, AMI, Phoenix, IBM, etc.)


For Award BIOS’ try these backdoor passwords:

AWARD_SW
j262
HLT
SER
SKY_FOX
BIOSTAR
ALFAROME
Lkwpeter
j256
AWARD?SW
LKWPETER
syxz
ALLy
589589
589721
awkward
CONCAT
d8on
CONDO
j64
szyx
 
 
For AMI BIOS’ try these backdoor passwords:

AMI
BIOS
PASSWORD
HEWITT RAND
AMI?SW
AMI_SW
LKWPETER
A.M.I.
CONDO
 
 
For PHOENIX BIOS’ try this backdoor password:

phoenix
 

try just hitting the enter without any password
also get her to try all her passwords out and try simple ones like 12345 or 000000 etc she must have entered something unless the retailer who set the thing up put in the password and in that case they have to provide it to you unless it was second hand then you will have to contact the previous owner and get pass word..... I am not sure if uninstalling and re install will fix it but expert should know.
I did that to the first one I had and forgot the password so son just took the bios thing out and put in another but lost everything as it all had to be reloaded again......

lol.. or that!

get ger to try all the passwords she or anybody else who may havehad access it may lock her out after five trys...........just hold the off on button down till it shuts down and wait a couple of minuites and restart it will go back to bios page and she can keep trying.
also contact the manufacturer there may be a way to acess and correct problem but as someone has somehow passworded the thing if the manufacturer cant help and she cannot find password then it will need new bios installed and will lose all on harddrive which will probably have to have all operating syatem and software reloaded.

Cheers for that ...........It is an American Megatrend Industries one ........so the AMI

I have tried the first 3 , to no avail .. AMI
BIOS
PASSWORD
............I have shut it off as it won't allow anymore tries at the moment , i'll turn it back on and give the rest a go

donquixotenz , thanks for giving it a shot ............the laptop  is basically brand new , My mum bought it for my daughter from the shop last March when she started Uni .....I have had a look at the receipt and it says it has 2 years limited warranty ............Do you think warranty would cover it ?

She hasn't had any passwords installed at all ..........All I know is that she went Overseas for 2 weeks , left the laptop at home ,unplugged ....when she returned it kept on saying she needed the password .

take it back and try they may cover it but someone has done that while she was away i think
good luck

If youre handy with a screwdriver and computers dont scare you - then you could always just remove the CMOS battery for around 5 min...

Be warned thou - doing this will erase ALL settings in the BIOS, meaning you may have to reconfigure some options on first boot - but it is do-able.

 :)

There's two ways of producing that message - either the disk it's self is locked (and could cause other drives to also become locked) OR the BIOS been locked also produces the same message. Almost all BIOS Products have 'back door' keys which you can find via Google (posted above) and we hope one of those work. I'm picking you have a locked BIOS... the easy one.

I'll go have a look for the BIOS vers/number for that model and we might even narrow it down to just a few passwords instead of the heaps we have right now - desired if you're going to have to reboot all the time...

Back in a tick.

Nope - that's it. I thought there was more but they were just rearranged...

Good luck!
 :)

How did we get on?

(https://cdn.smfboards.com/Smileys/smf/smiley.gif)

Son who built my beast says that the possible reason that a lockout occurred is that the cmos battery went flat or failed/failing.
This is not the main battery but one on the board and really needs someone who knows what they are doing to replace it.
He also said that tere are back doors but you would have to contact the manufacturer and you need to know what brand of cmos you have installed.
Replacing it should solve that but is possible that will need to be reconfigured and data may be lost.
He suggests that if it is new it should be under warranty and to take it back.

Nah no luck with the other backdoor passwords Daz .........

Thanks for that info donquixotenz  , and thank your son ............I'll be taking my daughters back to the shop this week , so fingers crossed they don't slug me  ;D...........If she loses Data she'll just have to wear it , no point crying over spilled milk .......she just ought to be thankful uni hasn't started for her this year yet and all assignments stored are old

Cheers to both of you for your trouble (https://cdn.smfboards.com/Smileys/smf/smiley.gif)

At startup there are lots of background programs working, is there a way you can look at them and turn some of the unneeded things off.
what thing can we do to make our comp work faster  ???

what do you do ???

This started yesterday.    When I type a reply, there is a delay in the letters coming up and have ended up missing the last letter of a word a few times.   The smilies are also jerking like stop start.
Its not happening anywhere else, emailing or excel stuff I've been doing.

Why is this ? 

Your machine is thinking very hard about something.


Press these keys all at the same time:
Ctrl - Alt and Delete


From the pop-up which appears select task manager.


First click on the tab named performance and see if the graph through the roof.

If it is, click on 'Processes' and then click on the column title 'Mem Usage'.


Post in here the top 5 image (program) names in that list - once you've sorted it so the images using the most memory are at the top.

 :)

Ok - first thing first - in your Startup menu under programs (go Start Button/Programs/Startup) and see what's in there.

If there's something in there which you dont want just right click and select delete.


After that we will take a look at the services running on your machine.
It's rather techy and it wont be tonight (I'm poked), but tomorrow we will take a gander.
 :)

I get that a lot :(

When I did that - and Im not having that drag when typing at the moment ..
Performance seems fine .. CPU 8% PF usage 818MB

and then processes/mem usage .. firefox is at the top 193,896 - incredimail next with 8592 ..

Firefox is rather high aint it??

Sometimes my comp starts working its head off .. should I check that when it does that???

 :blah

go Start Button/Programs/Startup


When I do this .. I cant understand most of the things in there  :hmm

Screen dump it and post the image in here.


I'm off to bed guys - I'm totally poked. Back to this in the morning.


Have nice nite!


 :bdtm

 :gn

 :thud

 :slpg

OK .. I get to startup using run/msconfig .. bloody hassle cos the screen dont enlarge GRRRRR  so I had to take 3 pics .. hehe

(http://i43.tinypic.com/2uhlhlg.jpg)
(http://i41.tinypic.com/mlqc.jpg)
(http://i44.tinypic.com/30bojz7.jpg)

Then I noticed this bit .. are these settings ok??

(http://i41.tinypic.com/2dcgvb9.jpg)

sleep well .. and lock the doors!!

seems you have got into selective start up click normal star up aply and click ok restart should have comp load all services properly as you have normally set up.
Also despite what folk say I am strongly of the opinion that firefox and incredimail are more trouble than they are worth they are too buggy and will often open my system to risks. So as system is microsoft I use microsoft and find that they have most tools that others offer just a little harder to find and use.
My experiences have been such that I rarely use them and then only for some aspect that I want to use that internet explorer office outlook or outlook express does not have and that is rare.

the only good tool firefox has in my opinion is that it will copy the whole page including the bit you have to scroll whereas wit IE you have to often take a screen shot of the bit you can see and then scroll down and take that bit etc ie 2 or three screenshots as opposed to 1 with firefox add on.
but is still too buggy for me to use as default browser

seems you may have some stuff running that is unecessary but perhaps dazza or someone can advise better.

I am running vista business and office 2003 pro and these are my start up notice a lot are unticked but everything seems to work ok its just that system tray is not cluttered and unecesary programs are not loded till they are needed.

(http://i589.photobucket.com/albums/ss334/donquixotenz/Capture-2.gif)
(http://i589.photobucket.com/albums/ss334/donquixotenz/Capture2.gif)

Keep this to yourself but my lappy is 40gig and there was 7.4 left before I just did a delete of garbage I had been saving but didnt need ..

now I have 9.6 left .. I guess Im gonna have to spend the next hour using the cleaners and getting out the ret of the rubbish.

Problem is I bump into programs that are interesting d/load them, have a play, get bored and delete most of it .. or dont delete it at all .. then I forget what it was.

I probably need to take what I need off and do a rewhatever .. wish I could just push a button and have it default and get rid of the crap.

 :sl

!  not  sure if yourve found the problem  but it could be the  security  program it  comes with,  " Infineon Security platform'    ive had a smiliar  problem   if thats the  case and you dont know the pass word i think  a full resets your only viable option =(

I did a total cleanout last night .. now I have 10.2 gig spare.

I dont know anything about that panther :(