Gerry Coburn wrote:
>
> I maintain a variety of standalone computers in my school and have recently
> found that one of my pupils has interfered with the CMOS settings and has
> password protected his work. The BIOS is an Award version on an oldish
> (c1993) PC marketed by Research Machines in the UK. The OS is Windows 95.
>
> Does anyone know how I can get around the password protection?

   If the battery can be removed then pull it out for a few minutes (I
have been told sometimes stored electrical charges in the capacitor
needs to trickle out even with the battery removed...sometimes as long
as overnight, but I can't confirm that statement) and reinsert the
battery (might be a good time to put a new battery in the machine). That
will clear the CMOS settings. You will need to look on the hard drive
itself to get the values needed to manually input them back in CMOS
after you get back in (I doubt that old BIOS has the autodetect hard
drive feature). If the battery is soldered to the motherboard you will
need a technician to remove the battery and resolder it back. Newer
motherboards have a jumper block specifically designed to clear the
password settings and the motherboard manual will show where those pins
are located.

   In the future if you have student hackers you may wish to password
protect CMOS itself on all machines to prevent access by students.

All the best,


                     Russell Smith    Edtech Consultant, Journalist
                   Region 14 Education Service Center Abilene, Texas
               http://camalott.com/~rssmith mailto:[log in to unmask]
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