At 06:34 AM 10/14/1998 Richard Ekpat, M.D. wrote:
>
>A friend brought me a system in which the motherboard password is enabled
>but he's forgotten the password. As a result, on boot up, when you hit 'DEL'
>to get to the CMOS setup you're presented with a small screen that asks for
>the password. Since we don't remember the password we're stuck there.
>Is there any way to work around this problem and disable the password?


Richard:

If you stated the computer or motherboard brand, someone
might be able to give you the backdoor password.

Known Backdoor BIOS passwords are:

American Megatrends BIOS:
AMI
AMI_SW

AWARD BIOS:
award
AWARD_SW
BIOSSTAR
biosstar
BIOSTAR
biostar
bios
alfaromeo
j262

NOSPIN (sponsor of PCBUILD) has some password
cracks on its site:

    http://nospin.com/pc/files.html

If you have to, you can use the brute force method,
i.e., wiping out CMOS; you do that by:

1. Physically shorting the CLEAR CMOS Jumper
(see your motherboard manual); or

2. Using software like KILLCMOS:

     http://members.tripod.com/~deathboy_koasp/

Be sure to record your hard drive parameters
before clearing CMOS.

Good luck.

John Chin

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