On 28 Apr 98 at 22:47, Jonathan Navarro wrote:

>    about this password problem ... I was told that by taking out the battery
>    of the motherboard and then attaching the positive and negative poles
>    with a little cable would remove the BIOS password.
>
>    Has anybody done such a thing? I would work or it would burn the mobo.

  This can't burn the motherboard, because the power came from the
battery which you've removed[1] -- which WHOOPS means that there's no
power, and so this cannot do *anything*.

  On most systems, there are a pair of pins which you can "short"
(connect temporarily) to erase all of the CMOS configuration data,
including any password.[2]  On some systems, these pins carry current
from the battery, on others, you may have to turn on the system power
with the pins shorted.
  On systems without such pins, you can get a very similar effect by
removing/disconnecting the battery and waiting for a minute or two.
No short needed in this case -- deprived of battery power, the CMOS
memory will revert to its default state.  This is probably what you
were thinking of.

[1] You have, of course, switched off (and preferably unplugged) the
PC before trying this....

[2] This is why you want a real case keylock to secure a system.
Anybody who can take the cover off can disconnect a front-panel
keylock and erase the BIOS password this way.

David G