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22 December 2011
A client brought in a laptop a few weeks ago with the rather thorny issue of being locked out of his computer because someone had inadvertently set a BIOS password and, worse, enabled fingerprint security. While in many cases simply cracking open the laptop and removing the CMOS battery for a few minutes or locating the reset jumper will do the trick, this particular laptop was playing hardball.
Not very old, this Acer Travelmate running Vista had a Phoenix BIOS and I had quickly exhausted any trick I had. So, as any normal PC tech who runs up against a wall, I turned to Google and started sorting through all the garbage posts and forum threads that led nowhere. The "backdoor" passwords being suggested, which I suspect are a load of hogwash but tried regardless, didn't work. Trying to boot up into Hiren's and running the DOS based BIOS apps didn't work. Add a comment
I know...a Windows XP tip? In 2011? Well, not everyone has made the leap to Windows 7 yet and, as it happens, a few weeks ago, someone called me up with a nagging issue. Somehow, they had accidentally deleted the Desktop Shortcut from their taskbar, a tool they apparently used quite a lot.
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