Removing the ultimate PC security measure.
You probably can’t.
BIOS (and now UEFI) passwords — which you enter before booting to allow the process to proceed — are tough items to crack. That’s (mostly) great news if you’re trying to protect your computer.
Unfortunately, it’s pretty bad news if you don’t know the password.
Let’s review the options.
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Removing a BIOS/UEFI password
BIOS passwords protect your system from unauthorized changes and unauthorized booting. In most cases, you need to know the password to change the password. If you don’t know that password some motherboards may have a physical reset switch that will reset a BIOS to its initial state, with no password, some require that you ship the motherboard back to the factory, and some cannot be changed at all it.
BIOS passwords
The BIOS (Basic Input Output System) or now the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is software stored in a memory chip on your computer’s motherboard. It performs many functions. We’re most familiar with it as the software that controls your machine from the moment you turn it on or reboot it. It’s responsible for locating the boot device and loading the software that takes over the next stage of the boot process. I often refer to them as UEFI/BIOS to show I’m talking about either or both. Throughout this article I’ll just use BIOS1.
Many, if not most, BIOSs can be configured to require a password before allowing you to do anything. This forces you to enter that password before you can even boot your machine, for example. It’s a very strong security measure to prevent any unauthorized access to your machine.
By anything, of course, I mean anything; if you don’t know the BIOS password, you can’t boot, you can’t alter any BIOS settings, and, of course, you can’t reset the BIOS password.
A BIOS password is strong security if that’s what you’re looking for. Given how often people forget passwords, it’s almost too strong, because if you forget it, you are likely to be SOL: Severely Out of Luck.
There are a few things to try if you forget your BIOS password.
1: Hardware reset
A few computer manufacturers provide the ability to reset the BIOS password by setting a switch or connecting a jumper on the motherboard.
The only way to know if this will work for you is to contact the manufacturer of the computer or its motherboard.
The reason this is infrequent is that it defeats the purpose of the BIOS password in the first place. A thief who has stolen your machine can just open the machine, flip the switch or connect the jumper, and they can get right in.
2: CMOS battery reset
The CMOS battery on the motherboard is typically used to provide just enough power to keep the clock running and preserve your BIOS configuration when the machine is not running or plugged in.
In some cases, you can reset your BIOS (including all settings and the password) by unplugging the machine, removing the CMOS battery for a few minutes, and plugging everything back in.
Once again, this should be a rare case, because it’s horrible security. A thief with your machine can do exactly the same thing to get in to your machine. All it does is slow them down a little.
3: Master or back-door password
I’d not heard of this myself, but I’m told it’s a possibility.
Some BIOSs apparently have a master or backdoor password that the manufacturer can use to override the normal password you and I might use. Clearly step one is to contact the manufacturer of the motherboard, but how they proceed from there is unclear.
It feels like another security hole if true. Either they’d share the master password with you (or the thief) at which point you could share it with the public, or they’d need some secure way to access your machine which I can’t fathom, unless you’re able to boot the machine normally.
4: Ship it back
I have heard scenarios where the computer manufacturer will reset the BIOS password for you (possibly for a fee). That means shipping your computer back to the manufacturer. They then perform whatever magic it takes to unlock it. Perhaps this is where they can use that master password securely.
This is a good theft deterrent because a thief isn’t likely to bother sending a machine off to a manufacturer where it can be traced back to him.
Nonetheless, I believe this is also an uncommon practice.
Related
Do I Need to Update My BIOS Regularly?
Your system BIOS is software, but updating it regularly may not be appropriate. Updating it to fix a bug, of course, would be.#3010
5: Motherboard replacement
If there is no way to reset the password, there is no way to unlock the BIOS.
One alternative, then, is to replace the motherboard, BIOS and all. With a new motherboard (and an un-passworded BIOS), you’ll have access to everything once again — data on the hard drive is unaffected by switching the motherboard.
6: Computer replacement
Sometimes a machine with an unknown BIOS password is unsalvageable. It’s essentially been “bricked”2. This might be the case on an older machine if the BIOS can’t be reset, and new motherboards are no longer available. It’s a shame, but it’s an occasional, unfortunate reality.
If the hard drive is not password protected (see below), getting a completely new computer and either installing the old hard drive, or attaching it as an external drive, is perhaps most expeditious.
Locked or encrypted hard drives
Occasionally, it’s not the BIOS that has a password, but the hard drive. For example, if you use whole-disk encryption with a third-party tool such as VeraCrypt, you’ll need to provide a password (or passphrase) before the hard disk can be read.
This is completely unrelated to the BIOS.
It’s easy to confuse this with a BIOS password, since they both ask for their passwords at roughly the same time: before the system boots. It’s difficult to know which you’re dealing with; pay attention to the wording of the password prompt and any information that precedes it.
The good news about a lost hard disk encryption key is that your computer is just fine. You may lose all the data on the hard drive3, and will perhaps need to reformat it, but the computer itself remains fully functional.
Do this
Remember your passwords.
It should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: remembering passwords is important, particularly those passwords for which there is no hope of recovery if lost.
If you do choose to enable a BIOS or whole-disk encryption password, be sure to save that password in a safe, secure location in case you ever need to recover it.
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I recently purchased a new Dell Inspiron laptop, a model 3793. When I first got it, I went ahead and set a BIOS password. I decided to clear the password when the computer insisted on needing the password when doing a restart. There’s a setting in BIOS that supposedly allows bypassing the password during a restart, but it wasn’t working. I found that I could not clear the password at all.
Contacting Dell was not very helpful and even contacting the vendor I bought the laptop from was not helpful either. Strangely enough, about a week later, Dell issued a BIOS update for this machine. After downloading and flashing the BIOS, I found that it was now possible to clear the passwords (there are two levels for BIOS passwords, an Admin and a System password. To make changes to BIOS settings, the Admin password is needed. To start the computer, either the Admin or System password is needed.)
The lesson I took from all this is that BIOS is just software and can have bugs just like any other software program. Luckily in this case all it took was waiting on an update.