Advent T200 Asking For BIOS Password
 

Fitted with W10, the HDD died. I put a new one but on boot, straight after the Advent logo it asks for a password. Tried the old trick of removing CMOS battery, but no joy. Tried the google suggestion of wrong password 3 times generating an error code which can be decoded, but it doesn't do that. Any thoughts please?

Re the Bios Prompt
 

On my Advent PC, I select F2 on start up to get into the BIOS.

Try this and go to the Security Tab and deselect BIOS Password if you can.

It sounds as the PC has reverted to factory settings at some stage.

CAT III

Thanks. Tried that but still get the blue password reqd panel.

Factory settings do not generally have a BIOS password IME. There is often a couple of pins to short with a jumper that will do a full revert -- if you have or can find the motherboard manual.


'a

It seems that recent laptops have an EPROM that stores certain things - these are not affected by removing the CMOS battery and there are no pins to short. Looking for a second hand mobo!

One other forum suggested reflashing the BIOS. Sounds a bit extreme, but as a last resort....?

But how? It won't boot at all.

Any chance you still have the old hard drive? If so, put it back in and see if its presence allows access

Hope I'm not teaching granny etc. A PC boots up into its BIOS from an onboard chip (stage 1), then depending on the settings within the BIOS it look for a device to load up system software (stage 2) unless you stop it from doing so. BIOS and operational software are two different things on two different media.

I presume the laptop was running ok and for some reason you decided the hard drive was faulty and you have replaced it (Stage 2) normally. I think you have to ask yourself why is stage 1 now corrupt? Changing the hard drive should not cause a boot up problem. The BIOS runs up and looks to see where to go for it's system software (normally the hard drive but not exclusively) - are you sure you've installed the hard drive correctly? When the laptop is booting up from power on keep tapping the f2 key all the time the laptop is trying to boot - as in my experience sometimes the boot up sequence sometimes does not see a single key press. Try powering on the laptop without a hard drive in it at all and see how far you get.

No idea at all if this site is reputable or otherwise but they claim to have a solution. It may or may not be helpful in your case.


You might consider this -


Advent Computers | BIOS Password Helper

JimJim than ks, but it doesn't throw up a code, just says password incorrect over and over. Even with no HDD fitted, it should go through the BIOS check and then say that no OS is seen.

tried any of these ?
 

Thanks esa - yes I did and got nowhere. Now bought a second hand mobo off ebay for 20 quid - windows installed from a USB stick with no problems, and has even activated itself, so job done.