Need help with A8Jm, HD locking and BIOS battery ASAP!

I was browsing the BIOS, trying to find a place to turn off the loud beep sound when the laptop requests password on startup. I then noticed a HD locking option and gave it try. However, when the laptop rebooted, it wouldn't recognize the password?!? I've tried numerous times, also tried putting in different password in the case I miss typed, but the password i entered is one I often use, so that should not be the case. I then tried to find the BIOS battery to reset the BIOS, but cant seem to find it. Is it the small one in the upper left corner in the HD compartment?

 

I don't know where the battery is.

0. Try to remember the password you entered including possible ways in which you might have mistyped it.
1. How about resetting the BIOS to defaults? That might (unsure, but might) reset the HD password.
2. How about rewriting the BIOS with a new version? That has a greater chance of removing all the settings from the old BIOS.
3. Hardware reset button on the bottom of the notebook.

I was going to suggest something more radical but I'll keep it to myself, one of the solutions above is likely to work.

 

1)
I cannot enter the BIOS, the first thing the laptop does, is ask for harddisk password.

2)
I'll try resetting it first.

3)
Which reset button is this?

 

Ok, further suggestions.

Addon to 0. What if the CAPS lock was on; the Num Lock was on; have you tried those combinations?

1. Then it's not a HDD password, it's a setup password. The HDD password AFAIK should only be needed upon booting up.

2. Yeah but if you can't access it at all...

3. The one marked |> o <| , turn the notebook face down and look for it. Push a straight pin into it. I'm not sure if the laptop has to be on or off. I'm not sure if this will reset the password but it might.

 

Like I said, I've tried all possible combinations.

Yes it is. When pressing F2 to enter BIOS (or booting up normally) I get the message "Hard Drive Locked, enter password:" This is still in the postscreen, right after detection of Pri Master.

I'm still not finding it, in which compartment is it located? HDD or CPU?

 

"Yes it is. When pressing F2 to enter BIOS (or booting up normally) I get the message "Hard Drive Locked, enter password:" This is still in the postscreen, right after detection of Pri Master."

Hmm why should a HDD password prevent you from accessing the BIOS. But OK. Rather stupid suggestion but how about removing the harddrive? Do you still get asked for the HDD password if the HDD is not in the system? Does it then try to boot from another device like CD without a password? If so you can make a DOS CD that can be used to rewrite the BIOS and probably get you rid of the problem.

As to the button, I'm not sure all notebooks have it. It should be accessible from outside the notebook so it's not inside any compartment.

 

That wasn't a bad suggestion actually, but it seems the password is written to the HDD and not the BIOS. I just removed the HDD and entered the BIOS fine. However, I could not change the HDD password setting, since there was no HDD present. Thus, I'm pretty sure, flashing the BIOS would probably not help, since the password is on the HDD.

OK, I'm pretty sure the A8Jm doesn't have one. It would kind of defeat the purpose of having BIOS password wouldn't it?

 

Well no, I suspect even for notebooks that do have it any passwords are kept in place.

Well if it's written on the HDD... then I have bad news. It's written in the firmware, here's what I found.

http://pwcrack.com/harddisk.shtml

I would try to rewrite the master boot record maybe I get lucky, but I doubt it. It seems to be in the firmware. You can try to check the site of your HDD manufacturer maybe they offer some tools for this situation... or call ASUS... or pay 100 USD to get your HDD unlocked by the guys in the link that I gave you.

Edit: there is actually no way to rewrite the MBR because you can't access the HDD... sorry that was a stupid suggestion.

 

Yeah, I was looking at that page as well, but 100$ is just insane...
I emailed ASUS, we'll see if they can do anything. Thanks though.

 

Argh! Heureka! For some reason, my BIOS won't accept .'s (dots) so the password was the just written without the dot and now worked!

 

Well remove it quickly and never set one again