Cf-30 please help

I just bought a cf30 on eBay without knowing that the bios is locked by a password. The seller does not have the password which worries me. What I want to know is can I boot Ubuntu or windows from a thumbdrive and will it work ok without being able to access the bios? The only thing I could think to do until I receive my hard drive is unplug the CMOS and let it sit overnight and hope that it resets. Any constructive advice or ideas would be greatly appreciated so I don't have to go thru the hassle of returning this and trying to find another at a great price. Thanks in advance!

Note: I DID NOT steal this laptop. I simply purchased it off eBay from a seller who apparently does not know how to use eBay correctly.

 

The forum rules prohibit us from discussing password removal.

That being said, You could burn a Ubuntu live CD (version 10.10 is our resident experts favorite). Boot to the live CD or thumbdrive and see how everything works.
If it will boot will depend upon what is setup in bios. The order can be changed along with enable or disable. I say try the thumbdrive or CD without any other drives first.
Post the full model number and we can give you information about the units hardware. Also post the price if you want. Maybe it wasn't as good a deal as you think..Just curious..We have a few members here who will treat you very well when you buy from them.

 

What Shawn said. It depends on what the boot order is in the bios.

I used a locked CF-52 for two years since it booted from cd first. Just trial and error at this point for you.

 

Welcome to the Panasonic Toughbook Forum

As Shawn said that is one thing that we can't talk about...almost every thing else goes. Please read this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/pan...reading-anyone-who-posts-panasonic-forum.html

 

Also if the seller on ebay will not work with you and offer you a refund or exchange then start a dispute at ebay and they will hold his money.
At last resort try heartland services to see how much $$$ for them to unlock the bios for you.

Bob

 

Starting price $200.00 and up

 

Oh?! ok then.
In my best Guilda Radner voice "never mind"

Bob



I will now go back to RimFireCentral and continue reading up on Winchesters & Marlins

 

Yes I know Bob, it's a LOT of $$$$...it's stupid. If it's a MK1 or MK2 it's not worth it but if you have a MK3 and got it cheap enough well it MIGHT be worth it...maybe

 

Thanks everyone. I will try to load ubuntu as soon as my hdd gets here. And I paid 97.50 shipped and its an mk2.

 

Wow...that was a good buy.

 

I'm not sure if it is the same problem, but I also had my two minutes of terror after buying the CF-30... After activating the fingerprint sensor, at the first reboot I was asked for a password that I never set and had no idea what it was. Luckily I'm stubborn and I tried to boot again and I noticed that the password request was made AFTER the BIOS screen. So I entered in the BIOS and from there I was able to disable the password request at boot, which was in some way activated by the fingerprint software.

 

Not quite... my issue is that a password is required to access the bios itself. So if I cant upload an os from a thumb drive or disk then its pretty much hopeless. Thank god the seller understands this and said he would accept a return if it doesnt work.

And since this might be a possibility, does anyone have a cf30, cf19 or something newer that they would be willing to part with? I checked the buy sell trade area and didnt see anything that was under like 400 or so.

 

That sounds about right. You see if you buy one here you will not run into problems like you are now. The ones the guys sell here are taken apart and cleaned, fixed and tested to be sure you are going to get one that will be with you for years to come. Many times them cheap ones on ebay end up costing you more :yes:

 

Send a PM to Sadlmkr. I know that he got some CF-30's before Christmas that he is going over getting them ready to sell. I am sure he has one or more ready to go. Units that I got off him have the best touchscreens I have used on any Toughbook. You will not be disappointed with a unit from him.

 

If you are really interested, get in touch lol. I have near 20 MK1 and 10 MK2. PM please. I just (an hour ago) installed Vista Business Factory Install on a MK2. GPS working fine, WWAN needs a driver to happen next. 9K hours. Screen protector on order due tomorrow. CF-30FCS85AM.

To those that don't know...W7 uses the Vista drivers....you load W7 and tell it to use them (words to that effect)

My CF-30CCS85BM will have XP Factory install. For W7 on this a bios change is required.

My price is my price. W7 with COA extra.

Fair for you fair for me. Turnkey operation.

Thanks to you and thanks to Mo,

Jeff

 

I cant pm yet!!! Nooooo! Can u send me one with a price?

 

5 posts and you will be able to PM.

 

This is post #5

 

And 6 because it still wont work.

 

It will now, it just takes some time to kick in.

 

Jeff,

Why would you install Vista instead of W7? Vista is terribly slow.

 

As far as I know, Jeff goes with the original COA unless the customer asks for something else.

 

I hate vista as well, but if you update it to sp2 and do some tweaks it is bearable. I got it working good on a single core machine this time home with 2 or 3 gb of ram. I would of just recommend a upgrade to W7 but they wanted to keep the installeded games they had as they didn't have the disks any more. So I did a major clean up of the system, UWT, and a few other tweaks. I cut off a lot of un-needed services also. After all that vista only had 55 things running at start up. Normally it has 75 plus, they did fix some of the slowness with SP2. I keep a generic Dell vista business disk for reloads if needed. ( I have three CF-U1's at home. One is loaded with xp, vista, W7. I will be updating them all when I get home and doing a xp vs vista vs W7 shoot out on them.)

(they had took it to a shop and the shop told them the hard drive was bad. They put two different hard drive in it and it burned them up. But it would still boot into vista. I told them leave that place right now and to bring it to my house. Found out the shop owner was trying to give them 35 bucks for that laptop since it was in bad shape for parts only. The problem was 155 things running on a single core at start up. Three different antivirus software that was expired and trying to update, etc. I un-installed LOTS of stuff. lol )

 

Vista installs all the Panasonic drivers in the right place and gets it ready for an update to W7.(I am having problems with too many distractions and the 5725 card.)
Final version should not be Vista. With no GPS I would install Mint 15 or 16. BUT all my units have GPS. So...recommend W7 which costs more. The minimum price I have seen is near $90.00.
Hard to price at what people think is competitive w/ ebray. Maybe roll it back to XPP but that's only good for four months.
I don't know.
Thanks Shawn.