Locked out of Toshiba 300CDS notebook

[FriedToast]

Guy at work bought a couple "junk" laptops from a place recently. One he's using for parts for the laptop he uses at work. The other one, a Toshiba 300CDS, is password-protected. He gave it to me to figure out.

Turning the unit on, there is no BIOS post or anything. It goes straight to asking for a password. Since it's used and changed hands how many times, it doesn't do any good to find someone who'd know.

Not sure if this is a BIOS password or what. Never seen a computer open directly to a login screen.

I'm wondering if I had a boot floppy, if that might not work. Problem is, I don't have a floppy drive on my Sager 8790 or desktop. My old VAIO notebook has one, but a friend's using it since his Acer died.

Until I can get a boot disk sorted out, any ideas on where to start here? I don't know if pulling the CMOS would do anything (or even where it'd be on this machine).

Anyone?

 

[HPTech]

Hi there!

This sounds like a corporate machine that has not been stripped correctly. It could also be a power-on password. Does it mention anything cororate for example [Some of ours say 'This machine is property of Hewlett-Packard. please enter password to continue boot'] or just a prompt?

If it's just a prompt then it's proberbly just a power-on password, and removing the CMOS battery for 20 mins and/or taking the thing apart and resetting that way *may* clear it.

HTH
MikeHP

 

[FriedToast]

There's no logo or anything that would give an indication of where the unit came from. And the password part is just a prompt- nothing fancy.

password = _

That's what it basically looks like. I'll see if I can't figure out how to get it apart and find the CMOS battery. Thanks!

 

[RBBRMADE]

Found this:


The one and only way to bypass the Power On BIOS password
of a Toshiba Notebook. This method works on all models.

This is what you need:

1. Your notebook
2. An empty formatted diskette (720 kb or 1,44 mb)
3. A second computer (e.g. a DOS desktop PC)
4. A hex-editor (e.g. Norton DiskEdit or HexWorks)

This is what you have to do:

1. Start the desktop PC and start the hex-editor
2. Put the disk in drive A:
3. Change the first five bytes of sector 2 (boot sector is sector 1) to: 4B 45 59 00 00
4. Save it! Now you have a KEYDISK
5. Remove the disk from drive A:
6. Put the disk in the notebook drive
7. Start the notebook in Boot Mode (push the reset button)
8. Press Enter when asked for Password:
9. You will be asked to Set Password again. Press Y and Enter.
10. You now see the BIOS configuration where you can set a new password.

And that's all!

Ron

 

[FriedToast]

RBBRMADE, that sounds like a good possibility. I downloaded HDD Hex Editor, but it didn't give me any options to edit the actual floppy itself. Will continue looking for a hex editor (that's free) and that will let me edit the actual floppy (unless I'm missing something).


Edit: Used HexWorks and edited the floppy as mentioned above. There's no reset button per se, but Ctrl+F12 seems to do the same thing. Pressing that while turning it on brought up a BIOS update screen. However, the Keydisc didn't seem to have any effect.

Over the weekend, the owner bought some program to clear out the BIOS apparently for ~$10. He's trying the CD right now, so hopefully that works. There was a floppy and CD with that set. Floppy didn't do any more than the Keydisc, unfortunately.

 

[bruceb]

If you got into the BIOS Update Screen then you should be able to navigate thru the BIOS
and change both the Boot Order & also remove or change any Power or Logon Passwords
that may have been set in there

You usually navigate with the Left & Right Arrow Keys ... the bios will tell you at
either the top or bottom of screen what key does what

 

[FriedToast]

Well, problem is that it's not the actual BIOS itself. It's a BIOS update sentence. Just one sentence on the screen- acts like it's waiting for a disc to be inserted. Unfortunately the keydisc I'd made and the disc that my friend bought were both ignored at this point.

 

[bruceb]

I think you were supposed to boot from that floppy so that it can reset the bios for you
Please reread and follow the instructions as listed:

This is what you have to do:

1. Start the desktop PC and start the hex-editor
2. Put the disk in drive A:
3. Change the first five bytes of sector 2 (boot sector is sector 1) to: 4B 45 59 00 00
4. Save it! Now you have a KEYDISK
5. Remove the disk from drive A:
6. Put the disk in the notebook drive
7. Start the notebook in Boot Mode (push the reset button)
8. Press Enter when asked for Password:
9. You will be asked to Set Password again. Press Y and Enter.
10. You now see the BIOS configuration where you can set a new password.

 

[FriedToast]

I read the instructions. I printed them out and followed them. I think the problem's at #7. There is no Reset Button. Closest we could figure was Ctrl+F12, which brings up the BIOS update. The power button itself isn't a reset. It's a purely On/Off situation there. Ctrl+Alt+Del also doesn't do the trick. It's been ~9 yrs since I had a Pentium 133 class laptop, so I don't remember if there were any specific resets that aren't used nowadays. And when I did have one, I had a Fujitsu, so if there are Toshiba-specific tricks, then I definitely am not aware of them. Never owned a Toshiba.

 

[LiLithTecH]

There is a RESET button.
Only it is not a button and you need a pencil to push it in.

Also, if I remember correctly, on the SAT 300CDS if you hold down the
LEFT SHIFT button while powering up it will allow you to Bypass the BIOS password.

 

[bruceb]

Try this program .. put it on a floppy ... it is supposed to be able to recover the password

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/CmosPwd

 

[FriedToast]

Update: Finally got another chance to work on the guy's computer (had a few other computers to deal with + vacation). Got a free parallel cable yesterday by chance, so I made a loopback cable and that worked great. Now it boots to an Invalid System Disk. But I'm happy. Making a boot disk/installing 95/replacing a bad HD are his problems now- stuff he can deal with (not like I'm an expert- he just doesn't know how to network w/ other people to find solutions).

A huge thank you to everyone that posted in this thread. Now that I realize I pulled a bonehead and didn't see the RESET button hole next to the power button, I could've had this done a long time ago when I originally had the KeyDisk made. But, live and learn.

Once again, thanks to everyone that posted for your time!