Comments on: Steal the administrator password from an EEPROM

By: bidomo

bidomo — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 04:24:36 +0000

I’ve tried to read the eeprom from a T400, it gave me only 128 byte .bin, anyone can help?

By: CDKent

CDKent — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 16:19:46 +0000

The links to the software are broken

By: CuteLinux

CuteLinux — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 00:52:25 +0000

Compaq nc6320 Bios Password reset
If the Stringent security NOT activated, you can follow this Steps:
1) Remove power cord and battery
2) Remove the keyboard
3) Unplug the RTC-Battery for about five minutes
4) Plugin the rtc battery once again
5) Plugin the power cord, but leave the battery outside its bay.
6) Switch the notebook on
7) Enjoy the cleared bios ;)
8) Enter Bios setup and restore to factory defaults.

By: bob

bob — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:31:57 +0000

any ideas on how to do this with the any idea on how to do this on a compaq nc6320 which is a lookalike business compaq

By: Jian

Jian — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 06:03:04 +0000

I need ThinkPad R40E`s 24RF08CN rom file. Please email to cpubar@gmail.com if you have.
Thanks

By: Bob

Bob — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:11:45 +0000

I used that method three years ago, on a rental Thinkpad R40e that was returned with a locked bios. It does work! Instead of soldering direct to the IC, I used an IC test clip. The password was readable when the software was set to scancode translation “off” and set to classic mode.

By: DannyX

DannyX — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:26:00 +0000

I have done the same with my xbox after a crashed softmod.
works perfect!

love it to do it this way :P

By: signal7

signal7 — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:57:21 +0000

I should have mentioned as well that the FT232RL chip makes a much better interface for the 24rf08 eeprom. It can be configured for the correct voltages instead of putting standard serial voltages on the 3.3v chip and taking the risk of burning out the chip.

By: signal7

signal7 — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:54:30 +0000

I did this very hack only a month ago for a couple of friends. They even paid me $50 for the service even though I told them it was a learning experience for me and I didn’t want any compensation.

@brad: Take the laptop apart and you’ll see a small battery located somewhere on the motherboard – probably not far from the eeprom chip. Remove the battery for a few minutes, reconnect it, and then put it all back together. I had to do this for one of the IBM laptops I was repairing where the password wasn’t set but the BIOS was prompting for a password anyway. I had to email the guy that posted the n2408 utility to figure that out because the contents of the eeprom didn’t make any sense.

By: gripen40k

gripen40k — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:32:04 +0000

I’ve used them to read the EDID info from various displays, they are just stored on a regular EEPROMs. They have a particular formatting but if you look hard enough you can find info on them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_display_identification_data

By: dogbert

dogbert — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:36:00 +0000

most vendors use Phoenix BIOSes, and they leave a backdoor open for retrieving the password’s checksum. other valid passwords can be generated from this without the need for any soldering. I’ve reverse-engineered the protection schemes of generic Phoenix, FSI, Samsung, HP and Compaq BIOSes and published the keygens on my blog: http://dogber1.blogspot.com

By: Jayson

Jayson — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 23:40:16 +0000

I’ve removed the battery in the past to reset the password so that I can force the bios to go into default and have it boot from cd to use a program to reset the password on windows. Taking laptops apart is a pain to do.

By: Hitek146

Hitek146 — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 20:51:57 +0000

Many laptops built during a certain period lock out non-factory installed MiniPCI wifi cards because the manufacturers stupidly agreed to abide by the FCC’s request to only allow radio cards to operate in the computer if they were the exact same card that was installed in the laptop during the laptop’s FCC certification trials… IIRC…

By: charlie

charlie — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:10:21 +0000

hacking ecu’s for cars.

By: brad

brad — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:26:00 +0000

I actually have seen something like this before, but that same guy who would “read” the data for you from this chip doesn’t seem to have his write utility for this chip up anymore. My ThinkPad decided to screw something up in the checksums on this chip shown here, and now the laptop refuses to boot. No amount of mucking about with the battery or anything fixed it, so I can’t really seem to figure out what I can do here. If anyone has any ideas, it would be great if they could post them here.