Service Forum

[kebabsaretasty]

Hello guys, I have in my Hands Panasonic ToughBook CF-U1 UMPC with BIOS password enabled, and encrypted filesystem protection before OS boot

Have attempted boot from external CD, inbuilt SD card but it appears the boot order is locked to internal SSD drive as default, changing the order requires access to bios

I don't necessarily need to wipe the BIOS pw, as the device can start to internal drive without requiring a password- however the problem is that section is also password protected.

Ii presume if i could simply wipe the internal drive, MBR etc and reload fresh operating system image then the system would start up fine- which wouldn't be a problem, however the drive seems to be some sort of proprietary SSD module, and without another device to access, there doesn't seem to be any easy way to read or write to it

Also tried various 'backdoor' passwords, as a last resort, but no luck

If teardown is needed, board images etc, will be provided, no problem- I guess the pass would be stored in EEPROM or something from what I've read from a few other BIOS pw removals on more modern devices, but i'm not an expert in this so I'm hoping not lol

Is there anybody out there that has experience with this, suggestions, or any contributions otherwise that could potentially be of assistance?


Thanks in advance;
Callum