Service Forum

baskodj · Nou Venit Joined: 31 Jan 2006 Posts: 7

they know q I was looking for by Internet and encounter that the same chip that uses laptop dell uses them then IBM said me that it made a short circuit in contacts PROT - SCL or contacts 5 and 10 when despues pledges laptop the ready resumption and that seems to them to you

victor · S.F. Boss Joined: 07 Mar 2004 Posts: 2581 Location: Staff

If you do that you'll have a nice CRC error, because IBM use to count the CRC and Dell not. Most of Dell's have 24cXX eeproms, not 24RF08. Those can be read easily and IBMpass 2.0 can show the passwords at once.
In fact, most of Dell eeproms contain only the password, without any other data like checsums. With IBM is another story..

command-tab · Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 8:55 am Post subject:

I've found that the EEPROMs in Dells not only contain the password, but the various tags that Dell uses... i.e. Service Tag, Owner Tag, and Asset Tag.

There are a few sources out there that document how to short out this chip and make it 'forget' this information and unlock the machine. In doing so, it loses these tags, but they can be reset with Dell's ASSET.COM utility (Service Tag with the undocumented /s switch). I've done it a dozen times, at least Smile

victor · S.F. Boss Joined: 07 Mar 2004 Posts: 2581 Location: Staff

The Dell eeproms can be read nice and easy, as I said. I am not a Dell fan but I had some old Dells here that don't have these tags. But they seem to improve it a lot since then, you're right. Anyway the passwords are still in scancode for many of them and can be revealed with IBMpass, what I've seen so far.
As for the password checksum, CRC or else, is nothing there.

Maybe I will open a new forum for Dells in the future, everybody are free to join Smile

command-tab · Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 9:21 am Post subject:

Good to know they can be read just as easily Smile

bob · Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 9:28 am Post subject:

Yeah, kids will love them, hehe