Service Forum

[yegoshin]

So I have a little problem (BIOS passwords, on boot and to enter BIOS).

Prelude feel free to skip over if you want: This laptop had issues with the power supply and the fuse blew, so I took the laptop apart to replace the fuse, on a separate board from the motherboard. When all was said and done and turned the laptop on it came up with the BIOS password when prior to this there were no passwords.

Now I took it ALL apart AGAIN (can you tell I am a bit annoyed?) and looked at the motherboard following this forums advice I located an ATMEL 24C02BN eeprom. Here are the pictures of the motherboard I took:
http://picasaweb.google.com/yegoshin/AlienwareM5550?authkey=Ha6LFrk0rrA

I would like some help with the following:
1) Is that the correct eeprom where the bios password is stored?
2) Can I just buy a new clean eeprom from say Digikey here:
http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail?name=AT24C02BN-SH-B-ND
and solder it on assuming all the settings will reset I don't mind that?
I would really like to avoid having to read the eeprom using the 2nd computer after the laptop is turned on because its hard to get to that eeprom on the laptop and I need to assemble it to turn it on.
3) If reading the eeprom is the only way what are the steps for an alienware laptop?

Thank you all in advance, -Dmitriy

[victor]

Hi Dmitriy,

1. Is possible (Would be nice if you can post the dump)
2. No, you can't do that. That eeprom is having its purpose there, password or not, usually those chips contain the UUID and MAC, along with other sensitive data.
3. There are the same steps like for IBM or better said, like for SONY VAIO>

i. Build the driven programmer -
www.allservice.ro/forum/dl/driven-i2cprog.pdf
ii. Download the eeprom reader R24C02
www.allservice.ro/store/utils/24c02.rar
iii. Dump the eeprom. Don't forget to put "/x /d /i" in command line:

[yegoshin]

So I read the EEPROM and it read as all zeros. I am certain that it was all connected properly because when I took any of the wires off it would error telling me the eeprom is unavailable.

So I got sad, and during this sadness I grounded the ground pin off the EEPROM to the case and the laptop shut off. So I decided to do that during bootup thinking it might clear the EEPROM, and guess what it DID!

[victor]

I prefer to not guess, so don't keep me in suspense.

But if you grounded the other "ground pin", which is the Vcc , then that figures it.
_________________
Victor Voinea
ALLservice HQ, Romania.