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Cmos password problem 1

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T4a

Technical User
Jun 20, 2003
6
GB
Hello, my young Daughter has a Packard bell Club 40 pc. Its an old computer with only a cyrix 300 processor but my daughter love it and would like to continue using it but some how she has set a password on the cmos. the poroblem is she cant remember the password & now she cant get in. I have been told that if i short the cmos battery it will wipe the password but i have no idea how to short it or if this will actually work. Can some 1 pls advise me with a solution to this problem?

TIA
 
yup u can short the cmos & it'll reset everything in it, the should be three jumpers for this, they're usally close to the battery but not always, if u still have the motherboard manual it'll tell u in there, if not a quick search on the net u should be able to find a diagram that'll show u all the jumpers
 
Well you can do this 1 of 2 ways:

1) Find the CMOS jumper and short it out to clear the settings.

2) Unplug the computer and remove the battery from the motherboard, go and have a cuppa for a few minutes and then put it back in.

If you do not know which jumper is the CMOS jumper then just use option 2.
 
I am not terribly familiar with the mainboard that is in this computer so I may be completely off base here. Some computers shorting the CMOS battery resets everything except the password. On these systems there is generally a jumper on the mainboard just to clear the password. The clear CMOS jumper and clear PASSWORD jumpers are almost always labeled. They are normally a pain to find though.

J Bentley
 
Are you sure about that mate? I have never, ever come across a computer that kept a password after having the battery removed.
 
me neither, in my experience it's always cleared the entire cmos when i close the jumpers or remove the battery, although battery removal is a pain in the arse, i recommended it once, then got called up about 10 mins later and got told it was giving a cmos error warning, turns out they didn't put the battery all the way back in.

it might also be possible that it could use a capacitor style battery which isn't removable, i know they are usually on older systems but there is still a few around.

i don't suppose u happen to know the names of any companies that design the type of boards with seperate cmos and password jumpers do u?
 
I saw in several of the posts where it said
"short the battery" Do not short the battery!!!
If there is a jumper to reset the cmos use that or remove the battery.

Shorting a battery can be very dangerous.
 
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