Shared Knowledge

"HP N5190 - Password Locked BIOS"

10 March 2009

Summary: after trying various methods, could not get the BIOS to unlock.

Bought a HP N5190 off of eBay. Only needed it for parts or so I thought.

Recently had cause to repair it for use for a friend and discovered that there was a password on the BIOS preventing me from looking at and potentially changing BIOS settings.

According to N5190 technical repair manual, a HP technician has to call a special HP Service Center to get a "backdoor" password.

Sure. Got to be a readily known "backdoor" password or someway to hack into the BIOS and read the hidden password or some special combination of key strokes.

Well, after having spent hours and hours on this problem and trying known Phoenix BIOS "backdoor" passwords gathered off the Internet and various software hacks downloaded from the net, nothing has worked.

Want to make a point here. I have cleared the BIOS of many desktop systems via motherboard jumpers or CMOS battery removal but the N5190 has no motherboard CMOS clear jump and removing the CMOS battery does not clear the EPROM stored BIOS password.

I even firmware updated the BIOS thinking that would clear the password as such a warning is provided on the BIOS update software but that did not work either.