In article ,
says...
Do you know where the jumper is?
do yuo know what it looks like?
It should be right next to CMOS battery. I think yuo have located battery.
It's pretty small. Maybe black or blue or white. It sits over two very small
pins sticking out from motherboard.

There are 3 pins. The jumper is sitting over top of two. The third should be
visible.
Note: the position jumper is in. Make sure computer is unplugged. Move
jumper so it sits over previously visible pin, and pin next to it that was
previously covered by jumper. Leave jumper in this position for approximately
one minute. Return jumper to original position. PLug in computer and try to
boot up. Should no longer have password protection.

The battery removal should have worked!! So should this work!!!
If it doesn't, I don't know what to tell you. No one else seems to know
either.

I have used "Online Chat w/Technician support". It doesn't cost a thing. It
is a live chat with text messaging. Try it out.
http://h20180.www2.hp.com/apps/Nav?h...&lang=en&cc=us
Pick yuor model! guess! doesn't really matter once you get to Tecnician.

Forgive me for piggybacking the following on your message but the
original post has gone away.

1. All of this depends on knowing who makes the motherboard.

2. Finding out who made the motherboard is the first step to a
solution. BECAUSE you can often go to the REAL manufacturer's
site and get the motherboard specs and jumper settings. (Compaq,
Dell, etc. don't manufacture their own boards)

2b. When you look at the motherboard there are going to be codes
on it... Those codes will help you find more about the motherboard.
The Dell's I've found all have Intel boards. I don't know about
Compaq... but I'd wonder if it is an Intel board too.

3 . FWIW My Intel board has IIRC only one jumper on it (apart from the
led jumper/connector array)... Setting that jumper will kick the
motherboard into setup mode wherein I can change the passwords etc.
Unsetting it lets the machine to boot as normally as windows allows.

4. Knowing how old the machine is might help. ...Though maybe not.

5. Knowing how it stores this setting seems important. If it's being kept
in flash, then screwing around with the battery isn't going to work-----
ever. (eg. My motherboard has room for other little programs to exist in
flash... and they would run at power-on if there were any there). There
is a setting in CMOS that disables their running... and there has to be a
way to get to it... see items 1 and 2.

6. If there is a physical keyhole on the front of the computer then the
machine may want to have a key inserted and turned... The solution may be
to disconnect the key from the motherboard... in which case you also need
to know if there is a jumper or altenate way to disable the key... see
items 1 and 2.

6b. If there is no way to disable the key ... it may be possible to
hotwire it, a question better posed in an electronics newsgroup.

7. Try typing blindly admin ---If it doesn't work after the
second time, give up. If you found it outside a store... try the store's
name. IF that doesn't work after the second time, give up.



My wife used to work in a bookstore. She described the following exchange
with a customer.

Customer: I'm looking for a book.

Wife: What's the title?

Customer: It's a good book.

Wife: What's the title?

Customer: It has a blue cover.

Wife: Blue can be a pretty colour. We have hundreds of books with blue
covers. What's the title?

Customer: It's blue and it has pictures on it.

Wife: I can't help you if I don't know the title.

Customer: I think it's a biography... or maybe it's fiction.


The upshot is that my wife called the manager over... who said, "Are you
sure you don't want a book with a red cover? We have far more books with
red covers than we do with blue. Red is very popular this year?........"