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key during the display of the manufacturers
logo. Once set, it can be extremely difficult, if
not impossible, to change the BIOS settings if
that password is lost. If the BIOS has been con-
figured to only boot from the hard drive and to
ignore any DVD or USB device, then it can be
impossible to reload the operating system on
the hard drive.
In my situation, the locked PC was included in a
Figure 4. External Battery Pack. group of three Toshiba laptops that I won at
If you have several devices that are recharged auction. All of the PCs had their hard drives re-
through USB cables, you may wish to pur- moved to protect the data of the selling organi-
chase a power converter with multiple USB zation from being accessed. All three were
outlets, rather than a separate charger for locked with BIOS passwords set to prevent the
each device. They will charge faster than using BIOS settings from being modified. Two of them
a laptop’s USB connectors. were able to boot from a DVD but not from a
USB device. Those PCs were able to have the
Finally, take spare batteries, as a charge may
not last for an entire day. You don’t want to new hard drives reloaded from a Windows 10
DVD. But one of them would not load from ei-
spend a sunny afternoon in Paris looking for
that oddball battery your camera uses. ther a DVD or a USB device.
There is a way to clear the password if you
(Continued from page 3) have desktop PC, by moving a jumper located
on the motherboard. Laptops do not have this
capability however. Some laptops, like those
Internet. One of the two videos to be decided from Dell, can be cleared by entering a master
on at our August LCACE meeting addresses unlock password. Most Toshiba laptops can on-
this issue and recommends various alternatives ly be cleared by shorting out two connection
for Win 7 users to consider after the service end points located on the motherboard. Toshiba
date. If this video is not selected for presenta- does not provide documentation on the location
tion and discussion at our August meeting, you
can access it from the APCUG YouTube video of these connection points in their consumer
offerings and watch it at your leisure. accessible documentation for the specific model
being worked on. The only way to get the pass-
As always, lots to be aware of in our computing word cleared on those models, is to take it to an
world! Time spent catching up on these various authorized Toshiba service dealer, and pay
initiatives can save you time and angst down about $75 for the technician to spend literally 5
the road dealing with problems that may other- minutes to perform the shorting operation.
wise occur.
After almost giving up on loading the new hard
Enjoy the summer! drive on this locked laptop, I came up with a
somewhat unique approach to solving the is-
sue. As I had an identical model, that was re-
loaded with the latest version of Windows 10, I
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