The CMOS battery is located on the motherboard and looks like this: CMOS Battery Locations The CMOS battery is a coin-sized battery that powers the computer’s basic input/output system (BIOS). The BIOS is a small piece of software that starts up when you turn on your computer and allows the computer to communicate with its hardware. What is the CMOS battery and where is it located? The same goes for the Hard Drive password, you cannot clear or reset this password if forgotten unless a ‘master’ hard drive password has been set. It’s important to consider the level of protection needed.Ī Supervisor password cannot be cleared or reset if it is forgotten, which offers the highest protection, but if you forget this password the system cannot be accessed and will need to be replaced. A note on these passwords:Ī Power-On password secures the system and will prompt for the password on system boot. If the Power-On password is forgotten, it can be erased or cleared fairly easily as described below. While you are inside the laptop, now might be a good time to clean the internal components. Note: This only works for a Power-On password. This will not work for a Supervisor password. The password should now be cleared. If not, try repeating the steps or consult your laptop’s manual.

Turn the system back off and replace the CMOS battery, palm rest or back cover, and external battery.

Wait a few seconds and turn on the system. The Power-On password should now be gone.

Remove the CMOS battery, it may be wrapped in yellow and plugged into the motherboard.Remove the palm rest for an older Thinkpad or the back cover on most newer laptops.Make sure the system is turned off and remove the external battery.

So to clear a BIOS password if you have forgotten it, follow the following steps: The process for clearing the CMOS password is similar on most laptops and desktops and this procedure should work on Dell, Acer, HP, and Lenovo laptops, but there are a few different ways to do this depending on your system. It may also be called the ‘CMOS battery’ or simply the ‘BIOS battery’.

How to Reset Laptop BIOS Password Clear The Power-On Password With The CMOS Battery I’ll explain how to reset a BIOS password, and then explore these options and walk you through how to initially set them up and remove the passwords. Computers have three options for securing the system with passwords. In the system BIOS there are selections for setting a:

Notebook bios password reset calculator