CMOS Reset Help

S

shadowfox476

Geek Trainee
Hi,

I purchased an Aspire One KAV10 LA-4781P netbook at an auction a few months and during the process of installing linux as an OS discovered the BIOS is password protected. In trying to reset the CMOS I discovered that the battery is soldered on and there is no CMOS jumper. The only manual I could find states that there is a CMOS "gap". Unfortunately the manual doesn't match my mobo and in addition I see two gaps, but nothing like in the manual and I'm not sure which one to short to reset.

Here is the manual I found linking to the Aspire One Series
http://tim.id.au/laptops/acer/aspire one.pdf

And here are some pics of my netbook.

Top (keyboard side)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30191066/s2/DSCN3436.JPG

Close up of potential gap on top
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30191066/s2/DSCN3437.JPG

Bottom
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30191066/s2/DSCN3445.JPG

Close up of potential gap on bottom
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30191066/s2/DSCN3444.JPG

Note that both gaps, although opposing sides, are both near the CMOS battery


I know your initial response will be to make the person who sold it give me my money back, but thats not really an option, and it was pretty cheap for a netbook and is functional. Its just an issue I would really really like to solve. Thanks for any help in advance!
 
You really need to ring the guy and find out what the bios password is mate, I mean surely you must have booted it up as soon as you got it yes?
 
Thanks, for the reply.

Sadly due to the "auction" it was sold to me 2nd hand. the guy I bought it from bought it at an auction from a computer shop. The computer shop has no record of the password or they are not willing to tell it to me, thanks to all the horrible people in the world who steal things. I am the honest owner of this PC and just wanting to unlock its full potential. Acer is no help. They no have phone numbers and no contact info to anyone who does the repairs. All I can do is send it in and it will be magically repair, but as to who repairs it, Acer has no contact info for that person/ company. I don't need a tutoral on how to do it. I just need to know where the device or short is.

Again thanks for the reply and hopefully somone out that has info on this.
 
Yeah, tried following the manual but the motherboard in the manual does not match mine. As shown above in the pictures my motherboard looks nothing like the one in the user manual for resetting
 
It's not about the motherboard but the fact that you are locked out of the machine because of an incorrectly entered bios password.

Read that section again thoroughly.
 
Thank you so much!!! Although that advice did not work on my laptop it revealed a section of the manual I didn't know about. I thought you were referring to a section of the manual that deals with physically resetting jumpers. Anyways, I did some googling and tried to apps mentioned in the manual on chapter two. None of the passwords it generated worked. But then I came across an app called "cmospwd". I used the cmospwd /k option to "kill" the cmos and reset it. After a reboot, all my heartache from wasting money on this computer was gone and so was the password. Thanks man, your awesome.


I realize that most netbooks and laptops store the password on an eepROM or something like that. I guess mine doesn't.
 
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