BIOS Password

[zenshinx]

I bought a second hand computer to install Linux for the first time and now that I downloaded the .iso images and burned them and got ready for the all the goodness of my first linux install, I find out that the BIOS is locked by a password. Does anyone know of any way to bypass this that doesn't involve taking a chainsaw to the hard drive?

[oz]

Look online for the manual to your computer to find the proper way to clear the BIOS. It's probably a matter of removing the battery, or shorting certain pins on the motherboard.

Let us know how it goes.

[zenshinx]

O.K., I managed to get ahold of the person I bought the computer from and they gave me the password. I set up the booting order with the CD first followed by the hard drive and saved the changes to the BIOS, however the computer is loading windows as usual. I'm not giving up, any ideas?

[oz]

It sounds like you probably just copied the iso file to the cd rather than burning it as an image. Check this HowTo for the steps to follow for making sure you properly download and burn the iso file as an image:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/ins...nstall-cd.html

Let us know how it goes.

[zenshinx]

I actually used imageburner to burn the image and I set it at 4x speed because I read it was better. I just burn the image again at 6x to ensure everything was fine, but no dice.

[zenshinx]

I'm thinking about formatting the hard drive, I'll see how that goes.