mary dennison
asked on
Locked out
I have an HP Stream 14 ax020wm and I bought it used. When I turn it on it ask for a administrator password or a power on password. How do I fix this?
David is correct. BIOS passwords are very difficult to remove and this is by design; many governments will not buy equipment where BIOS passwords can be defeated. See the EE article linked below:
https://www.experts-exchange.com/articles/5193/Dealing-With-Laptop-BIOS-Passwords.html
It is in theory possible to buy a blank password chip, ship the system and the blank chip off to a tech house which does this kind of work, have them remove the old password chip and install the blank one, and ship it back to you. Figure around $200 for this service. It often works. Sometimes the TPM has been activated, though, and now you face another level of problems, and you can't tell whether that is the case until you get into the BIOS.
As David says, ship it back to the seller and resolve that in future, when buying used equipment, always ask "Have all passwords been cleared from both the hardware and the software?"
https://www.experts-exchange.com/articles/5193/Dealing-With-Laptop-BIOS-Passwords.html
It is in theory possible to buy a blank password chip, ship the system and the blank chip off to a tech house which does this kind of work, have them remove the old password chip and install the blank one, and ship it back to you. Figure around $200 for this service. It often works. Sometimes the TPM has been activated, though, and now you face another level of problems, and you can't tell whether that is the case until you get into the BIOS.
As David says, ship it back to the seller and resolve that in future, when buying used equipment, always ask "Have all passwords been cleared from both the hardware and the software?"
If it is giving you a system disabled code, HP should be able to help you.
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contact the seller otherwise it is pretty much junk.