A317M Bios Bug... or what?

[djidji.govedina]

Here's the situation:
I had a password enabled in bios, which I have had to enter when I turn my notebook on, and the password was xyz...
Some time ago I went to bios and disabled it, so I don't have to enter anything when I turn the machine on. And everything worked fine. Today, I wanted to install fresh copy of windows xp pro sp2 and I had to enable boot from cd, and what a surprise!!! I was asked to enter a password... a bit confused I was, but I entered the old one... and guess what... nothing... I tried the one I used before the old one, and still nothing.... And these two are the only passwords I ever had [in bios], I try leaving fields blank, pressing esc. even try to override it with old trick to keep pressed F12 and turn the machine on, and still nothing... Is there any solution other than opening notebook and reseting bios by taking the battery out?

[djidji.govedina]

And just to add, it's an American Megatrends bios, so I tried all generic passwords for AMI found here

and still nothing..

[rich912]

You will find a reset button on the under side of your notebook. It is a pin sized hole, so you will need to use a paper clip, or similar - do not overdo the pressure on this switch!

[rich912]

Btw turn off and disconnect from power supply before doing this.

[djidji.govedina]

hmh... it seems that there is no hole on A 317M... unless it's just under the windows sticker... are you sure that all models have that hole??

[rich912]

No I am not certain that all models do, but I have yet to encounter one that doesn¿t. I am wondering if they have hidden it away in one of the memory compartments ¿ either on the underside of the notebook or beneath the keypad. If you want to investigate this, your on-line manual at Vaio-Link will give details of how to access each compartment.
I have a pal with an `A¿ series but he is off line at present. I will ask him if he has any ideas when we next speak.

[djidji.govedina]

thanks in advance

[djidji.govedina]

imagine this!!! on stinky vaio-link is possible to downloaqd a manual, but, a big BUT, on bios page is this text:

If you forget the password and need assistance to cancel it, a cancellation fee will be charged

I supose you must pay to get info about hole position...

[rich912]

You have not forgotten the password, as I understand, it is just malfunctioning. Whether this makes a difference is open to debate!

[djidji.govedina]

... I will send them an email, to see what answer I'll get... But I doubt that vaio-link will be willing to debate... will see... at the end I hope I will have something usefull to post here... for future generations..