RobPlatt.com » Tips

Toshiba Satellite BIOS Password Reset

robplatt — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:52:43 +0000

Heres a quick and dirty way to reset the password on the Toshiba Satellite A205 BIOS.

DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU ARE THE OWNER OR YOU HAVE BEEN ASKED TO. Warn any clients that something could go wrong with this procedure. THIS IS A RISK!

(You do this at your own risk. You do this at your own liability. I will not be held responsible if something goes wrong.)

Now that I’ve said that, I will add that this method did work for me on an A205-S5814 and has been reported to work on (A205-S4707, A205-S4639, A215-S7425, A215-S7425, and a A205-s5804)

Power the laptop off, remove the battery and power cable.
On the bottom of the laptop, locate the memory bay, and remove the cover plate.
Peel back the black sticker on the motherboard (set that aside, and remember to return it when you’re finished)
Locate two solder joints labeled XXX in one of the corners. (we’ll return to those in a minute)
Set the laptop on its side, so the screen is open to prop it up, and the power jack is facing up.
Insert one of your ram modules.
Plug in the laptop and turn it on.
If it turns on and prompts for a password then continue, if it does not, then power it off, and move the ram module to the other slot and try again.
Turn the laptop off.
Hold a small flathead screwdriver onto those two soldier joints, shorting them.
Turn the laptop on while you’re shorting those two soldier joints.
It should boot. You can remove the screwdriver, power the laptop off, replace the other ram module (don’t forget that sticker), cover plate, and battery. Turn on the laptop, it should boot up!

TLDR: Short solder joints labeled XXX under memory bay to clear password.

Post your results in the comments below. Good luck!

Update: Head over to WhatsMyPass.com to see more information about BIOS password recovery.

http://goo.gl/u6Id0

untrack files in git

robplatt — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 21:36:32 +0000

I accidentally added files to a git project that I didn’t want to.

git rm –cached filename

git rm –cached directory -r

cleared me right up.

(please note, that is two dashes in front of cached)

http://goo.gl/O42L6

ASP.Net SessionState in SQL

robplatt — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 22:36:52 +0000

Using SQL Server to store ASP.Net session state has it’s advantages. It was time for us to switch from InProc to SQL, but we ran into some problems getting the configuration right.

The SELECT permission was denied on the object ‘sysobjects’, database ‘mssqlsystemresource’, schema ‘sys’.]

Unable to use SQL Server because ASP.NET version 2.0 Session State is not installed on the SQL server. Please install ASP.NET Session State SQL Server version 2.0 or above.

These two pages got me going in the end.

http://idunno.org/articles/277.aspx

http://cherupally.blogspot.com/2009/08/problems-in-configuring-sql-server-for.html

Now watch your session states survive an iisreset, or even server reboot! You can also load balance your requests over multiple web servers now too.

http://goo.gl/qiCr