So it's like this... I'm booting up my school laptop into Ubuntu, it's running dual-boot xp pro/ubuntu 7.04. It's taking awhile to boot up, and I had a feeling it was ndiswrapper cuz the windows driver was ****ty in the first place(but the only one available). So after ubuntu loads, I reboot again, and in GRUB i get rid of splash and quiet from the boot options so I can watch it load and see what's sticking. Hit b to boot and i get a black screen with the little flashing underscore in the corner. Hmm.. wtf?
Anyways, I wait a good 5ish minutes, and it's still sitting there flashing, showing no intentions of doing anything(no hard drive activity). No key combinations could turn if off, so finally, i resorted to holding power button. I boot back up to the lovely post screen and am greeted with a lovely beep combined with a "CMOS Cheksum error, reverting to default configuration."
Then it came... the password screen. The three strikes your out kind. Pissed, I restarted again. This time no error, but still the password screen. And I'm just thinking damnit! So i let it sit yesterday, hoping that the computer gods would do their work while I was out having fun with friends. I came home to discover that they failed me, and the screen returned after each boot, even when trying to get into the bios.
First i checked if it was some form of hard drive password(doubted it, but figured I'd test anyways). I took out the hard drive, to get the password prompt yet again. Attempted to boot with flash drive and cd(knoppix). Still getting the ****ing black screen with the tiny padlock in the corner.
This is where it gets ugly... I decided it was a cmos password, and knew what i had to do to rid one of those. Unplug the cmos battery. I'd done it a million times before in laptops at my highschool when i was a tech. I got my hands on a copy of the hardware installation/removal guide for the laptop. Took off the keyboard and palm rest to gain access to the little cmos battery. Grabed the tweezers, unplugged it, and all was said and done.
I boot up with it still unplugged. Got a date time error for the cmos, meaning that it needed to be set. Good. The cmos was reset. And then tada! It gives me password screen again. I turn it off, (after trying 3 passwords of, "F*ck", "Sh*t", and "Why the **** will you not work you piece of ****?!"). I plug in the cmos battery again, and put the keyboard + palmrest back on. (Quite a ***** to do, I must say)
I turn it on again, get my expected "date time" error, and then a fancy new beep with a message claiming "THE SYSTEM HAS BEEN TAMPERED WITH!!" It was right. But still, i wish it wasn't there. Because now when I take it back to IT at the school, I'm going to get a bunch of hell from them, not only for installing linux but for opening the thing up as well. I'm just hoping they don't try to take cash outta my deposit for this. And I have no way of getting my hands on a copy of the technology waiver that I signed for another 2 weeks cuz I'm home in Michigan, rather than utah.
Btw, I did some research. The password is stored in an encrypted format on a separate chip on the mobo that's not connected with the cmos. I can fix it, but it requires soldering some stuff to a chip on the mobo, connecting it to a serial plug at the other end. buying some software, and digging through hex code to get the password. I figure I'll just give up now rather than potentially getting in bigger **** with IT.
So pretty much... I ****ed up.
tl;dr - I'm a failure.
I ****ed Up
