Although In The Past, We Could Clear The BIOS Password By Disconnecting The Motherboard Battery, This Method Does Not Work In New Laptops. 

Interestingly, researchers have shown that with only one screwdriver, the BIOS password of laptops can be bypassed. Read details in Hardware City.

Breaking the laptop lock with a screwdriver

We know that laptop manufacturers have moved the BIOS password to non-volatile memory chips in recent years, which can no longer be erased by removing the motherboard battery. Therefore, forgetting the BIOS password can be a serious problem.

The security experts at CyberCX ran into exactly such a scenario and forgot the password of an old Lenovo L440 laptop that had been retired. While trying to bypass the BIOS lock, they treat it as an adventure that has an interesting result.

Since the BIOS password is stored inside an EEPROM chip in modern laptops, removing the battery will no longer erase it. Therefore, bypassing this chip causes the BIOS password to be forgotten and has attracted the attention of researchers.

The laptop in question has two other EEPROM chips, making it difficult to find the chip containing the password.

However, once the correct chip was found, bypassing the BIOS password required only shorting its two pins with a screwdriver.

Researchers have shown that by short-circuiting the SCL and SDA pins at the right time when turning on the laptop, the BIOS skips the step of entering the password, and the laptop lock is easily bypassed. By doing this trick, the user will be taken directly to the BIOS settings page.

Although the discussed method and the simplicity of bypassing the BIOS password seem interesting, it probably won’t work for new laptops. We know that in new laptops, BIOS and EEPROM are placed inside a single chip. Therefore, bypassing the BIOS password requires more complex and difficult techniques.