So some time ago I set up a BIOS “User” password and and “Admin” password on a laptop.
For those who doesn’t know. A BIOS “User” password is prompted every time you boot a computer using that motherboard, and the “Admin” password is prompted when you attempt to enter the BIOS settings
If you have both set up, either password is accepted on boot, but only the “Admin” password is accepted for getting into the BIOS Settings.
I’ve just had both of these set up because I’m weird and paranoid (before you say “encryption”, yes the disk is also encrypted), and I got into a habit of just using the Admin password for boot.
But now I think its unnecessary and annoying now and doesn’t seem to do much since the disk is also encrypted, so I tried to remove the “User” password in the BIOS settings, but I forgot the User password. Inputing the Admin password is rejected as “incorrect password”, but its accepted when you try to change to Admin password. Wtf lol. The Laptops I had before this one, allows the Admin to reset the User Password, wtf is this new change? Admin cannot reset User Password? Make zero sense lol. So I guess I’m just stuck with this unchangeable setting? Triggers my OCD so much that there’s a setting now I can’t toggle on/off.
I mean it’s still perfectly usable as long as I keep the Admin password enabled and not mess with that, so this is the definition of mildly infuriating, just very samll annoyance I’m stuck with.
It’s an Asus Zenbook btw if you’re wondering.
Apparantly
Yep.
Oh Asus! You fucked up! For this, I’m out. Never again.
Like other things in life, there’s now nothing Asus can do or say that will convince me to ever buy one ever again.
Remember ATI video cards? Yup, never again. There’s no more ATI. It was nice while it lasts.
ATI was bought by AMD in 2006 and the brand name phased out by 2010. So there’s still ATI cards, there just AMD instead.
Um… I mean I’m not sure if the takeaway from this thread is “Asus Bad”, but its more like “Who the fuck designed this shit” shitty design BS.
I mean, I still have a usable laptop, just have an annoying setting I can’t seem to ever turn off from the rest of this laptop’s lifespan.
It’s an Asus Zenbook btw if you’re wondering.
Of fucking course it’s an asus. There’s your problem right there. They don’t know what the hell they’re doing, and no one should ever buy anything this company makes.
Source: I have also been burned by them, and only afterwards did I hear a lot of other people’s horror stories. It’s a shit company.
I had one die on me out of nowhere, the fans would start spinning, but nothing else would happen.
I googled it and the top solution is to put it away for a few years and forget about it, then, it miraculously starts working again.
Hasn’t worked for me so far.What do you consider a good laptop manufacturer?
You know, that’s a great question that I don’t have a good answer to. I don’t have enough experience with laptops so take this with a bucketful of salt, but I think:
Framework looks amazing, but perhaps a bit niche: https://frame.work/ (next time I’m in the market for a laptop, I think this is what I’ll get)
MSI is alright I think? So is Dell, maybe?
In my head HP has an absolutely dreadful reputation, but that’s just because of printers. A friend of mine is pleased with her HP laptop.
Lenovo, I’m not sure. They’ve had an inexcusable security blunder in the past which made me write them off ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-enHfpHMBo4 ) but maybe they’ve turned things around, I really don’t know.
The laptop market is in a really poor state, other than macbooks (which aren’t really relevant for this discussion for obvious reasons) it’s a race to the bottom and everyone’s making compromises that I really don’t want to see.
Their tag line is “in search of incredible” for a reason, they sure as fuck haven’t found it!
Is this new? I have some 10 year old ish Asus motherboards that have been really solid
I’m not sure. My Asus laptop is about 5-7 years old (just woke up and can’t quite do the math…). They’ve also really been screwing up on the security front: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC8qfXxAhAw
sorry for taking a tangent and let me preface by saying I’m not criticizing your setup or desire for security at all. it’s obviously adding a particular kind of physical roadblock to what stealing your stuff would require.
but I discovered that BIOS setting at a young age and have had this burning question about what exactly does it protect? it does prevent booting but in a situation where somebody has access to your computer that only really stops them from using your motherboard right? is OP’s usecase the actual intention, where somebody would be required to physically steal at least part of the computer in order to access it?
On school computers it blocked us from just booting a live usb and accessing the whole disk
Motherboard has a key on it that is used to generate a key pair with your disk when encrypted. So you can’t just snag the drive and pop it in another computer.
Note; I have simplified the technical details above for simplicity, on a technical level you’d want to read up for a technically corrected explanation.
ohhhhhh. I had no idea it did that. no, thank you for simplifying it. I’m only self-taught so I barely have a hobbyist’s understanding of computers.
Don’t discount your own knowledge just because you’re self taught. I’ve been in IT for 26 years now and help in managing over 100k user accounts and hundreds of servers, and while I’ve had some formal training, >90% of what I use daily is self taught. It’s a desire for knowledge that matters, not how that knowledge is derived.
wow, that’s reassuring. people in my life are telling me I should have pursued a career in IT support, repair, or admin because I built a couple computers and tinker with software. are there actually places in that market for people without formal training like in that ancient greentext about the rookie IT guy?
Are CMOS batteries still a thing? Removing that and the laptop battery should wipe the BIOS to the default settings. Actually before that, can you reset the BIOS settings with the admin password, and will that wipe the user password settings?
That hasn’t worked on any (good) machine for the last 20 years. Especially now in the EFI age any important settings like that are stored in nvram.
Resetting settings doesn’t seem to affect passwords, I tried it.
Maybe you can check the manual if the laptop has a CMOS battery. If it does, you’ll have to take apart the laptop to remove the battery for a few minutes, which will reset all the settings.
I searched the entire PDF for “CMOS” and cant find anything. I read a few reddit threads saying modern laptops don’t store CMOS settings in volitile memory anymore, so its harder to bypass.
Motherboards used to have a jumper pin to erase bios passwords and reset bios to default. Doubtful that a modern laptop has these, but worth a look.
is it not possible to delete/turn off the user/boot password requirement all together and then save and reboot then try setting it again? I’ve never seen a mb that cared about user password entry, admin gave bios access and from there any setting was able
I deleted the Admin password, I see the User password still says “Installed”, yea it seems like if I reboot, I’ll get locked out, because I wouldn’t have an Admin pin to override the Boot Password screen. So yea… nope, not testing it, I quicklt re-added the Admin password back in and now have that Admin password saved in my password manager just in case I forget this one too.
I don’t know if these will work, but some of the commenters seem to have had success:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ASUS/comments/12dt39q/
I hope you figure it out. At least the settings are still accessible and the system is bootable.
If it honestly doesn’t permit the User password to be reset, is there a “factory reset the whole BIOS” option?
Couldn’t find such option. I find a “load default settings” thing, but the passwords are unaffected by that. I tried updating the BIOS but the passwords are still intact.
I wonder if there’s a tool that can reset the BIOS from the OS.
Have you tried doing a full BIOS update? As in, download from the manufacturer. I wonder if that would overwrite the passwords.
I downloaded the BIOS on a USB drive, I went into the BIOS menu and updated it. The version number is now different, but the passwords remain. 🤷♂️
You could try to dump the EEPROM and get a hold of the user password or override it by reprogramming it.
If it’s an EEPROM it can also be reset electronically by accessing the pins soldered onto the bord, but I don’t know any details about that.
Did you try typing in the user password instead of the admin password when it asks for a password?
It probably wants you to authenticate as that user in order to delete the password requirement for it. The admin account probably doesn’t let you alter any of the settings for a different user. User space management with bios is often limited.
Again, the problem is, I forgot the User password. I didn’t try too hard commiting that to memory because I just assumed (like with previous laptops) that I can reset it if I forget.
I can get to the BIOS Menu but it has 3 lines, one asks for “Current Password” and then the other two is “new password” and “confirm new password”. It doesn’t recognize the admin password as a valid password, but it does recognize it if I try to change the admin passwors instead. I tried removing the Admin password, and did it, but the User password is still in place, so I just quickly re-added the admin password back in so I don’t lock myself out when I reboot.
Not sure if this is a “modern laptop” thing, or if its only Asus that does that. I had HP and Dell before, and they just let you reset the user password with he admin one.
I’m very sorry, I missed the part when you said you didn’t know the user password. My bad!
It sounds like the way that the user space is managed in your bios won’t permit any other alternatives other than the possibility of deleting the user account using the administrator account? Is that possible?
You’re not gonna be able to reset that password unless you know it. That’s kind of the point of the password. Unfortunately, it seems that your bios does not allow for you to change the user password without knowing the old one, but it may let you delete the account altogether and re-create it with a new password. That however, may cause a bunch of other problems that I can’t really predict without knowing a lot more information.
Don’t try doing this until we talked about this a bit more.
Is this an LLM?
Are you? Don’t bother answering. I’m blocking you.
Have you read your reply to OP?
It’s a bunch of circular repetitive answers that simply re-iterate what OP has already said.
So it sounds like an LLM response.
There is no cure for what flex you
Best wishes. Also, I blocked you.
