Now for the 64dollar question...

The story goes... I bought this used puter(for the kid to replace the one with the boot virus) And it activate the AGP slot, i have to get into the bios(DUH).. Now it tells me that the bios is passworded... I have no clue what it is, the folks i bought it from have no clue, and it's a tangent computer.. Yes, i'm headed over to find out if they even have a site anymore.. But it wasn't a bad deal otherwise..
$60. for an 800mhz pIII(says 888on the cpu) 1/2 gig ram, 20gig HD, DVD-rom, floppy, 250mg zip drive, clean inside, and quiet..

But i digress(as always)..

Question: How do i reset the password to the bios short of flashing it?
I have tried removing the MB battery and leaving it out for about 20mins. And, believe it or not, it doesn't even beep at me when i turned it on after reattaching power to it.. When inspected, the motherboard has the words 'batt-1' wehre the little sucker goes.. But i can't find a second one anywhere on the MB...

I appreciate any help i can get here... Hoping to have it up and running for the kid this weekend..

there is normally a jumper on the motherboard that you need to jump in order to reset the bios password. In order to do this, you'll have to know the make and model of your Motherboard in order to find out what jumper and location it's in

Or you could say fuck that, break the hard drive, ram, and motherboard in half, and go get something worth running, lol.

But yes, there should be an independent jumper for resetting your BIOS. Or just flash them. I'm not sure why you're opposed to flashing them...

cause if not done right, you could seriously fuck up the motherboard.

well, i figured out how to reset the bios.. worked fine...
Now it tells me that the WD 20gig HD is not readable or has a virus..LOL
Guess i have to get a new HD to get this sucker running...

OH, and tangent replied to me.... Sorry, due to security reasons, we can't tell you shite!!!....

Turn off the bootsector virus protection in your BIOS and lowlevel format the harddisk (see the harddisk's vendor website on instructions).

you can also remove the power and the battery and it will usually reset the bios password

If all else fails..........

I took the 20G hd(reads 19.1) formatted and installed win98OS2 while it was in MY computer.. fragged my XP, But a restore of my XP disk fixed that, more-or-less

But am now in the final stages of updating the kids puter.. Well, he's doing that while i type this

Still think someone should kick gates in the balls really hard with JackBoots on!!!!

OH!! asked tangent if they could at least tell me what MB was installed in the puter i bought..
After i found out which one and fixed the bios(had to pull a jumper AND remove the battery) I got a new email from them.. Listed a totally different MB.. Don't get stuff from tangent!!!

OKies, new question on an old thread..

Could someone point me to a place where i can find info on removing a virus from the boot sector of a hard drive??

It's fairly easy...just use a boot disk from Windows 98 and type fdisk /mbr
It always works.

'Xept in WinXP installs, you screw up the ability to boot like that. For WinXP installs you'll need to boot from the XP install CD, go into the repair console and use fdisk /mbr from there

*nods*
And there is always the administrative tools.

LOL i had the drive formatted.. 4 times in fact.... And when i goto load windows(any version) i get the warning page that says there is a virus in the boot sector and it wants to change the information there...

Interesting. fdisk /mbr did not work?
Turn bios flash protect on and try again. If not, turn it off and update your bios.

Interesting indeed.

LOL it's an OLD computer.. pre '99 motherboard... I cannot find a bios for it for less than $50. Plus a membership to the site...
The HD(the one with the problem) is a maxtor 10Gb ata100 7200 rpm. Thats where the problem lies.. in that tiny littly boot sector that no normal person is supposed to get into..
I have heard there is a program that 'might' fix it.. thats what i'm looking for...

You are looking for the maxtor utility...Max blaster. Go to the website and download it.

Turn off boot sector virus protection in the BIOS. During windows installation the MBR gets written to, BIOS might falsely think that a virus.