Laptop set a password on its own!

[Appie703]

Hello,

My stupid laptop put a password up on its own which is a bios password. As this is not frustrating enough, the manufacturer charges me tons to get rid of it. How ****** ridiculous is this ??

Anyhow, now I am here with the problem. This is bothering me so much. I have been busy with this for hours, days and weeks trying to fix this. I couldn't find a schematic of my laptop but now I finally do. The laptop is a toshiba c55-100-1dc. I am a complete amateur on this field, I only used this laptop till now I never opened one before.

As I read, I need to connect 2 pins on the motherboard to set this stupid behavior right. Which one is this?

Thank you.

[Geek-9pm]

Many mere want to help your with you computer problem.
Password reset can be a difficult job. Let me explain.
in the past this for him has helped many users with password problems. But since then some new issues have arisen. Often times portable computers are stolen and then the thief wishes to remove any password protection so that he can sell it on the black market. Manufacturers  are aware of this practice and has now adopted a procedure so anyone who wants to help a lost user shall present to the user a series of questions and make some suggestions so as to discourage dishonest people from abuse of this form. Please  understand why this is needed.
Another issue is that the manufacturers have made it more difficult to change any password on computers to improve the security.  Now to recover the password the user must go to the account that he has established with the vendor or the manufacturer and request instructions as to how to reset the password. This is no longer simply a matter of shorting to wires together on the computer motherboard. Nor is it sufficient to just remove the CMOS cell and hope the password will disappear. At the present time passwords are burnt into flash memory and become a permanent part of the computer until it is reset by the authorized user of the computer.
To help you out, here are some questions we have to ask.
First of all, are you the original owner of this computer and did you register at your computer with the manufacture?
Second, did you keep the user manual and instructions you received with the computer? If so, did you read the instructions about how to set the password and how to reset it is needed?
Third item. Your comment about the password was reset by someone else does not make sense. Do you let other people use your computer? Possibly you share a military with other people and somebody else got access to your computer and decided to pull a prank on you. Is that possible? That is a prank sometimes popular in college dorms, if the user has not set the password to his account, anybody else can come along and put a password in. That is one of the reasons you should put a password in yourself as soon as you get a new computer. Even if the password is something very simple, like the name of your cat.
Also, if this is a laptop computer it may be more difficult to change the password by hardware only. Laptop computers are a popular target for the criminal community and there is been special effort made by the manufacturers to make it more difficult to steal and resell a laptop computer.
Please provide some information about the model number of the computer and about what time you bought it and also some information about where you bought the computer. It is very important to know the make and model number of the computer before we can help you anymore.
Please reply. 

[patio]

A) A laptop will NOT do this on it's own without User intervention...

B) The only method to remedy this is the manuf. service center....be prepared to show proof of ownership cause they won't touch it without it...

[Salmon Trout]

A) A laptop will NOT do this on it's own without User intervention...

Not accusing anyone, but a neighbour guy once showed me a Sony Vaio laptop, nearly new, and said "his kids" had set a BIOS password... could I fix it for him? I told him it needed to go to a Sony service centre with proof of legal ownership. He just said "OK" and went away. A few months later I didn't see him in the street any more. Then I saw his picture on the front page of the local newspaper. He had got 7 years in prison for receiving stolen goods, and possessing what the UK calls Class A drugs with intent to supply. He had been dealing drugs and also getting junkies to burgle houses or mug people and paying them with heroin or crack for the goods they brought to him, then selling the stolen goods for a profit. The police described his house as an "Aladdin's cave" of luxury consumer goods - PCs, laptops, large screen LCD and plasma TVs, high end smartphones and automobile stereo gear,  hi-fi equipment, jewellery, Rolex watches.

[Lorraine walsh]

Your post reminded me of my laptop which was stolen from library and was recovered when the guy brought it to the local service center because the worker there had suspected something phishy after he had failed to provide any ownership proof so police got involved and he contacted the Service Description Laptop Tracking & Recovery Service of Dell and then I got a call from there. It was like founding something I had given up long time ago! (Not accusing anyone, just this post reminded me of that incident).

[Appie703]

Hello,

Sorry for responding late, I expected a notification of reply.

No I did not steal this laptop or anything like that, this laptop set a password I never set. I have all the papers of payment with me that I am the owner of this laptop. Yes I registrated the laptop too.

The statement that a laptop never sets a password on its own sounds stupid indeed.I have researched a lot and in the USA Toshiba has helped many users for free with their laptop because it was setting it on its own when the battery was drained. This is not as nonsense as you think.

I came here for help as I am really clueless about the situation.I have been doing researches for weeks. Its really tiring and stressing. I cannot access the data on my laptop neither.

[Appie703]

the manufacturer is charging me a huge amount of fee to help me. The last thing I honestly expected after I posted here as my last resort of help was to hear a bunch of stories about thieves lol. Altough I understand that the world is a bad place now, I did not steal this laptop.

I have tried so many things. taking bios battery out etc. Now I got a schematic same or close to my laptop but I don'tknow what to do with it.

Is there someone who would want to help?

[Geek-9pm]

My ability to help you is very limited. Let me try.
Did you buy the laptop from a local vendor? If so, talk to him and then write a nice formal and polite letter to the manufacturer and also publish it on social media.
The way to stop vendors and makers of consumer goods from harming us is to voice our concerns. By the way, what is the name and model pf the **** laptop that reset the password.
I for one am willing to believe you. Let me explain the problem. Now if a  a laptop would reset its own password, that should have been found in the early QA testing. Failure to correct this early indicates the management of the company is very careless. The author of the BIOS should have included some kind of feature or control to prevent this from ever happening. The are software tools to prevent unwanted random entries in the BIOS.

Here are links that support your claim.
https://www.technibble.com/forums/threads/toshiba-satillite-random-bios-password.2475/
http://superuser.com/questions/243413/bypass-bios-password-set-by-faulty-toshiba-firmware-on-satellite-a55-s1065-lapto
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/138340-reset-bios-password-on-laptop
The dates and details of these indicate separate instances of a mystery password reset. So yes, others have made this claim. Some might be wrong.

Please clarify one thing. Did the maker of the laptop want to charge  you r a fee? If so, this is the basis for a class action against the maker or his local representative. Or it may be a scam. You may want total to your local police and maybe they have heard of this before.

This sounds close.
http://bgr.com/2016/08/04/walmart-email-hack-phishing-password-reset/
(OK, not the same thing. But below is one that is close. )
http://superuser.com/questions/1002709/hacker-put-password-on-pc-need-help-to-get-into-pc/1002714

My Uncle got a phone call from hackers pretending to be TalkTalk and as he is elderly and was tired, they talked him into doing things on his laptop. When they started to talk about banking etc he twigged and hung up but they have put a password on his laptop which we can't get past.

In a special cases it is possible to put up a fake screen that looks like a BIOS password, but it might not be so. (I refrain for giving the details on this.)

Hope this is of some help.   

Note: If you remove all bootable devices, including the hard drive, the BIOS setup will come up. Thee you can look around and see what thugs have really been set in the BIOS. Get help tom a friend  familiar with BIOS stiff.

[Salmon Trout]

Many Toshiba laptops have a firmware bug.

'A "Password =" prompt may be displayed when the computer is turned on, even though no power-on password has been set. If this happens, there is no password that will satisfy the password request. The computer will be unusable until this problem is resolved. [..] The occurrence of this problem on any particular computer is unpredictable -- it may never happen, but it could happen any time that the computer is turned on. [..] Toshiba will cover the cost of this repair under warranty until Dec 31, 2010.' -

http://support.toshiba.com/support/viewContentDetail?soid=2232649

[Geek-9pm]

Salmon Trout, good catch.
That link you gave must be read by every owner of an older Toshiba laptop.

...If the problem has not happened yet, verify that your computer has the BIOS currently available from the Toshiba Support website. See detailed instructions below.
Your computer's BIOS may already include the fix for this problem, depending upon the model, and when it was manufactured.
This Support Bulletin is not a notice of a new BIOS for your computer; it's a notice that the password prompt problem has been fixed in relatively new BIOS releases.

Hard to believe, but it really does happen!

[Appie703]

Thank you, finally someone who does not suspect me that I stole this laptop. However, the Toshiba support does not help me for free. This company sucks, I won't advise any Toshiba laptop to anyone else. I now ordered a new motherboard to replace mine.

Seriously, I strongly recommend not to buy a Toshiba. I barely could do things for a long time. I even ended up buying a new laptop.

[Geek-9pm]

hello, thanks for sharing.
Thanks for sharing. In all the years I've been on this forum I think this is the most unusual and unbelievable phenomena that's ever been reported.
Now as for computer maker Toshiba, they deserve credit for finding and reporting the problem. From the information supplied by them, it appears that a firmware update is needed to correct the problem. The references to not mention a quick and easy way to fix the problem. But at least they found the problem and identified it.
Sad to say that they would not fix the problem for free. It might be the problem so difficult to fix that they might have to rework the motherboard in order to fix the problem. In other words, the problem is not the sort of thing that is field repairable. To say that something is " field repairable" means that a technician has a tool or a method that could be used outside of the factory and out in the field of the users home or place of business.
Understandably, Toshiba could decide not to make the details of this public. For one, it could provide information about how to bypass the password, or it could impact the sales of Toshiba laptops.
Rather than supposing or speculating about how this ever happened, perhaps the best thing to do is just drop the subject. Anyway, a new motherboard with the correct firmware should completely resolve this issue for you.
Again, thanks for sharing. This incident might not make much difference in the sale of Toshiba laptops. They have had a very good reputation for the quality of their product and likely sales of Toshiba laptops will continue to be in the top ranks.