Does resetting the bios not clear the user password?
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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Mildly Infuriating
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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.
I understand what you're saying but I think we can both agree that nobody is buying ATI cards.
😉
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.
I mean... presumably Asus designed it though...
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.
Their tag line is "in search of incredible" for a reason, they sure as fuck haven't found it!
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.
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
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.
Apparantly
Yep.
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.
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?
It can definitely be difficult to find jobs without having a degree, but they do exist. A lot of the time you'll have to start at the lowest level and work your way up, but knowledge is knowledge and that would be apparent in your performance. Unfortunately because a lot online job applications are now filtered by AI, you may run into issues just getting an interview. Only thing I can suggest is mass-applying to several places and see what gets you a response.
Either way, if you do have a desire to learn and show that in an interview, it'll always be a positive.
And a quick edit: don't forget to look at public school districts or other local public offices for IT job, they're usually needing additional help.
Figures, it seems like job hunting in any kind of field now is utterly fucked by ai.
But that makes sense though, I guess I'll shoot my shot for some humble positions. Thanks again 👍
Yes, it's absolutely a hellscape out there right now. It was bad before, with poorly written requirements and unknowing HR depts, but now applications can be instantly rejected, including when they were suitable candidates.
Good luck!
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.