Unsolved
This post is more than 5 years old
4 Posts
0
1682
XPS L502X BIOS password
Hi, all
I have an old XPS (2011) as described in the title and I need help with the bios password. My laptop have been poor on performance sometimes and I found out that disabling Intel Speedstep in the BIOS might increase overall performance. Thing is I had some problems with this laptop before, with the warranty already expired and I took it to repair in some shops, but one of them set a bios password and I cannot access bios setup. This has been a while and I didn't need to enter setup since then, so I let it go. But now i'm desperately needing to access and i have no ideia of what the password could be. I have even contacted Dell by phone, but they said as the system is more than 5 years old "they don't have the system's data anymore and can't help". So I'm coming here to ask you, is there anyway I can still access my bios setup without a motherboard replacement?
ejn63
1 Rookie
1 Rookie
•
87.5K Posts
0
December 27th, 2017 11:00
Upon verification of ownership, Dell will issue a master unlock password. It's either that - or replace the system board.
If the system is throttling due to overheating, it needs a thorough clean-out and replacement of the heatsink pads/thermal compound. That should solve the performance issue, if overheating is the cause. So too would replacing the hard drive with a solid state drive if the system still has a conventional hard drive in it.
ivobhz
4 Posts
0
December 27th, 2017 11:00
Thanks for the fast reply!
No, they did not change the motherboard. The motherboard is still the one that came with the system.
Getting the password back would be (nearly) impossible, as I don't know exactly which one of the shops set the password and that was months ago, I doubt that they would still have it.
And about the Intel Speedstep, I read that it underclocks the system automatically if it needs, but i think it is actually underclocking when I need performance the most. I was monitoring this with the task manager.
ejn63
1 Rookie
1 Rookie
•
87.5K Posts
0
December 27th, 2017 11:00
If part of that repair was that the shop changed the mainboard, then it's true - Dell cannot generate a master password for the system. It is NOT true that they cannot generate passwords for systems over 5 years old -- but if the board has been changed, they likely cannot help.
If you need to get that password, contact whoever replaced the board and set the password -- otherwise, you're going to be buying a replacement mainboard again. Also note: disabling Speedstep will do the opposite of what you want - it will lock the CPU in low power mode, running as if on battery all the time.
ivobhz
4 Posts
0
December 27th, 2017 12:00
Maybe in the US. In Brazil, the answer I got was that of the OP. I'm starting to consider an overheating issue, but it's odd since I'm also using an external USB cooler.