Hey guys, i was at my dads work the other day, and found a whoooollle room of old PC's (both desk top and laptop) and he said i could take one, so i took 3 dell Latitude C600 laptops. They are all loaded up with old versions of windows, two are windows 2000 and one is windows 98.
I went to load windows XP onto the first laptop (curretly running windows 2000) and i realized the boot order wasnt set to boot from CD drive. SO....i am in the bios as the laptop sits beside me, but when i go to change the boot order it says "Configure setup is disabled" and it wont let me change this, which because of this wont let me change the boot order (which is set to boot from floppy, hdd THEN cd drive).....i was about to open up my first laptop ever and try and find the cmos battery as i am sure it is somthing my dads tech departemtn has done to the bios so no one can tinker with their computers.

is there any other way to get around this ?? or am i going ot have to bust this bad boy open and clear the cmos by removing the cmos battery.

Here is the spec sheet for the c600 mobo replacement. Let me know if you need anything else. Crack that badboy open!!

Attached Files

Dell - Latitude C6xx _ Inspiron 4xxx Chassis mobo.pdf (89.6 KB, 391 views)

Quote: Originally Posted by Sn0wMan Here is the spec sheet for the c600 mobo replacement. Let me know if you need anything else. Crack that badboy open!!

thanks alot dude ill let ill know how things go

Blahh still nothing, the battery that powers the C mos is that green one near the ram correct ?

becuase i pulled that one out, booted the pc up and shut it down really fast.

i also noticed that the reason it wont let me fiddle with the boot order configuration, is because i need to enter a configuration password, which inst the same as the admin password.

Anyone ?

Remove that battery and the one for the laptop as well. The green one IIRC is infact the CMOS battery, I've had my c610 completely disassembled and it is pretty much the same chassis, PM me if you need help.

Thanks alot man, as we were talking on MSN, I just cant get that password to change, so i just deleted as much crap off the computer as i could.

I am buying a nice wireless network card soon, aswell as a nice external HDD. This is old laptop, like 2 or 3 years old, do you think this has USB 2.0 ? i have tried to google it and find out but i can only seem to find information on the newer model the D600.

Any one know or know where i can find some info about this topic ?

Here's what i found......

The cmos password is embedded into a eeprom chip. So disconnecting battery's isnt going to work. There are programs out there that can crack the password but it could damage the laptop's cmos. This is a do at your own risk......So if you wanna do it. I lighted the match the rest is up to you.

Your best option would be to ask your dad an see if he can get in touch with the IT guys that work there. They may know the password. It's worth a shot.....


As for Usb 2.0 it does not state anything about it. So chances are its usb 1.1.