MSI Laptop

[BrianL]

I have an MSI gaming laptop MS-16J9, My son was playing with the buttons on startup and now it says I need to put in password on startup.

He doesn't know what he has done.

I have removed the battery and the bios battery leaving it over night and shorting out the bios battery terminals but still asks for a password before it gets to windows.

Any help appreciated.

Brian

[digininja]

Can you send a screenshot of the password screen?

BIOS info isn't battery backed any more and some of the settings, like requiring a password, can't be cleared with a reset as they are designed to lock the machine down regardless of what happens to it.

[BrianL]

 

[BrianL]

The above is a photo of the locked screen.

 

Thanks

[digininja]

Looks like a BIOS password to me, I assume it is shown pretty much as soon as the machine is turned on.

You could test this be trying to get into the BIOS settings by hitting whatever key it needs, usually F2, escape or sometimes delete.

If it is that, and you've tried resetting the BIOS using whatever method the manufacturer says to use, then you might be out of luck. I'm not a hardware hacker so don't know of any other ways to reset it.

Worst case, you can still pull the drive and access all your files by putting it in another machine.

It does seem odd that this could have been enabled with random key presses. Passwords like this usually need to be entered twice. Try asking him what he would have put in, you might be able to guess your way in.

[BrianL]

Thanks for the reply, looks like it is a brick now.

Thanks any way.