Password locking the BIOS on Toshiba Satellite Pro M10

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

MattPG wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I work at a school that runs about sixty Toshiba Satellite Pro M10
> laptops. As anyone who has worked on school computers can probably
> testify, the kids have a tendency to try and probe where they
> shouldn't, and one area of particular concern is them getting into the
> laptop BIOS and password-locking the machine, rendering it unusable by
> anyone else. I have looked at the password setups in the BIOS, and it
> seems to be impossible to set it up so that the machine will boot
> without a password, but also have access to the BIOS restricted by a
> password. Setting up a password requires that password to be entered
> to boot the machine, as does setting up the HDD password. There must
> be some way to set up the machine so that it boots normally with no
> need for a password, but only allows the BIOS setup to be entered
> with a password. This is quite an urgent concern, as at least one
> pupil has already discovered how to lock a laptop so nobody else can
> use it (and my efforts to unlock it with a DIY parallel dongle have
> not worked thus far - I shudder to think of the cost of sending a
> whole class full of laptops away for unlocking).
>
> Matt
> ====

I know it's irrelevant to your problem, but laptops, IMO, are much too
fragile for school use. You will have a nightmare on your hands keeping
these operable. The points of failure will be the keyboards, quite
possibly the cooling systems, and anything whatsoever that hangs from
any port and the ports themselves. The worst will be the LCDs that
will be cracked, scratched, inked, bent, and any other damage
conceivable - and they are of the order of $700+ to fix with a downtime
of weeks. I estimate the lifetime of a laptop in a school environment
at no more than six months at the outside.

I hope, for the sake of the taxpayers, that the laptops were free.

Q

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

MattPG wrote:
> Hello,
>

Set the Supervisor Password in the Toshiba console.

Only locks the BIOS.

Regards,

James

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Yeah, I have to agree with you, but it wasn't my decision (the purchase
order was already made before I even started work in the IT department,
and even then the IT manager's opinion on the subject was basically
ignored). I just have to keep the things running (along with all the
desktop computers in the school too).

Matt
====

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion. Doing this, along with setting the user
permissions in the Toshiba utility seems to have done the trick,
meaning a password now needs to be entered only to enter the BIOS setup
screen (I wish the Toshiba manuals had been a bit clearer on that
point...)

Matt
====


me/2 wrote:
>
> S U P E R V I S O R P A S S W O R D
>
> Setting the Supervisor Password
>

[snip]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

On 8 Mar 2005 03:54:52 -0800, "MattPG" <tiger_cow@yahoo.com> wrote:

:>Hi,
:>
:>Thanks for the suggestion. Doing this, along with setting the user
:>permissions in the Toshiba utility seems to have done the trick,
:>meaning a password now needs to be entered only to enter the BIOS setup
:>screen (I wish the Toshiba manuals had been a bit clearer on that
:>point...)
:>
:>Matt
:>====
:>
:>
:>me/2 wrote:
:>>
:>> S U P E R V I S O R P A S S W O R D
:>>
:>> Setting the Supervisor Password
:>>
:>
:>[snip]

Great. I'm glad that worked for you. And yeah, Toshiba did a good job of
"hiding" that feature away. :-)

me/2

PS: Anyone that owns a Toshiba should bookmark the site at
http://ts.toshiba.com. This takes you to a page where you can select your
model and see all downloads and support bulletins for it. BTW, the URL you
see in your browser address bar after connecting is a dynamic URL that is
not the same every time you go there. The easiest way is to save the
bookmark or favorite of that page and then manually edit it to the URL I
posted above.