Flipping great! can't lock down bios

[Zourous]

Just got in some Toshiba Satellite Pro C850-10V's for students, and to cut a long story short I've discovered you cannot stop someone (students) from being able to set a power on password in the bios unless you set one of your own. Toshiba support confirm this not to be a bug, but just the way it is (great!). Yes we can set one of our own, but the teachers have to know / remember and not disclose what it is and type it in each time the a student powers the laptop on (nightmare!). So, I'm looking at ways to reset the bios if we leave it open, if anyone has some trusted methods?? I've tried removing the CMOS battery for a minute and that didn't work (currently trying for a longer time to see if that works). Toshiba support unsurprisingly won't let on to any method other than sending it back to them (plus cash) for a reset. Any help greatly received as these laptops needed to be ready yesterday.

[Zourous]

Removing the battery doesn't reset the passwrds, but I can set supervisor password for the bios and a master password for the power-on-password, and then set a user power-on-password that the students know. If they change it, I can change it back with my supervisor password access, but this is far from ideal and just about the only option I think I have.

[Mcom]

Sounds bad , see if they have any BIOS updates out.

[twin--turbo]

The supervisor PWD should lock the bios??

 

Rob

[timbo343]

This was a common problem we had on the L10 range many years ago, got to the point where i taked to one of the MDs in germany and i expressed my thoughts to them. Since then, we havent bought tosh laptops for students

[twin--turbo]

We have C660,C650,A300,L300,M10's and an assortment of other Toshes and never had an issue in setting a BIOS password.

 

Rob

[Mcom]

The last BIOS update was on the 08/14/12.

[Zourous]

Nope! the supervisor PWD doesn't lock the bios, when you set one you are still offered to press f11 for limited functionality. The limted functionality consists of just setting a power-on-password everything else is greyed out. I did try the latest bios and it does the same thing, in fact I can't see any changes. I've resorted to setting separate master and user power-on-passwords. The students can know the user password and if they change it I can change it back with the master password. Warning to all, don't buy these for education. We only brought 12 (thank god) and that was enough.

[plexer]

Had exactly the same with some old novatech laptops.

 

Ben