How can I get past password in the bios when booting up?

I have a thift store Dell Dimension XP Home Edition that worked excellent for six months but for some reason now is asking for a password during the boot up. This is before it gets to the windows stage. I asked about the previous owner at the thrift store but they have no idea who donated the computer so I have no way of asking the previous owner.How can I get past password in the bios when booting up?
you could try removing the cmos battery (the little round battery on the motherboard) this may reset everything ... or do an online search for the make of your board and see what you need to do to short out the cmos settings (usually you need to move a little plastic jumper pin from points 1 and 2 to points 2 and 3 or something similar)

Good Luck :)How can I get past password in the bios when booting up?
If it worked and now it doesn't then you (or someone else) has set / turned on the bios boot password deliberately or accidentally.



Getting rid of bios passwords is a big industry... some computers like HP you can set a jumper and reboot and it forgets the password. I think Dell you have to send back to Dell for 'repair' or pay a third party to fix... or buy the kit the third party people had and do the job yourself.



It may not be worth doing :-( depends how old and cheap the thrift-store 'puter was. Pull the hard disk, sell it on ebay as working but bios locked and buy a new laptop.How can I get past password in the bios when booting up?
Write any of these Default Password and you should be able to access the PC in a flash



Advance

AMI BIOS

589589

A.M.I.

aammii

AM

AMI

AMI_SW

AMI!SW

AMI?SW

AMI.KEY

ami.key

AMI.KEZ

ami.kez

AMI~

lkw peter

lkwpeter

LKWPETER

PASSWORD

SER

setup

SKY_FOX

SW_AWARD

SWITCHES_SW

Sxyz

SZYX

t0ch20x

t0ch88
The suggestion about removing the CMOS battery is a good one. If, however, your computer is an older one where the battery is soldered to the motherboard, you may have to get a friend to download this particular file. It's called KillCMOS, and it will wipe all the information from your BIOS. You'll need to re-enter it all to get your computer running OK again.



Be aware that an anti-virus program will detect this as a virus. Believe me, it is NOT! It detects it as a virus as it wants to make changes at a basic level. (I've used the file myself to get past a BIOS password that was set on a computer that I repaired ... the owner didn't know what the password was either.)



It will need to be written to either a floppy disk, if you have a floppy drive, or a CD-ROM if you have a CD-ROM drive. You'll then need to boot from that medium.



Best of luck.