Toshiba Satellite L305-S5915 cmos battery?

How do I get to my Toshiba Satellite L305-S5915 cmos battery?

I need to reset it to remove that pesky bios password. After a while searching online, I've
haven't found anything useful about finding it.

Anyone here know where it is, and how to remove it?

THIS IS A COPY AND PASTE FROM www.tech-faq.com USE AT YOUR OWN RISK

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Resetting a Toshiba BIOS Password

KeyDisk will reset the BIOS password on Toshiba laptops.

Older Toshiba laptops can be convinced to boot without their power-on BIOS password by attaching a dongle to the parallel port which crosses a number of the pins. The pin out is:

Pins
1-5-10
2-11
3-17
4-12
6-16
7-13
8-14
9-15

Some Toshiba's can be convinced to bypass the startup BIOS password if you hold down the <LEFT-SHIFT> key while booting the system.
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link to keydisk
http://www.cgsecurity.org/keydisk.exe

If you are not comfortable taking apart your laptop you will not be able to find the cmos battery unless it is under the memory/modem/wifi/harddrive covers on the bottom of the laptop. If you are comfortable taking it apart than my suggestion is: what are you waiting for?

dr.sandman said:

If you are not comfortable taking apart your laptop you will not be able to find the cmos battery unless it is under the memory/modem/wifi/harddrive covers on the bottom of the laptop. If you are comfortable taking it apart than my suggestion is: what are you waiting for?

Click to expand...

I don't mind taking it apart. It's starting the process that I need help with. I don't want to take the whole thing apart, if I don't have to.

I think I would try the keydisk option first. I usually find CMOS batteries under the keyboard. "usually" Unless you get lucky and find someone with the exact same laptop or schematics you'll just have to start pulling it apart. And the keyboard is one of the easier parts to remove. (look there first)

How does this "keydisk" work??

I don't have any Floppy disk drive (internal or external) in my PC or laptop.
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What about this KILLCMOS thing? Would that work, and how?
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I tried this thing called PCCMOSCleaner. But it didn't really work. It reset the BIOS, but the password was still there.
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I also seen this thing called cmospwd-5.0. But I'm not sure how to run it.
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How about resetting my laptop to factory settings through Vista? Would that reset the BIOS password to factory settings?

Well.... I googled it for you and looks like keydisk doesn't work. Removing the CMOS battery doesn't work.(not surprised). I don't recognize the other utilities you listed(I would be really leery of something that wrights to the CMOS). If you have a parallel port that trick might work. But probably not on a newer laptop. I know that most manufacturers have a universal unlocker code built in that will reset these passwords and from some of the forums it looks like Toshiba does also. Your best bet is to contact Toshiba directly or to take your laptop to an authorized dealer/repair shop and cross your fingers. I know from experience with customers computers that if it is a dell and you are not listed as the owner of the computer in dell's systems they will tell you to go get screwed. Can't blame them though - there has to be a lot of liability with stolen laptops and secured data...

I am glad it is so hard to recover or reset a password. Makes it harder on the common thieves. Maybe if enough are rendered useless, it'll result in less theft.

A few quick Toshiba myths dispelled:
Parallel port unlocking - I haven't seen anything that Toshiba has produced in the last 5 years that this works on
Killcmos.exe, etc... - won't work. Satellite series for the past 2 generations has stored the password in an eeprom, not the cmos
Pulling the cmos battery - won't work, see reason stated above.
Theres a backdoor a.k.a master password - If so, word would get around and having a bios password would pretty much be pointless. Some Toshibas did have challege/response code, but that was a long time ago.
Resetting something in Vista - The OS and the BIOS are completely independent

To reset the password on this model, you need to:

• Power off the computer, flip it over, and open the ram door
• Find a small jumper to the left of memory module 0 (the one closest to the board).
• Use a screwdriver to jump this pad while you turn the computer on
• Continue jumping the pad until after the splash screen dissappears
• If successfull the password prompt will go away. If not, try try again.
• When successful, make haste to update your bios: http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/content/support/downloads/slb8v140.exe Toshiba's have a nasty habit of setting bios passwords on their own. I'm assuming thats why you're here.

jwhazel said:

Theres a backdoor a.k.a master password - If so, word would get around and having a bios password would pretty much be pointless. Some Toshibas did have challege/response code, but that was a long time ago.
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Click to expand...

Great job on finding the fix. Where was it if I might ask?

I know for a fact that some laptop manufactures do have a master password - I also highly doubt that it is the same for all laptops and is probably randomized for each one and stored in a database. Dell keeps track of the machines they sell and associate a person with that machine. So since they keep track of the machine in a database it isn't hard to store an unlock code that would be unique to the machine. Since it's unique it would eliminate the problem with the code being distributed on the net.

Thx, for all the replies. I've checked all the "easy" excess spots for the battery. But no luck. Being a "new" laptop I didn't really want to dissect it yet. Please don't be harsh with me but I did what I was told to after I called Toshiba customer service. I took it to one of their
repair reps. Because Circuit City is closing I couldn't bring it there, so I was forced to go to........ the....the.... G..G...E...E..K.. ...SQUAD located in Bestbuy.

Don't be mad with me. It just caused me pains hearing about all the laptop horror stories while in line.

In any case they fixed my issue. The BIOS password prompt hasn't come back yet. So all looks well, and this thread can be locked.

Great solution by jwhazel.
Works perfect for me in a L105-5933.
in the ram area ,opposite side of modules, look for :
"PS10" three xxx (vertical) after that 2 silver contacts.
Make a short in those contacts with a flat screwdriver when the laptop start up.

And thats it.

Ive got a Toshiba satellite that I got from sitting out in the cold in from of best buy for hours. Got it for 300 bucks.

That thing sucks!

Its not that bad just havbe to always have it plugged in cause the battery died awhile back.

Bran new it only lasted an hour lol.

anyone got a picture of the jumper. i see a orange one but does nothing

Wow, I forgot about this thread. Jasonjt, I'm afraid I don't have any pics. I'm was a Toshiba certfied tech but haven't worked on them for awhile and don't have access to one now. You'll need to find the two solder pads to the left of the ram slots. The pads will look similar to these flat rectangular pads: http://www.codesuidae.net/FetModMT/ZZMT-Via-Jumper-Top.jpg (this was the best picture I could find to demonstrate what a solder pad jumper looks like, sorry).

I'm not sure what the orange thing is that you speak of, probably a smt capacitor. If you can take a picture of the ram slots and post it, I can circle it for you.

I'll post a quick caution here as I see romai has succesfully removed a password on a different model with this method: this only works on some systems. Generally speaking, toshibas made in the last 5 years have the password removed by: shorting a jumper for ~30 seconds with all power disconnected (stored in cmos), shorting a jumper and then turning the computer on to POST (stored in eeprom), or challenge-response only clearable by Toshiba themselves. As of this post there is definately no "master" password. Attempting to remove the password by randomly shorting jumpers can kill the board.

Here is a pretty clear pic of the jumpers marked for easy use.
This works for the Toshiba Satellite L305 series.
Keep in mind I had to boot about 4 or 5 times holding a flathead tip across these for it to clear the corrupted bios password.
These series are notorious for randomly generating a password out of the blue with no user action.
Thanks very much for this tip!