I have a Dell Latitude E6500 and have been playing around with VMWare, trying to see if I can get Mac OS X installed as a virtual machine.
All was going well until it was highlighted that in most Dell machines there is a BIOS setting to enable Virtualisation mode, which by default is switched off.
When I rebooted to the BIOS settings I had an “unlock” icon which then required a password to do anything to the BIOS. Screwed!
This it seems is Dell’s own security which can be switched on and used for corporate means, but as laptops are sold on and owned by other folks these passwords can be left on the machines.
Obviously I googled around for a way around this problem – and there a heap of “paid for” solutions, where you supply your Dell service tag number, and they’ll supply the password for around $40.
But you get to thinking that if multiple people are making a buck out of this, then there must be a program they are using.
Then I found this post by Dogbert. It’s the program that circumvents the password security and supplies your BIOS password when you supply it with the Service tag. He’s also supplied the source code!
Kudos to him, rethink for Dell??? although the program is over a year old.
