Clearing out a BIOS password on an acer aspire one

My mom set out to look for a new laptop recently. She had been using the same one for years. Not a good one to start with, it had long lived past it's usefulness. She wanted something small and fairly cheap.  Her needs aren't great.  She decided on a netbook, the acer aspire one 722.

Somehow in the first day she managed to set a bios password and a windows password that didn't work anymore.  From talking to her over the phone it sounded like she had put a password on the hard drive.  Thus encrypting the drive and making it useless.  Acer wanted $100 to fix the password problem.  So my mom decided to buy a new version of the same netbook and give me the one with the broken password.  I thought if nothing else I could put a spare hard drive in it and have a new netbook to replace my old hp.

Once I got my own hands on the netbook, I quickly realized it was a bios password and not an encrypted hard drive.  To google I hurried and searched for how to clear the bios password from an acer aspire one. It took a bit of searching but I eventually found this forum thread http://www.laptop-forums.com/aspire-one-ao722-bios-recovery-t23653.html

I followed the instructions and it worked. I am going to do a slightly more detailed instructions below since a few steps were left out or unclear in the forum post.

  1. Go to http://www.acer.com and download the latest bios for you model from the support area. Mine is the 722
  2. Format a USB stick using the FAT filesystem
  3. In the DOS directory of the extracted bios zip file is a .bin file.  Mine was P1VE6111.bin
  4. Copy that .bin file to the USB stick and rename to BIOS.fd
  5. Remove the battery and power cable from the aspire one
  6. Plug the USB stick into a USB port.  I used the one on the left side of my aspire one 722
  7. Press and hold "fn" and "esc" keys.
  8. Plug in the AC cord
  9. While still holding the "fn" and "esc" keys push and release the power button 
  10. Continue to hold the "fn" and "esc" key until it starts beeping (boy are they loud)
  11. It will beep loudly for about a minute
  12. Then after another minute or so it will reboot and you should be able to access the bios without a password.

Comments

  1. UnknownJune 7, 2013 at 5:42 PM

    Awesome...!!!
    Thanx a lot Sir
    Salam from Indonesia

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownJuly 15, 2013 at 10:48 AM

    This worked for me! Thank you so much for posting this solution!!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Plan Trip GOJuly 22, 2013 at 1:16 PM

    Great help. Thank You!!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dennis SmithJanuary 20, 2014 at 4:25 PM

    Thanks for sharing this...saved me a lot of time

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownMarch 13, 2014 at 9:39 AM

    HI.. I tried it with my aspire 5750g and does not work.. is there any other solution for this issue???? anyone??

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownApril 5, 2014 at 9:43 PM

    EXCELENT!!! worked like a charm. mine didnt beep at all and it didnt reboot but I saw the led on my USB drive when it read it and waited a few minutes after it finished the netbook shutdown by it self and just turned it on and the password was gone.

    just a note: the name of the .fd file should not be changed only the extension because I tried it with BIOS.fd and didnt worked so tried again with the default name and it worked

    ReplyDelete
  7. SuperTechApril 6, 2014 at 2:53 AM

    Great help thanks worked perfect thanks :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. UnknownJune 20, 2014 at 6:49 AM

    i have 2 file .fd. which of the two i must rename and place in the usb?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hitesh NirmalSeptember 27, 2014 at 9:55 AM

    Thank You So Much Sir. God Bless You :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. UnknownNovember 26, 2014 at 3:08 PM

    Worked for me! Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  11. UnknownSeptember 9, 2015 at 5:26 AM

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  12. UnknownSeptember 9, 2015 at 5:27 AM

    Thanks, worked with an Aspire One D250 (luckily without loudly beeping)

    ReplyDelete
  13. henrycomputerrdSeptember 18, 2015 at 11:46 AM

    Very helpful for me. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  14. AnonymousJanuary 2, 2016 at 11:08 PM

    The only bios upgrade i find is an .exe file...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JamesTheAwesomeDudeAugust 13, 2017 at 1:44 PM

      You have to use 7-Zip to extract the .bin file from inside of it

      Delete
  15. yeakaJanuary 5, 2016 at 7:40 PM

    I have a Ao722 and this worked! I managed to clear the password following your instructions. No need to remove cmos battery or reset the switches! I didn't remove the battery, I just plugged in the ac charger.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Tanya Marie GordonJanuary 30, 2016 at 10:27 AM

    I did this and it seems to have worked in removing the bios password (great) however now it is stuck looping through the 'we apologize for the inconvenience but Windows did not start successfully' screen with safe mode, start windowd normally, etc. As options.....I've clicked on all the options and just keeps looping :/ any suggestions?

    ReplyDelete
  17. UnknownApril 8, 2016 at 10:35 PM

    when i download the bios in acer. the file was exe not bin
    just like ZE7_110.exe
    can i rename this?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. wonky73April 10, 2016 at 12:54 PM

      I would not rename it. Try and run it as an exe

      Delete
  18. Hampton ITApril 24, 2016 at 3:22 AM

    When you download the BIOS file from Acer, it may be an exe file. This will not help you, as even if you used 7Zip to extract the files, there is no bin file.
    What you must do is type an incorrect password three times; after which you will be prompted to enter a password or shut down the computer. Choosing to enter a password again will bring up a password prompt, but this time there will be a key next to the title.
    Enter that key into a password-unlock site as bios-pw.org, and wham-o, you're in! Next, change the admin password using the same decoded password the site just gave you.

    ReplyDelete
  19. UnknownAugust 8, 2016 at 9:42 PM

    My pc Aspire One D270 wont recognize the USB device, I already copied the BIOS files in that flash drive, and followed the instructions but nothing happpens.

    ReplyDelete
  20. old hackAugust 16, 2016 at 8:11 PM

    All laptops..All I had to do was, take out the main battery,the bios battery the memmory and unplug external power and anything connected to laptop. Then install bios battery up side down and take it right back out and reinstall it correctly. Now but everything back the password will be gone.

    ReplyDelete
  21. UnknownSeptember 17, 2016 at 1:38 AM

    Finally, worked like a charm on my 722 )) and in the DOS folder there was .bin file that i renamed )) after the pc started to beep just release fn ect keys and let it do its thing till it reboots itself

    ReplyDelete
  22. faridfaisholJanuary 10, 2017 at 2:54 PM

    Thank u so much !

    ReplyDelete
  23. UnknownSeptember 7, 2017 at 1:40 PM

    Sadly, this procedure did ruin my netbook for good, even though I did everything like listed on here.

    The Netbook starts, the LEd on the USB stick is flashing in a certain routine, but neither the Netbook does or did ever beep at all, nor does it finish the routine but goes on trying forever, with the CPU-coolign fan at 100 percent all the time.

    ReplyDelete
  24. UnknownMarch 21, 2018 at 6:34 AM

    All you need is a small USB Flash Drive. This way is more easy and secure that it has no limitation. It will list all user accounts of your computer, you just need to click whichever user account and click Reset Password button. Software for password recovery

    ReplyDelete

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