A client has one of these laptops. She uses it as a personal machine and had left everything on defaults. These laptops come included with a slew of zero-trust based security 'enhancements'. One day, after a Windows update, somehow the Pre-Boot Authentication safeguard was triggered, and since then the laptop has been asking not for her Windows password, but for the password of the temporary profile that Windows creates during updates (defaultuser0, defaultuser1 etc.)
Per Microsoft documentation, this is a hidden profile with a randomly generated password. And somehow, the preinstalled HP crapware considered that this temporary profile switch during Windows updates meant that the main user of the laptop has now become 'defaultuser1', instead of the laptop owner's profile). Therefore: password is unknown, and from what I understand RCUnlocker doesn't seem to work on these newer 256mbit BIOSes to completely purge said password prompt.
HP says that this is 'user error', and wants over a 1000 euros for a new board. Is there really no hope for this otherwise pristine laptop? I was able to boot into the OS by plugging the SSD on another Intel machine, but HP software wouldn't work (of course), although I highly doubt these passwords are stored anywhere accessible.
The BIOS chip is a Macronix MX25L25673GZ4, WSON 8 chip. My trust SOIC 8 clip doesn't work, sadly, so I need to either desolder the chip or get one of those WSON test lead adapters offaliexpress... thing is, is it worth it? Is there a way to recover this stupidly locked out BIOS?
Per Microsoft documentation, this is a hidden profile with a randomly generated password. And somehow, the preinstalled HP crapware considered that this temporary profile switch during Windows updates meant that the main user of the laptop has now become 'defaultuser1', instead of the laptop owner's profile). Therefore: password is unknown, and from what I understand RCUnlocker doesn't seem to work on these newer 256mbit BIOSes to completely purge said password prompt.
HP says that this is 'user error', and wants over a 1000 euros for a new board. Is there really no hope for this otherwise pristine laptop? I was able to boot into the OS by plugging the SSD on another Intel machine, but HP software wouldn't work (of course), although I highly doubt these passwords are stored anywhere accessible.
The BIOS chip is a Macronix MX25L25673GZ4, WSON 8 chip. My trust SOIC 8 clip doesn't work, sadly, so I need to either desolder the chip or get one of those WSON test lead adapters offaliexpress... thing is, is it worth it? Is there a way to recover this stupidly locked out BIOS?
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