Hi there, I was googling around for a solution and came across this page. Anyways I thought I did just like to share my experiences with you. I just recently got my Compaq Presario 2100 from an online auction. The BIOS was locked and I was trying to remove the password and I came by this program called cmospwd to try and "kill the cmos" and hopefully causing it to reset. A word of warning to users attempting to use this method, DON'T! It caused my notepad to keep resetting itself after every 3 secs of powering up the laptop.
After killing the cmos, I decided to actually read the Technical and Maintenance pdf file obtained from HP's support and found out that once the cmos is killed it's a goner and will have to be replaced with a new motherboard. I decided to pull the whole laptop apart to sell in bits until I found a cmos battery cell underneath the motherboard. Took it out for 15-20 mins and decided to give it another shot and to my surprise the whole thing was POSTing again!
Another interesting thing I found was that my cmos chip is mpf 39sf040 and was not soldered onto the MB but mounted onto a socket and can be removed with a flathead screwdriver. So if the chip is totally killed perhaps you can get one from
http://www.badflash.com/orderbiosinstr.html as I was considering at that time.
Anyways I ended up updating the BIOS through the boot disk method however this still did not remove the BIOS password. BTW It seems there are also a lot of other people having difficulty cracking through PhoenixBIOS v4.0 rev6. BTW it only took like 2-3mins flashing my BIOS from the boot disk.
Sp from what I understand,
*the password is written to the EPROM and cannot be reset.
*cmospwd and IBIOS did not reveal the correct password
*killing the CMOS in msdos debug will not work and not recommended unless you're willing to take out the battery cell
*flashing the BIOS with a newer or older versions did not remove the password either
So yea err so that's my life story....
If anyone has any other suggestions please do post