my father in law, he he says it all, not really. he brought a computer and old ibm for his grand kids. well he got it at a yard sale. well now i know why. turn it on and password protected. has to be the password in the bios/setup because it wont let me do anything. cant even get to the bios/setup without it asking for password. will using a rebootdisk by pass it to reinstall a new op system? or is there another trick you can share with me.

Hello Wheel

Welcome to PC Help Forums

Pull the motherboard battery for about 30 minutes then replace, reboot and all should be ok, ie; Password gone.
If you need any help on installing a new operating system shout up.

this may sound stupid but was i also supposed to unplug it? took battery out for more than 2 hours. put it back in same thing. needs password. will using a reboot disk by pass this? if so where can i down load one.

Do you mean you did not unplug the pc from the mains when taking out the battery?

Turn off the pc.
Unplug it from the mains.
Leave it for a few minutes.
Remove the battery.
After 30 minutes replace the battery.
Switch the pc back on.

If it's still there after that the Password could be stored on an eprom which is a similar thing to some laptops and cannot be erased except by specialised means.

no i did not. had a severe blonde moment. didnt even think about it till i was writing. duh, take out battery leave power on. serioue error. lol its done right this time so we will see.

while we wait whats an eprom?

Eprom is an acronym that stands for "Eraseable Programmable read only Memory" chip. Its used as non volatile memory for the bios, and several other functions in computers.

Edit: Heres some info that gives more detail on Eproms:
How EPROMs works

okay, i disconnected all power, took out battery and waited an hour or so. put her back together and no luck. still wants password. thanks for the info on the eproms. will the reboot disk work or am i stuck with a piece of useless hardware?

except for pieces parts.