Master File

In order to protect data safe on laptop, encryption is used usually, and the most popular encryption technology is CMOS password. And in the purpose of important data safety, maybe you need to set different password and you have to remember them. But for laptop users, does it really need to set password gateway one by one? If not, how to set password opportunely for laptop?

The CMOS password of laptop includes Supervisor Password, User Password, Power-On Password and Hard Disk Password. For different laptop brand and series, there are probably different password combinations. Take Toshiba Satellite 3000 laptop as example, enter CMOS setting program, and turn toSecurity menu option, only Supervisor password, user password and Power-on password can be seen. And in ASUS M2N laptop CMOS program, you could only see Supervisor password, user password and hard disk password setting options.

Supervisor password is the password of administrator in CMOS setting program.

After you set supervisor password, if computer user want to access CMOS setting program and change its parameters, supervisor password is necessary to type in. And before you enter Windows operational system, you have to input supervisor password. Or if you have set user password, you can type in user password too.

User password only could be set after you have set supervisor password. Once you have set supervisor password, and user password only could be used to access Windows operational system. Even though you can enter CMOS setting program and change CMOS parameters, modify or clear user password, administrator password couldnÕt be changed.

Please note that, Windows open password couldnÕt be set the same as supervisor password. Otherwise, after you cancel supervisor password, Windows system still requires you to type in open password. And the previous password you type in couldnÕt be accessible too.

Hard disk password is set to protect data stored on hard disk from being used after laptop is stolen. After you set hard disk password, supervisor password would become available too. If you donÕt type supervisor password, you wouldnÕt read hard disk. Even though you remove hard disk into another laptop computer, hard disk password still exists.

Hard disk password seems to be safe. But it is not recommended to use, because once your mainboard is destroyed or your laptop couldnÕt boot because of any reasons, data on hard disk will lose.

In a word, though password has helped us more in data security, password has to be not set easily, because CMOS password set on laptop couldnÕt be cleared by removing battery like desktops. And password on laptop CMOS is stored in logical circuits on mainboard, which canÕt be recovered generally. At this time, if you only want to reset Windows user password or open password, Windows password recovery tool could help you, such as Windows Password Genius, Offline & Registry Editor.

So we donÕt think that CMOS password set on laptop can achieve the highest encryption effect. To my point of view, supervisor password and user password can be set, but other kinds of password had better not be set easily. If you have to set it, please remember it. Once you forget it, such as hard disk password, you have to pay for it with high price. Actually, Smart Card and Fingerprint Boot Identification System for laptop now will make traditional CMOS password protection more effective.