~Toughbooktalk~

Hallo Toughbook Lovers.

Toughbooks are great machines and well developed to hava a looooong life. There are plenty Company specific Toughbooks who are sold daily for a second life out there. No reason to give it to the garbage because it was manufactured for a specific company. Also the companies get good money when they sell it after a short lease from lets say 2 to 5 years and should take care the machine is free from EVERY custom specific SOFTWARE and PASSWORDS.

My issue:
I was on the search for a relative new Toughbook and bought a CF53 mk2 (CF53JGW69FG). As i found out it seems there is a customer specific supervisor password installed which is activated when loading the bios setup defaults.

The TB comes without bios password. What i did is set a supervisor password since its neccessary to activate TPM. After tests went good i wanted to clean up totally to make the w7 TB a w10 TB.

I started with save the bios function (wherever the TB saved it ???) and loading the setup defaults in the bios.

AND from that point on i cannot access the bios anymore. The supervisor password i gave the TB is not working or lets say overruled by the custom settings in the setup defaults.

I called panasonic toughbook service and had a friendly chit chat to get the following information:

The TB is customer specific model and there are two ways to access the bios again.
1.) Get the password from the Company, sure they are not allowed to tell me for which company the machine was produced for
2.) Get the machine to panasonic to change the mobo. Since i was not interested i did not ask for costs or if the machine will arrive back to me with the customer specific setup defaults (the unknown supervisor password) or they will set it free

My 53 mk2 is still in warranty

Is there somebody out who run in this problem and have a recommended method to get this TB run with ownership TPM ???

That is fascinating.
The custom BIOS has a password that is stored by default.
If you know the password, you get into the BIOS and disable it.
Restore BIOS to defaults and the password returns.
I have never heard of that before, but from the company point of view, it is a good plan.
They were even nice enough to disable the password before selling it.
Man you screwed yourself by doing the normal thing to reset the BIOS.

OUCH...

I can tell you this much it's going to cost you more to remove it than what you paid for the 53. The thing is there is lots of software out there to get into a BIOS but none that will work on a Toughbook. We all have been trying for years and still no luck.

How to deal with panasonic so they will change my mobo for free (the TB still has warranty). I mean should i feel guilty ? No.

My question is what do you think who should pay this bill. At that moment i think the company who bought the TB from panasonic should take care that they free the machine and so they have to do/pay. What are you thinking about this guys ?

Where did you buy the Toughbook? Ebay or a dealer?

Neither one knew that the BIOS reset would re create the password. I can't see it being their fault or responsibility.
It sux, but when you buy used equipment, you take on the responsibility that it may not turn out exactly like you plan.

I would try to find out who the original purchaser was. One phone call may get you the password.

I bought it at http://www.dideko.de , they offer it at ebay. I phoned them already and they are busy to gather information about the topic. Must be a difficult thing since they had 2 companies in between for data destruction and verification.

Panasonic just deny that it is from Rolls Royce because in the bag who came with it was in the ownership from a Rolls Royce employee.
Dideko just told me that they cannot give me this information. As i understood both and read in between the lines it seems to be a (very) big automotive player with plenty car dealers (this deal was 30 peaces).

I think you are out of luck.
Will everything work with the BIOS set as it is now?

I stay constructive, just i know it will not be a quick solution.

I work with this bios now, its booting from hd and up now i did not find anything which not works.

There is a good chance I can remove this BIOS password for $89.

Never done on a customer specific model but it wouldn't hurt to try it.

Thanks!

Hallo Rob.

Thanks for the offer and thanks for the attention and all your work you do to have this forum.

I am not jet ready for the pragmatic way. Maybe after warranty is outdated. Nothing to do with you, but in general i like to do it myself or let the producer do it. Sure i would like to know your intended way to decide if i will do it myself. If it doesn't hurt you, you could tell me your secret in a pm.

Do you know where i can get a bios which i could burn ?