Replies

I take back my previous statement, after reading this Toshiba doc. This is BIOS is highly unusual (read: weird).  Maybe these instructions will work for him, now that the jumper trick might have worked.

https://support.dynabook.com/support/viewContentDetail?contentId=108503

But there’s hope:

To change or remove the BIOS Password, it’s necessary to know the existing password. Otherwise, it can only be removed by a Toshiba Authorized Service Provider. To locate a Toshiba Authorized Service Provider (ASP) anywhere in the world, visit Toshiba’s Global ASP Locator at: http://pcrepair.toshiba.com

Bill mentioned he’s near KC, and there’s two service providers located in Overland Park and Lenexa.

I hear it’s been a long ordeal, but fixing the BIOS date is the key.  If there’s no BIOS password, or even if one exists, there should be no restriction on updating clock from the basic setup menu.  Administrator passwords are designed to block more sensitive details like changing boot devices, network or enabling advanced security options.

When your original backup battery went dead, and after replacing it the BIOS will reset to some factory date.  Typically it will be several years behind, even if you’ve been using a new battery for a while. If you had rights to change time from Windows, BIOS would sync to match.

Windows security model doesn’t like it when the current time is long past, or in the far future, when checked against its last written settings.  This problem might be that simple that a BIOS edit can fix.

No.  Windows Live Mail was a horrible program, mostly because the Office team didn’t want a real alternative to Outlook. It didn’t even play smart with Hotmail (sigh).

True.  Outlook.com manages all hotmail.com, msn.com, live.com and some personal domains set up through Outlook services.  They just rolled everyone under one cloud.

Not having a default gateway (blank) would be cleaner, and has the same effect.

While it’s popular to blackhole traffic to a bogus route, your machine will still try to send outbound traffic because it believes a route exists.  The application will still have to timeout waiting for no response.  Under static routing, no default gateway means Windows can tell it’s impossible to send the traffic there and skip the network stack timeouts.

But yes, controlling the gateway is the least intrusive way to restrict off-LAN traffic.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Paul T

The root cause is some applications (this is where AV products get a bad reputation for behaving exactly like malware) are locking files at the system level.  This has nothing to do with insufficient user permissions.

You have to stop the owner application to release the file lock.  AV products don’t want any random program halting their execution, so they will actively lock entire folders and files.  Safe Mode tends to work, because MBAM or whatever wasn’t running.

This older article is a good starting on unlocking tools:

https://www.raymond.cc/blog/lockhunter-is-unlocker-alternative-that-works-on-windows-x64/

Sometimes a non-AV program will crash, but leave behind file locks which remain across reboots.  This is why file unlockers exist.