“I can’t login and use my Windows 10 laptop”

A rare and interesting challenge awaited me this week from a new computer repair client.  The user had taken their HP Windows 10 laptop to an Apple Mac computer place to have data copied to their new Mac laptop.  When they got the HP  back, a strange login screen greeted them every time they turned on their Windows computer.  They used to see the regular Windows 10 login screen when they started it.  The new login screen was blue and white and a user of Admin needed to login.  The coloring tipped me off that this was the BIOS screen which runs before Windows.  BIOS stands for Built -in operating System. We guessed the password and then had to get by another BIOS screen for the administrator access. HAving a BIOS password is an extra layer of security which prevents unauthorized users from changing critical settings on your computer. Some of them would allow the computer to be booted from a DVD/CD or USB thumb-drive and take over the computer and possibly take control of your data. And this one had a different password – We found this password  on the paperwork under an odd category.   Now we could disable the BIOS login requirement which was stopping us from getting to Windows and use the computer. The computer was restarted and this time no more BIOS passwords were needed and the Windows 10 login screen greeted us.  My client entered her Windows password and they could finally use their computer.  We never did determine why BIOS passwords were created because my client never asked for this and the Mac company never informed her about it verbally or on her service paperwork.  My client certainly didn’t know how to do it either.