Disclaimed: This is only for educational purpose. I do not take any responsible for any of your actions. By doing this, you might lose your warranty for the laptop. If you are not sure what you are doing, stop and exit here

One of my best friend asked me few days ago to fix his sister’s computer. The windows XP crashed and there were files that need to be recovered. “Well, sure mate, that should be easy”- I thought, as you know Ubuntu LiveCD can access hard disk driver and copy files into USB flash memory.

I started up the laptop, Acer Aspire 1360, and tried to access the bios so i can change the boot option to CD. As i pressed the F2 to enter, the password window showed up and asked me. I have the password but i needed a supervisor password to be able to change setup. I searched on the net and found many people had same problem and even the default password (000000), backdoor password or what ever they call it….none of them worked. Acer would like to help you, if you pay them 100$ and send to them so they can disable it (which takes days or even weeks without laptop). People told their stories about how they removed the battery and it doesn’t reset the password (which normally it would!)

Hey, they want you to send it in, which means they have to open the laptop, otherwise they could just tell you the password OR at least other people on the net should be able to have the password. If they open a laptop, it must be easy since they don’t want to hide deep deep deep inside, which means it has to be near the battery.

So what i did was find the Manual Service, usually as PDF format and can be found on the net (although IBM provides such informations on their website for free, thank god).

Here comes the good part, and i will show you how to open the Aspire 1360 laptop.

Step 1

Removed since it is not necessary to unscrew those screws at the bottom of the laptop (Aspire 1360)

Step 2

Now turn your computer back to the original position and look at the red arrow as the picture shows below. You have to remove this plastic cover and the other side too, use your thumb and press down and out at the same time. If you can’t remove it, use the thin screwdriver and insert as the red arrow display. Do it gently and as you see the gap, use your thumb again.

Step 3.A

Here you can see that i removed the second cover on the other side. Now you remove this screw and the other side too, of course. These screws here are to hold the switch panel and the buttons. You have to remove the panel to be able to remove the keyboard.

Step 3.B

Now look carefully at the next picture (below). The red arrows are the gaps between the panel and the keyboard, while the green arrow is showing you have to be careful at the backside. First, push the LCD down about 60 degrees, then use a screwdriver again and insert between the gaps (red arrows) and try to press the panel backward (up to the LCD direction) and press it up. Do it slow and you will see and get it. Move to step 3.C to watch the backside.

Step 3.C

Push the LCD down back 100% to see if the notches start to release. As you lift the panel slowly up away from the computer(under there is a fan/cpu cooler) (3.B) these small plastic clicks should separate. If not, use a screwdriver and try to separate these as the picture shows. There are few clicks, you have to move along the LCD.

Step 4

You can see the panel is remov and i turned up side down (green arrow shows that the surface is the panel’s underside). You should now remove the contact (red arrow) to separate the panel away from the motherboard, make things easier to work later. Pull out slowly and gently!

Step 5

Ok, insert a screwdriver (red arrow) and bend the keyboard. You should do it both side and in the middle as well, so they come up nicely. Once you can get your fingers and grab the keyboard but do not lift it to high!!!, check also the 2 sides (green areas) are released or separated from the laptop. We are almost done, just few steps away. Continue to step 6.

Now pull slowly toward to the fan (green arrow), as you will notice the red areas has start to release as well. One thing before you do: try not to pull the letters again from the keyboard, i did that with key F2 and took me 5min to get it back. So watch out for the letters/keys at the top when you pull.

Step 6.A

Try to turn the keyboard up side down (letters face down) and we are going to switch the password check off in next step 6.B. By the way, if you ever want to change the battery to CMOS/clear CMOS, the blue one on the picture is the on.

Step 6.B

Last step i guess…Okay, look closer near to the battery and you will see a brown dip switch. There is a label “Password Check” and then “SW1″ which means nr 1 on that dip switch. In the brown dip switch, there are 4 switches. In my case, i just switch the first one to the other side so the password check will disable.

I suggest you look around this area, if you have a different laptop, these switch most be near here (i don’t think Acer wants their techs dig deep into the motherboard just to disable password). And also, switch 1 at the time and don’t put back anything, just press the keyboard back and connect the panel again. Then reboot and enter BIOS, if you can change the setting in there, disconnect the power and put everything back (follow the steps and go backward up, i guess).

And here is the screenshot when i accessed the bios after switched the password check.

Conclusion

As you can see in this case, you could actually open the laptop and do it buy your self and get away with 100$ (plus postal + troubles+gas). Of course it could be easier if Acer didn’t have the Supervisor Password and let the users choose if they want to boot from cd. Think for those linux users, they don’t have a chance to open the laptop (warranty voids if removed label?). Boot from a LiveCD is also dead, as you can see in my case.

Acer wants us to use their WindowsXP and that why they locked the boot option? I discovered that if you press ALT+F10 at startup, you will enter the recovery partition, but that would delete all the files in c: drivers. Is that the best way? or Acer wants your 100$?

Use LiveCD to get your stuffs back before format c:

Okay, i am quite happy with this and of course i learned how to NOT to buy Acer’s laptop. Actually i have, and only, IBM thinkpad T40p and they do give you better support and drivers. Not mention the weight….i was comparing Acer Aspire 1360 and T40p and i can say the Acer was like a “drag-top” (like when you have to drag it instead carry it), not laptop. While my T40p is dead silence, the Acer worked like a desktop machine.