There are a lot Toughbooks out there on eBay and thru some refurbishers that have a M at the end of the bios version model number. This M stands for modified. This means the bios was modified by Panasonic to turn off certain features when “load bios defaults” is selected in the bios. These defaults will also load when the Cmos battery is disconnected, along with the regular battery and external power. Here is something that some people don’t realize, this CAN set a bios password! Most of the units that come from Federal Governments will set a password when defaults are loaded. You can test this by going into the bios selecting “Load Setup Defaults” then pressing the left arrow key one time to go to the security tab. Arrow down to “Set Supervisor Password” and press enter. If the prompt asks you to “Enter Current Password” then your bios defaults has a password built in. At this point go back to the exit page and select “Exit WITHOUT saving changes” and select YES. The system will then reboot with the last bios setting that should not include a password.
The good news is that we can remove these default values for you, the disabled features, the default passwords and so forth. Of course this depends and the exact unit type. We can also program your systems to load your own defaults. We do this for some of our current clients already that are refurbishers.
