How To Remove the BIOS Password on a HP Compaq T5520 (T5000 Series) Thin Client

This 2020 blog post tells you how to remove the BIOS password on a HP Compaq T5520 (T5000 series) thin client.

Warning: You follow my BIOS password removal instructions at your own risk. Please make sure you take safety precautions not mentioned here and keep yourself, other people and anything else safe. I’m only mentioning the basic steps I took to reset and remove the BIOS password on the thin client.

Introduction

I’ve recently purchased this thin client and I’m playing around with DOS and Linux, which I likely will blog about shortly. I wanted to access the BIOS and change some settings, but there was a password. It was incredibly easy to remove the password.

The simple and quick answer is that I removed the battery for ten minutes. Below I will tell you how I went about doing this.

Please note: I had powered down the thin client and removed all cables, plus pressed the power button before I proceeded with the steps below.

Step 1 – Remove the screws and two parts of the case
At the rear there are two screws which I removed and then on the side, two further screws that needed to be be removed. I then removed the top black part of the case which has ‘hp compaq t5000’ written on it.

Then once that part of the case was removed, I unscrewed two further screws and removed a silver metal part of the case.

Step 2 – Remove the battery
I gently held back a piece of metal securing the battery in place and used a pair of pliers to remove the battery.

Step 3 – Wait a while and then reassemble
I waited at least ten minutes. I’m unsure of the exact time as I got distracted looking at the chips on the motherboard and researching them!

I then put the battery back, reassembled the case and reconnected the wires.

Step 4 – Enter the correct date and time in the BIOS
Now I was able to access the BIOS using F10 and no password was required. I then entered the correct time and date and saved the changes. I then took a look at the system information, showing the T5520 processor type, speed, flash memory and RAM details.

Final thoughts

I wanted to see what details and options were available in the T5520 BIOS.

I’m having fun playing around with this thin client. I’ve already installed FreeDOS and played games. I intend to publish more blog posts about this thin client.

If you found my password reset information helpful, I would appreciate a thank you in the comments.