Bought a used HP nc8230 and user informed me they could not get into bios. No problem I have diconnected the cmos battery plenty of times to reset bios. It does not work with this model because after a lot of research I found out it has the trusted platform module (TPM). Hp tells me the power on password is permenent in CMOS and the only way to get around this is to replace the motherboard. Just to inform you further about this, the minute you turn it on it ask for the power on password with a picture of a key. You don't even get a chance to try to Fkey into bios. Also I guess it was set to not ever boot from cd or other peripheral.
I got to belive someone out their knows a better/easier fix....thanks in advance.
Olympus
Single & Not Looking
The TPM module basically makes sure the hard drive (HDD) can only be used on that specific hardware (laptop in this case) that the password was set on. As far as I know Thinkpad users are able to do a rest but HP not so much.
Since you bought the laptop from someone else are you interested in keeping whatever data may be on that HDD? If it doesn't matter you could just replace it with a new (or another) HDD. Once you put the different HDD in the laptop you should be able to get back into BIOS.