I'm setting up my father-in-laws computer over the holidays. You know, slapping on a linux instead of the Win XP that came with it and that stopped working. That kind of stuff.

Since I'm using the opportunity to experiment with Gentoo for the first time I'm compiling lots of kernels and generally rebooting a lot. So I innocently thought I'd deactivate the BIOS passwort he had set.

Bad idea. The Bios (some MSI) had no such option, so I tried entering an empty password. Yup, it accepted it. Entered it again for confirmation and up came the message 'password deactivated'. Cool. Reboot. 'Enter Password:' WTF?!? I hit the enter key without typing anyhting else. No luck. I entered the old password: 'Wrong password!'

Aaargh! The BIOS accepts empty passwords at the setup prompt but not at the authentication prompt!

Braindead. I wish I could just get him a Mac.