Look, I know what are forums made for, but nobody on this forum or other forums wasn't able to help me with a helpful information that I didn't know, regarding this bios password problem. So, I had to work on my own. I think that if you know how to work with eeprom programmers and with eeproms in generally you can figure out wich IC is an I2C eeprom in a very simple way: the way the pins are connected between them (pins 1 to 4 and 7 connected to GND, pin 8 connected to +5V and pins 5 and 6 are clock and data pins). If one IC is connected this way, I suggest you put it in a programmer (like JDM) and try to read it and see what's the result. In my case it worked, but as I told you before, there were two IC's marked in the same way. The first one I read was an eeprom containing infos for the notebook's internal clock generator so I didn't touch its contents. With the second one I was a little bit luckier because I was able to see the word SONY, the model of my notebook (VGN-A417M) and a long serial number (UUID) written in the dump in clear text, so I looked in the memmap.txt file that came with Sony Vaio Analyzer and found out at wich addresses the password is stored. To bypass the password I had to modify the dump just the way it was written in that .txt file and modify the bytes containing the password to 00. Programm the IC with the modified file, solder it on the motherboard and power up. Surpize!!! The notebook doesn't ask for a password anymore!
So that was it! I've done it! I hope that this info will help you to unlock your notebokk and you won't have to pay 99$ for a new "security chip". The IC that I was looking for is located somewhere near the battery connector, on the opposite side of the Southbridge (the other side of the PCB). I can't help you with pictures because I don't have them anymore I've lost them... I don't know how, but they're gone.
Here is the memmap.txt file, if you don't have it:
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f
00:PP PP PP PP PP PP PP pp pp pp pp pp pp pp ?? SS
10: UU UU UU UU UU UU UU UU UU UU UU UU UU UU UU UU
20: OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO
30: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
40: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
50: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
60: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
70: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
80: MM MM MM MM MM MM MM MM MM MM MM MM MM MM MM MM
90: MM MM MM MM MM MM MM MM MM MM MM MM MM MM MM MM
a0: RR RR RR RR RR RR RR RR RR RR NN NN NN NN ?? ??
b0: ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? 0? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? 0? 0? ?5 ??
c0: ss ss ss ss ss ss ss ss ss ss ss ss ss ss ss ss
d0: ss ss ss ss ss ss ss ss ss ss ss ss ss ss ss ss
e0: tt tt tt tt tt tt tt tt tt tt tt tt tt tt tt tt
f0: tt tt ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ??
PP - Machine password
pp - User password
SS - Security setting (FF/4E: ask at startup; FE/00: don't ask)
UU - UUID
OO - OEM Info
MM - Machine name
RR - Revision
NN - Model Name (4-character!)
ss - Serial number
tt - Timestamp
One more thing: if you think that you are not able to do this or you don't have the tools or the knowledge to de/solder an SMD IC, build a hardware programmer, or to edit a hex file, with all the respect, I think you shouldn't try anything that I've written here, because you can PERMANENTLY DAMAGE YOUR NOTEBOOK!!!! Someone told me that if you, by accident, modify or delete the serial number of the notebook, it won't work as it should work! So, BE VERY CAREFUL!!!
