The terms, in language you can actually check

1What we do

We attempt to recover BIOS passwords on Intel-based Acer laptops running InsydeH2O firmware. That is it — one narrow job, done remotely.

The flow is:

1. You send us the application form: your name and email, the laptop model, serial number and SNID, the processor brand, whether Windows still boots, which password you are locked out by, any passwords you think it might be, optionally a proof of purchase, and your confirmation that you own the machine.
2. We look at it and tell you by email whether we can help, which tier your machine falls into and what it will therefore cost. Some applications we decline.
3. If we accept, we email you a small Windows program and its SHA-256 checksum, so you can verify the file is the one we sent.
4. You run it on your own locked laptop, as an administrator.
5. You email the file it produces back to us. Or, if you prefer, we run that step with you over a remote session, for the $20 in section 7.
6. We work on recovering the password at our end, on our own equipment.
7. If we recover it, we describe what we found so you can recognise it as yours, you pay, and we send you the password.

2Whether your machine will work, and why we cannot promise

We have verified this on some Acer models and inferred it on others. The service covers Intel Acer laptops, in three tiers, and section 7 prices each one:

• Supported — Intel Core 12th, 13th or 14th generation. This is where most of what we have verified sits.
• Unsupported, older — Intel Core 11th generation and below. We take these on. They cost more and they take longer, because more of the work is done from scratch.
• Unsupported, newer — Intel Core Ultra. Also taken on, at the higher price and the longer turnaround. Core Ultra is a different family from Core i7 rather than a newer version of it, so a brand-new Core Ultra machine is further from the cheapest tier, not closer to it.

Every tier carries the same two requirements. The laptop must be running Windows as its operating system, and you must be able to sign in to that Windows as an administrator. The program we send you is a Windows program, so a machine running Linux or anything else cannot be done at all, whatever processor is in it.

Five kinds of machine we refuse outright: AMD Acer laptops, Acer Chromebooks, Acer desktops such as the Orion, Nitro N50, Veriton and Aspire TC, older Acers that display an 8 or 10 digit code on screen at the password prompt, and any machine not running Windows. Refused means refused — not a dearer tier, not a longer queue, and not something to send through the free check either, because the file it produces is not something we could do anything with. The on-screen-code machines are the happy case: free tools have solved that prompt for years, so use one of those and pay nobody for it, ourselves included.

Beyond the tier, whether your particular laptop works comes down to two things we cannot know in advance: whether your model keeps what we need in a form we recognise, and whether the tool can read your machine at all. If your machine is an Intel Acer laptop running Windows and you are unsure which tier it falls into, or whether we can help at all, start with the free check: you send one file, we reply with whether it can be done, what it will cost and how long it should take, and it costs nothing whatever the answer.

On timing, a supported machine is usually finished within 24 hours and an unsupported one can take up to 72. Those are what we aim for and plan around, not a clock you are buying: an unsupported machine may need a remote session before we can get anywhere, and we would rather take an extra day than send a password we have not checked. So we still do not commit to a timescale, and if a job is running long we will tell you rather than let you wonder.

This is a best-effort attempt, not a promise of a result. We do not warrant that we will succeed. The evidence page sets out exactly what has been verified and what has not.

3The laptop has to be yours

This service is for laptops you own. By applying, you confirm that you either own the machine or have documented permission from the person or organisation that does.

We may ask you for a proof of purchase, and we may decline or stop work at any point, including after we have started, if we are not satisfied on this. If we stop for that reason, you owe us nothing.

Why we care, and why we do not think this is a lock-picking service: to run the tool at all you must already be logged into Windows on that laptop as an administrator. The process defeats neither the Windows login nor disk encryption. It recovers access to the F2 setup screen of a computer you are already inside. Someone with a stolen laptop they cannot log into gets nothing from us. Ownership is still the line we hold, and we would rather lose a sale than cross it.

4What the tool does, and what it cannot do

The program reads. It uses Intel's own digitally signed flash utility to collect what we need, and writes a single sealed file. Every command it issues is a read command fixed inside the program.

It does not write, erase or reflash your firmware. There is no code path in it that can. That is not a policy, it is the design.

The file is sealed to us on your machine, before it leaves your machine, so it is unreadable in transit and unreadable to anyone who intercepts it.

5What we need from you

• Back up your data first. Before running any tool from anyone, ours included.
• Run it on mains power, not battery.
• Do not shut the machine down mid-run. Let it finish.
• Give us accurate details. A mistyped serial number costs us both a round of emails and can send us looking at the wrong firmware entirely.

6Remote sessions

If you would rather not handle the program yourself, we can run that step with you over TeamViewer. A guided session like that is $20. It is optional, it is charged only because you asked for the help, and you can decline it and run the tool yourself at no extra cost.

Sometimes it is us who asks for the remote access, because we need to look at the machine ourselves before we can get any further. That happens mostly on unsupported machines. A session we ask for is free. It is for our benefit rather than yours, and we are not going to charge you for our own homework.

Either way, you start the session and you can end it at any moment. During it we will only do what we have described to you: run the tool and collect the file it produces. Please close anything private, such as documents, browser tabs and messaging apps, before you let us in.

7Price and payment

Every machine has two prices, in US dollars, and they carry equal weight. Which one applies depends on whether you send us a proof of purchase, because establishing that the laptop is yours is a good deal more work for us when there is nothing to check it against.

• A guided remote session is $20, and only when you are the one who wants the help. A session we ask for is free — see section 6.
• One payment covers one machine and one recovered password.

What counts as a proof of purchase

A receipt, an invoice or an order confirmation. A person reads it rather than a script, so we may come back to you with questions if something is missing or unclear — every case is different and there is no checklist we could usefully publish. We may also decide that what you have sent does not establish ownership, and then the price is the one in the right-hand column. We would rather tell you that here than have it appear on the invoice as a surprise.

The invoice

You get one final invoice, before the password is sent. It lists everything owed: the unlock at the price above, and the guided remote session if you asked for one. There is nothing else on it, nothing is charged before it, and nothing arrives after it.

Before you pay, we describe the recovered password to you: how many characters it has, and what kind of characters they are. That is enough for you to recognise it as your own and of no use to anybody, deliberately — we do not send you any part of the password itself, not even a single character. The password follows once payment has cleared.

Payment by cryptocurrency, Western Union or MoneyGram, or an international bank transfer, and only ever after we have recovered the password. We send you the details when it is ready. We do not take cards or PayPal, and section 8 explains why. The payment page covers each method. There is no deposit, no assessment fee and no charge for looking at your application.

8No refunds once the password has been sent

Once we have sent you the recovered password, the sale is final and there are no refunds.

This is also why we do not accept card or PayPal payments. A card payment can be reversed by the payer weeks after the fact; a password cannot be un-sent. Taking cards would mean pretending the sale is reversible when it is not, so we ask for cryptocurrency or a bank transfer, both of which settle for good. And because you should not have to take our word for it either, we prove we have the password before you pay — see section 7.

We want to explain this rather than bury it, because it is the clause customers push back on. What you are buying is a secret string. It cannot be handed back, un-seen, or repossessed. The moment it is in your inbox we have performed the contract completely and there is nothing left for us to withhold or take back. If you have the correct password, you have exactly the thing you paid for. "I have changed my mind", "I mistyped it", "I found another way in", or "I do not need it any more" do not undo delivery, and none of those are grounds for a refund.

So the line is: the password does not work, and you can show us is refundable. The password works but I no longer want it is not.

9Your password stays yours

The recovered password belongs to you. We do not keep it, reuse it, or share it, and we do not publish machine identifiers: no serials, no SNIDs, no model-and-owner pairings.

10Confidentiality, both ways

We will keep your information and your machine's details confidential. Please do the same with what we send you: the program, its internals, and how it works. Neither side needs to keep confidential anything that is already public or that we are legally required to disclose.

11Your data

We collect what is on the application form, the file your machine produces, and our emails. Form submissions go to a private channel that only we read. There is no database and no file storage behind this website. The file is sealed to us on your machine before it is sent, so it is never readable in transit or at rest anywhere but on our own offline equipment.

You can ask us to delete your data by email and we will. Full detail is in the privacy notice, which forms part of this agreement.

12Liability

The tool only reads, and reading cannot corrupt anything. So if a pre-existing fault, a failing drive, dying memory, or unrelated hardware trouble shows up while the tool happens to be running, that is not something we caused and we are not liable for it.

The same applies to disk encryption. We warn you in section 5, and the tool warns you on the machine itself, that changing BIOS settings can trigger a BitLocker recovery prompt. If you change those settings without having saved your recovery key first, the consequences are not something we caused or can undo.

What we are not doing is disclaiming responsibility for our own mistakes. If we actually cause damage through negligence, that is on us. We do not exclude liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud, and we could not if we wanted to.

Otherwise our total liability to you under this agreement is capped at the amount you have paid us. This is a job that costs between $100 and $250; a cap at the price is the only figure that makes the service possible to offer at all. We are not liable for indirect or consequential losses such as lost work, lost profits or lost time.

13Your consumer rights

Nothing here takes away rights you have under the consumer law of the country you live in. If something in this agreement conflicts with such a right, the statutory right wins and the rest of this agreement carries on as written.

14Changes, and how you accepted this

We may update this agreement. The version that applies to your job is the one you accepted, by its version number and date. Later changes do not apply retroactively to work already agreed.

You accept this agreement by ticking the acceptance box on the order form, which records which version you accepted and when. The order form also carries a separate box, which you tick yourself, asking us to deliver the password as soon as we have recovered it and acknowledging that once it is delivered you lose any right you would otherwise have to cancel and get a refund, for the reasons in section 8.

If any clause turns out to be unenforceable, it is severed and the rest stands. This agreement, plus the privacy notice and the details on your order form, is the whole of what we have agreed.

15Law and disputes

This agreement is governed by the law of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and the courts of Amman have jurisdiction over any dispute arising from it.

If something goes wrong, email us first at [email protected]. Almost everything is fixable in a couple of messages, and we would rather sort it out directly than formally.

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