“In the world of BIOS,” she explained, “ FF means ‘no data.’ No data means no password.”

Leo had shaken his head. “Not on this model. HP ProBook 430 G5 stores the password on an EEPROM chip. It’s not like a Windows login. You guess wrong three times, it locks you out for increasing minutes. After ten tries? Permanent brick.”

sudo flashrom -p ch341a_spi -r bios_backup.bin