Accidentally locked my phone -- need help!!
 

Hi,

A long time ago I set a password on my phone and used to lock it but it got annoying so I stopped doing it. Unfortunately I never reset the password. Today I accidentally hit the lock screen button and my phone locked itself. I can't for the life of me remember the password. I've read that I should take it to some nokia center somewhere but I'm in a village in the middle of nowhere for the next week and I'm sure there's no nokia center around and i really need my phone. Is there any way to get the phone functional again without flashing it and deleting all my data? I have the USB cable and a mac laptop (no windows but I do have linux installed). Any help would be much appreciated.

Re: Accidentally locked my phone -- need help!!
 

Friend,

You're talking about the Lock Code, right? Actually, flashing your N900 won't help either (the lock code won't go back to the default of 12345). There is a thread here which talks about the steps needed to extract an "encrypted" version of your lock code from your N900, and then using a decrypter application available in Linux (such as John the Ripper), so that you can recovery your lock code.

Here's the thread, hope this helps: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=37808&page=33

Re: Accidentally locked my phone -- need help!!
 

go to the 1st post of the thread, download the a.out file & follow instructions

Re: Accidentally locked my phone -- need help!!
 

I think to extract the "encrypted" code you need access to your N900 so flashing will help as it lets you use your phone again, and then go through the steps in the links to recover the code. I know this because exactly the same thing happened to me. When you flash though, all your personal details (coversations, address book etc will still be there)

Re: Accidentally locked my phone -- need help!!
 

Um...I specifically meant that flashing will not help as far as resetting the lock code. Definitely flashing will help making the phone still useable.

Re: Accidentally locked my phone -- need help!!
 

Yep, got that sorry, I edited my post. :D

Re: Accidentally locked my phone -- need help!!
 

Thanks for the responses. This really sucks! Am I correct in understanding that there's pretty much no way to get into the phone without frying my data? I feel like a complete idiot saying this but I don't have much of it backed up and there's tons of stuff on there -- photos, notes, etc... Is there anyway to get the data off? Even sending it to Nokia?

many thanks..

Re: Accidentally locked my phone -- need help!!
 

Sorry I posted before seeing these last few posts. I don't care about getting the code because I don't really use it...its a much longer term problem. But I'd like to go hiking now and need a phone in case I have an emergency or something. And I absolutely do not want to fry my data (contacts are not a huge deal as i sync them but photos, tomboy notes, etc.. are). So is there a way I can flash the phone and make it useable without losing the data? is there a way to do this from OS X or linux? I would really appreciate a link with some details if so. Many thanks!

Re: Accidentally locked my phone -- need help!!
 

Just to check: you can still navigate through menus, etc.? How about being able to access X Terminal?

Re: Accidentally locked my phone -- need help!!
 

Hi,

Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean. I have no access to my phone or the menus or anything? When I boot up the phone it asks for the lock code which I don't know and I'm pretty much stuck there. I'm not running an ssh server so I guess my only option is to flash right?

From here:

http://wiki.maemo.org/Updating_the_t..._does_it_do.3F

I looks like flashing rootfs will preserve my data such as photos and conboy notes (the main stuff i really need). Is this correct? And will flashing to rootfs be enough to get my access to my phone again. I don't care if it doesn't reset the password for now...I'll sort that out later.