I bought a Thinkpad X22 on eBay recently "for parts or not working". It arrived yesterday and it powered right up. But, there's a power on password set that I can't seem to get past, I've tried removing the CMOS battery so far and that didn't work.
I bought a Thinkpad X22 on eBay recently "for parts or not working". It arrived yesterday and it powered right up. But, there's a power on password set that I can't seem to get past, I've tried removing the CMOS battery so far and that didn't work.
Try removing the battery for about 10 minutes, so that it is guaranteed to have BIOS data forgotten. Make sure that everything is unplugged. Also, are you sure it has a BIOS screen and not just one of these annoying new UEFI thingies?
This thing predates UEFI by far (and UEFI is pretty nice) - ThinkPads made after the 600X have stronger protection that can't be defeated by replacing the battery. Your simplest option is just replacing the planar or trying to guess the password. If you're really dedicated...
I bought a Thinkpad X22 on eBay recently "for parts or not working". It arrived yesterday and it powered right up. But, there's a power on password set that I can't seem to get past, I've tried removing the CMOS battery so far and that didn't work.
Try removing the battery for about 10 minutes, so that it is guaranteed to have BIOS data forgotten. Make sure that everything is unplugged. Also, are you sure it has a BIOS screen and not just one of these annoying new UEFI thingies?
When I removed the battery it was out of there for over an hour. It's gotta be something else that controls the password on the board
This thing predates UEFI by far (and UEFI is pretty nice) - ThinkPads made after the 600X have stronger protection that can't be defeated by replacing the battery. Your simplest option is just replacing the planar or trying to guess the password. If you're really dedicated...
I'll try to guess it. Will come back with results that will be (hopefully) positive.
Also, I don't think it predates UEFI. I remember seeing WinBIOS on a few Compaq systems from the 90s
I bought a Thinkpad X22 on eBay recently "for parts or not working". It arrived yesterday and it powered right up. But, there's a power on password set that I can't seem to get past, I've tried removing the CMOS battery so far and that didn't work.
Removing the CMOS battery is only useful if you're erasing the BIOS password. Unfortunately this doesn't sound like the case. Either you will need to purchase a new planar (mother) board, or have the password removed professionally. The latter will cost you a small fortune.
The added protection for the user password is hard to bypass for the following reasons.
The password is written into a option ROM ether on a chip somewhere on the motherboard or it is written onto the hard drive's option ROM. Clear the CMOS by taking the battery out and remove the hard drive to rule out if it's the Hard drive or a special on-board option ROM on the motherboard. If it does boot up fine with out the hard drive then I would replace the drive or if you want to do some "fun" detective work you can flash the hard drive option ROM with some ATA commands.
The added protection for the user password is hard to bypass for the following reasons.
The password is written into a option ROM ether on a chip somewhere on the motherboard or it is written onto the hard drive's option ROM. Clear the CMOS by taking the battery out and remove the hard drive to rule out if it's the Hard drive or a special on-board option ROM on the motherboard. If it does boot up fine with out the hard drive then I would replace the drive or if you want to do some "fun" detective work you can flash the hard drive option ROM with some ATA commands.
It doesn't boot fine without the hard drive sadly. There's something on the motherboard that I figured out due to ampharos's post
My X230 has UEFI, and it's near on 3 years old now. Plenty of them do.
My T420 (from late 2011 or early 2012, I don't know the date of manufacturing) doesn't have UEFI - and I thought at one point I saw a T430 without UEFI. Maybe I was wrong about what model it was, but I know it had the chiclet keyboard. I know I saw an X220 at one point without UEFI also.
T420 definitely is UEFI - Sandy Bridge is when ThinkPads and the industry at large was switching over to it. (Apple was using EFI from the start of the transition and Intel and Gigabyte were early adopters of UEFI on motherboards, in the Core 2 era.)
T420 definitely is UEFI - Sandy Bridge is when ThinkPads and the industry at large was switching over to it. (Apple was using EFI from the start of the transition and Intel and Gigabyte were early adopters of UEFI on motherboards, in the Core 2 era.)
I wasn't thinking when I wrote that message. I forgot UEFI =/= the mouse controlled interface things
I've had a few socket 775 Intel motherboards that were in fact UEFI but didn't really utilize it and used a BIOS like payload over the UEFI. One board in particular intel d945gtp that I used for my Hackintosh was unstable as hell when the administrator option (AMT) was enabled.
I've had a few socket 775 Intel motherboards that were in fact UEFI but didn't really utilize it and used a BIOS like payload over the UEFI. One board in particular intel d945gtp that I used for my Hackintosh was unstable as hell when the administrator option (AMT) was enabled.
I believe the Dell Optiplex 780 is UEFI, a desktop from 2009 that's one of the last LGA775 systems Dell released. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about that.
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When I removed the battery it was out of there for over an hour. It's gotta be something else that controls the password on the board
I'll try to guess it. Will come back with results that will be (hopefully) positive.
Also, I don't think it predates UEFI. I remember seeing WinBIOS on a few Compaq systems from the 90s
Removing the CMOS battery is only useful if you're erasing the BIOS password. Unfortunately this doesn't sound like the case. Either you will need to purchase a new planar (mother) board, or have the password removed professionally. The latter will cost you a small fortune.
The password is written into a option ROM ether on a chip somewhere on the motherboard or it is written onto the hard drive's option ROM. Clear the CMOS by taking the battery out and remove the hard drive to rule out if it's the Hard drive or a special on-board option ROM on the motherboard. If it does boot up fine with out the hard drive then I would replace the drive or if you want to do some "fun" detective work you can flash the hard drive option ROM with some ATA commands.
It doesn't boot fine without the hard drive sadly. There's something on the motherboard that I figured out due to ampharos's post
I don't think any Thinkpad has ever had UEFI anyways - every thinkpad I've ever used has the same BIOS
My T420 (from late 2011 or early 2012, I don't know the date of manufacturing) doesn't have UEFI - and I thought at one point I saw a T430 without UEFI. Maybe I was wrong about what model it was, but I know it had the chiclet keyboard. I know I saw an X220 at one point without UEFI also.
I wasn't thinking when I wrote that message. I forgot UEFI =/= the mouse controlled interface things
I believe the Dell Optiplex 780 is UEFI, a desktop from 2009 that's one of the last LGA775 systems Dell released. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about that.