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PSlover14

203 posts

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#208732 25-Feb-2017 15:06
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I bought a couple of IBM Thinkpads off trademe thinking they only had Power-On Passwords on them but have found out since that they have Supervisor passwords on them, which the seller did not know since he got them from a recycling company. I have been looking at the KeyMaker X by Joe in Australia http://www.ja.axxs.net/ but it is roughly $160 NZ for the base model which I do not have lying around being a student and such.

 

So I thought I'd ask here and see whether anyone had one they could lend to me, I would pay postage both ways of course,  since I only need to reset 1 laptop that cost me around $30.

 

 

 

Thanks


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Rickles
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  #1729437 3-Mar-2017 14:41
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 I know that ThinkPads lock both system and hard drive under Supervisor access, so simply removing the BIOS battery doesn't complete the job.  But I thought there are jumper switches on the motherboard that resets everything?




PSlover14

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  #1729538 3-Mar-2017 18:08
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There are 3 types of passwords on Thinkpads:

 

A power-on password which is just for booting the hard drive, which according to Lenovo themselves can be reset by disconnecting the battery,

 

A Supervisor password which is saved in the EEPROM and is used for accessing the BIOS setup and can't be removed without either a KeyMaker X or other similar EEPROM reader

 

and A Hard Drive password which this is not since I swapped the hard drive


PSlover14

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  #1729539 3-Mar-2017 18:09
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Mine is a Supervisor Password which requires either the KeyMaker X or another similar tool (allservice.ro sells one for this task also) to remove




Rickles
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  #1729558 3-Mar-2017 18:38
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Bummer ! yell


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