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neb

neb

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#251526 29-Jun-2019 12:49
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Asking for a work colleague: Their ex-work laptop, an older Lenovo Carbon X1, has just come up with a tamper switch error, which means you need to enter the BIOS supervisor password to continue. However the password was set by an admin who left long ago, so no-one knows it. According to Lenovo, this requires a motherboard swap to fix, which means tossing the whole laptop since it's an older model. Presumably there's a non-official way to do this, does anyone know it?

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  #2266795 29-Jun-2019 13:01
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I have seen websites that claim to have masterpasswords for BIOSes of different laptops. 

 

No idea if they will work or not.




  #2272077 8-Jul-2019 21:31
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There isn't a master password opportunity for late model Lenovo laptops.

 

You're going to need an SPI Flash Programmer to dump your existing locked BIOS, then a bit of assistance to clean it before you upload the unlocked dump. Now you can enjoy unlocked Lenovo Carbon X1. 





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neb

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  #2272493 9-Jul-2019 16:49
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1024kb:

You're going to need an SPI Flash Programmer to dump your existing locked BIOS, then a bit of assistance to clean it before you upload the unlocked dump. Now you can enjoy unlocked Lenovo Carbon X1. 

 

 

Ugh, I was afraid it was going to be something like that, which is a bit above my pay grade. Or at least I'd give it a go, but I may fry the thing. The Russians claim you can bypass the password by shorting out one or more pins on the SPI flash at boot, but that also sounds like a one-shot-is-all-you-get approach...

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