Thinkpads Forum

and the person who sold me it doesn't know the passwords. i can't enter bios either cuz that has a password. am i screwed? time to demand my money back?

fartonmyear wrote:and the person who sold me it doesn't know the passwords. i can't enter bios either cuz that has a password. am i screwed? time to demand my money back?

no way to let you in ...

if there is activated security chip with password you're out of game.g

can i take out the bios battery?

Have you ran the serial # on the laptop with the manufacturer to see if it was reported stolen?

i looked up the warranty info. doesn't say it was reported stolen.

ok, i pressed f12 at boot and it shows me a boot menu. how about password recovery? no password resetting. any boot disks that will let me SEE the current password?

fartonmyear wrote:any boot disks that will let me SEE the current password?

No, that would render the password feature meaningless if you could just stick in a magic boot media and recover the password. I once had the same problem - purchased used thinkpad which had BIOS password set but the owner hadn't used it for so long that he had forgotten it. See this thread: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=4065

http://www.ja.axxs.net/unlock/ seems to be still in business, try there.

If you can return it, why would you not? Based on the fact that it is locked and the seller doesn't know the passwords, it's probably stolen. Why would you want to take a chance of being caught with stolen goods?

Ed Gibbs

ok nevermind. i'm stated the problem wrong. i can't get into rescue and recovery. it asks me for a password. when i enter 4 wrong passwords it restarts. any way to get past this? i can get into bios and everything. can i just boot from a usb drive with an xp cd on it and just format like that?

I might have a solution but you will lose any data that is protected by the passwords. If you are willing to try it PM me and I'll send it to you.

Yak

turns out it was stolen. i found the original owner and am holding it random. jk. i'll work things out with him.

Good to know that a stolen laptop has been recovered in one form or another.

I can't speak for everybody, but thank you for atleast checking to see if it was stolen.

i actually looked up the username on google and emailed the 2 people who had the username as an email address.

Good Detective work!!!

But since you found them randomly, make sure that they can prove that it was theirs. (ie. model number, paperwork, police report, etc.)

most people don't know to tell the manufacturer if your laptop is stolen.

My bet is that it is a stolen laptop. Or they would know the password before they sell it to you.

Good detective work on your part.