Thinkpad T42

[bahagrl79]

While booting there is a 1 battery sign and lock that appears? It stops booting at the point and the cursor is blinking. What does this mean and how to fix it?

[ajkula66]

Welcome to the forum!

Your laptop is locked by a Supervisor password. You can:

a) Contact the previous owner and obtain the password.

b) Change the motherboard.

Do bear in mind that password-cracking technique discussions are NOT allowed on this forum.

Good luck.

[RealBlackStuff]

In addition to the above, this is all the help we are allowed to give you:
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail. ... MIGR-59377

[bahagrl79]

I have a password how do i remove this, if possible?

[ajkula66]

Press F1 to enter BIOS on boot, proceed to security and change the password, it's pretty self-explanatory once you're in there.

Good luck.

[cadillacmike68]

That "1 battery sign" just might be the HDD # 1 password prompt and not the computer's POST or supervisor password.

Same thing, go into the BIOS with F1 and blank out the existing PWs to "change" them to "blank".

Best sequence is to:
Power it off
Power it on
Press F1 right at the opening thinkpad screen
Enter the PW you have at the "1 battery sign" prompt
Go into the password section and change any enabled Pws to blank. that is how you clear them.
good luck.

[Neil]

Is this the image you see?
If so, it's a hard drive password like cadillacmike68 says. It's stored on the hard drive not the computer.

[RealBlackStuff]

To get rid of it, find the password and set it to 'blank'/empty, or replace the hard disk.

[cadillacmike68]

Is this the image you see?
If so, it's a hard drive password like cadillacmike68 says. It's stored on the hard drive not the computer.

That is a seriously cool little screen cap image there, RBS

Niel, You clear it the same way you would clear a POP or SupPW. You need to get into the BIOS. Press F1 during a power on cycle and enter the PW you have.

Then when in the password part of the BIOS select the HDD with the PW enabled. Note if it has a user or master or both (I always use both).

If you just have the user pw change that to blanks. If you have the master or both, change the master to blanks. that will clear both PWs on the HDD. Its not rocket science, but you must have the proper PW or else the HDD becomes a nice paperweight, (or you can take the disk platter(s) out and make cool rear view mirror hangers out of them ).

I never could figure out what the difference b/w HSS user and master PWs is, but i have noticed this over the years:

If your POP and used HDD PWs are the same, you can enter the POP at the POP prompt and it will pass this pw along to all HDDs with the same PW! You can see it on the screed, you get the Ok, then the HDD1 Ok then the HDD2 OK and even the HDD3 Ok if you have three HDDs in the thing!

However, if you put in the suporvisor PW, even if you did not press F1 for the BIOS you need to hand enter the HDD PWs, even if they are the same as the supervisor PW.