Anyway to clear a bios password?

Message

koolzero · #1 Post by **koolzero** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 10:31 am

I just got a computer in from someone in the field and they've enabled a bios password. They say that they didn't set it but it just started to display a lock in the top left corner of the screen.

http://www.kevebrown.com/uploader/files/2/DSC00022.JPG

IBM says the motherboard would have to be replaced. Is there not any other way to clear this?

AIX · #2 Post by **AIX** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 10:57 am

koolzero - read the 12-th paragraph on the FAQ section here:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=1689

Anyway, it's a t43p? or a T42p?

koolzero · #3 Post by **koolzero** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 11:21 am

AIX wrote:koolzero - read the 12-th paragraph on the FAQ section here:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=1689

Anyway, it's a t43p? or a T42p?

Thanks T43p. So the answer is that it is a motherboard replacement?

JHEM · #4 Post by **JHEM** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 12:18 pm

koolzero wrote:I just got a computer in from someone in the field and they've enabled a bios password. They say that they didn't set it but it just started to display a lock in the top left corner of the screen.

If it's a Power On Password (POP), remove the CMOS battery for a minute and then replace. The PW will be gone, along with the date and time.

If it's truly a BIOS (Supervisor or SP) PW, then yes, you're looking at a MB replacement or an expensive hack of the unit's EEPROM.

BTW, in most of my client companies when a unit is returned from the field with an unknown SP installed the employee is charged its street value.

SPs do not suddenly and miraculously appear, all such stories you might read here to the contrary notwithstanding.

Regards,

James

koolzero · #5 Post by **koolzero** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 12:41 pm

JHEM wrote:
koolzero wrote:I just got a computer in from someone in the field and they've enabled a bios password. They say that they didn't set it but it just started to display a lock in the top left corner of the screen.
If it's a Power On Password (POP), remove the CMOS battery for a minute and then replace. The PW will be gone, along with the date and time.

If it's truly a BIOS (Supervisor or SP) PW, then yes, you're looking at a MB replacement or an expensive hack of the unit's EEPROM.

BTW, in most of my client companies when a unit is returned from the field with an unknown SP installed the employee is charged its street value.

SPs do not suddenly and miraculously appear, all such stories you might read here to the contrary notwithstanding.

Regards,

James

I get the thinkpad splash screen then I get the padlock. So is that a Supervisor PW or POP?

koolzero · #6 Post by **koolzero** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 12:50 pm

Can someone tell me where the cmos battery is on a t43? I took out the keyboard and I'm not finding it.

Woohoo i pulled the battery and it fixed it!

#7 Post by **draco2527** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 1:17 pm

It should be under the palmrest (yellow in color)

JHEM · #8 Post by **JHEM** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 2:13 pm

koolzero wrote:Woohoo i pulled the battery and it fixed it!

Glad to hear it!

Regards,

James

koolzero · #9 Post by **koolzero** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 5:50 pm

JHEM wrote:
koolzero wrote:Woohoo i pulled the battery and it fixed it!
Glad to hear it!

Regards,

James

I just talked to her and she said she hasn't let anyone use her computer. Have there been any instances where it has "installed itself"?

I think a co-worker pranked her!

Thanks

JHEM · #10 Post by **JHEM** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 6:59 pm

koolzero wrote:I just talked to her and she said she hasn't let anyone use her computer. Have there been any instances where it has "installed itself"?

There have been many stories offered over the years by people seeking a way to circumvent a SP. One of the favorites is that "it just suddenly appeared!" While the SP can't be self generated by the laptop, there can be instances of where a SP is set and the user/owner has forgotten this fact, only to be faced with the prompt when they attempt to enter the BIOS, change a HD, reset the date and time, etc.

koolzero wrote:I think a co-worker pranked her!

Entirely possible and the number one reason why we should never let our Thinkpads run around bareassed.

At the least everyone should have a POP set on their system, if only to prevent someone else setting one and locking you out.

But, as you saw how easy it is to remove a POP, everyone should also have a SP set as well. If worse were to come to worst and your beloved Thinkpad was purloined by a miscreant, you could at least take some comfort from the fact that the thief now has a nice doorstop!

Regards,

James

koolzero · #11 Post by **koolzero** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 11:18 am

I wrote a document (with pictures) on how to take the laptop apart to pull the battery do you think this would be of any use to anyone? If so does anyone know of some place I could host the document?

egibbs · #12 Post by **egibbs** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 11:51 am

If you are working in an IT department supporting Thinkpads, you need to pay attention to James' comments.

No machine should ever reach a user without a Supervisor password having been already set by the IT department to a standard password defined by your company. This accomplishes two things...

1. It prevents users from setting it themselves, in which case if they forget it or leave the company you have brick.

2. It provides an easy way to remove Power On Passwords that users set and "forget."

You got lucky this time because only the POP was set. Next time you may not be so lucky.

Ed Gibbs

koolzero · #13 Post by **koolzero** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 1:04 pm

egibbs wrote:If you are working in an IT department supporting Thinkpads, you need to pay attention to Jame's comments.

No machine should ever reach a user without a Supervisor password having been already set by the IT department to a standard password defined by your company. This accomplishes two things...

1. It prevents users from setting it themselves, in which case if they forget it or leave the company you have brick.

2. It provides an easy way to remove Power On Passwords that users set and "forget."

You got lucky this time because only the POP was set. Next time you may not be so lucky.

Ed Gibbs

That's very good advice, however our IT Department does not send them out with supervisor passwords. The IT department just sent out nearly 400 laptops so to change these to having passwords would not be possible, but may in 2 years when we do another upgrade this could be set...

Hopefully this doesn't happen again.

also I've never worked at any company where passwords were set. Before I worked at a place that used dells exclusively so they not have had the capabilities of having a supervisor password...

Lastly I do not rate I'm just a lowly help desk tech I doubt my thoughts on this would make any difference. I'm sure if this becomes a problem something would definitely be changed.

JHEM · #14 Post by **JHEM** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 2:14 pm

koolzero wrote:That's very good advice, however our IT Department does not send them out with supervisor passwords.

You're playing Russian Roulette with these units! In essence, you're betting that you'll never have a disgruntled employee set a SP leaving you with a doorstop, or an employee's child get access to the unit and set one while "experimenting", or, most damaging, the laptop will never be lost or stolen thereby giving others access to company information and possibly your servers.

koolzero wrote:The IT department just sent out nearly 400 laptops so to change these to having passwords would not be possible, but may in 2 years when we do another upgrade this could be set...

If the laptops are properly setup to allow for remote access and depending on the OS, the SP can be set at any time the units are remotely updated.

Regards,

James

egibbs · #15 Post by **egibbs** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 8:08 pm

As a rough rule of thumb, figure 10% of those 400 TPs will come back sooner or later with an unknown Supervisor Password.

That's 40 x $2K/per = $80K. Not counting time wasted, the value of which might exceed the cost of the machines.

Your boss is an idiot. It's up to you to save him from himself.

Ed Gibbs

JHEM · #16 Post by **JHEM** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 8:44 pm

egibbs wrote:Your boss is an idiot. It's up to you to save him from himself.

Ed knows whereof he speaks, you should listen to him.

Another fact I forgot to mention is that if a SP is set on one of those machines, the HD PW is automatically set also.

As long as the HD resides in that specific laptop, everything will be fine.

But if, for whatever reason, you were to attempt to read that HD in another laptop or attached to a system via an external case, you'll be prompted for the PW!

Regards,

James

#17 Post by **RonS** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 2:47 am

Jumping in on this thread... suddenly, I'm confused.

I have a TP that I have the the BIOS password set (power-on and HDD). But I did not set the "Supervisor" password because I saw no need to do that.

Does that mean that someone can simply pull the CMOS battery, reset my passwords, and get full access to my system?

egibbs · #18 Post by **egibbs** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 6:53 am

If you have Power On and HDD passwords set, the Power On Password could be cleared by pulling the CMOS battery, but the HDD password would remain. They would have to put a new drive in to get a working machine.

Still a good idea to set the SP as well - just make sure you set it to something you'll never forget. On my machine (personally owned) all three are set to the same value, which is probably not the best practice. But it's a good strong password (passphrase actually), and I don't give it out to anyone.

On a corporate machine the SP should be set to a value known to the company but not the user (unless you really trust your users). The POP and HDD passwords should be set by the user to whatever floats their boat.

Ed Gibbs

mybellyisempty · #19 Post by **mybellyisempty** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 7:59 am

Is there a way to clear out a hdd with a hdd password?

Fdisk, etc?

I have a supervisor password on my T43, but I haven't set a hdd password yet, as I've not really had a chance to see what it would do outside of the laptop (should it be put in an external enclosure, another system, etc. in the future).

JHEM · #20 Post by **JHEM** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 8:38 am

mybellyisempty wrote:Is there a way to clear out a hdd with a hdd password?

Fdisk, etc?

Not readily, as it requires a way to read the PW off the HD's EEPROM, read the FAQs. FDISK will do nothing as the HD is inaccessible without the PW and the PW isn't stored on the disk.

Regards,

James

koolzero · #21 Post by **koolzero** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 3:38 pm

JHEM wrote:
koolzero wrote:That's very good advice, however our IT Department does not send them out with supervisor passwords.

You're playing Russian Roulette with these units! In essence, you're betting that you'll never have a disgruntled employee set a SP leaving you with a doorstop, or an employee's child get access to the unit and set one while "experimenting", or, most damaging, the laptop will never be lost or stolen thereby giving others access to company information and possibly your servers.

koolzero wrote:The IT department just sent out nearly 400 laptops so to change these to having passwords would not be possible, but may in 2 years when we do another upgrade this could be set...
If the laptops are properly setup to allow for remote access and depending on the OS, the SP can be set at any time the units are remotely updated.

Regards,

James

I don't see how you can say that I'm playing russian roulette it's not like I am the one that implements these machines it's the corporation as a whole. I just started working here in Jan so there is little pull I have. The employee is told that they aren not supposed to allow any one but themselves use their machines and if a password is set and has to be fix their cost center will be billed for it and they will be responsible for paying it back.

JHEM wrote:
egibbs wrote:Your boss is an idiot. It's up to you to save him from himself.
Ed knows whereof he speaks, you should listen to him.

Another fact I forgot to mention is that if a SP is set on one of those machines, the HD PW is automatically set also.

As long as the HD resides in that specific laptop, everything will be fine.

But if, for whatever reason, you were to attempt to read that HD in another laptop or attached to a system via an external case, you'll be prompted for the PW!

Regards,

James

For the little time i've worked the 2 companies i've been with neither one of them had any type of bios password enabled. I mentioned it to my boss that we got lucky this time but the next we may not be and he just kind of shrugged it off and said they've never set those passwords and they've been doing this for many many years!

Like I said before I don't make the decisions I just work on the help desk there isn't much leverage we have on this unless it became a problem.

JHEM · #22 Post by **JHEM** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 4:53 pm

koolzero wrote:I don't see how you can say that I'm playing russian roulette

That was a plural "you're", meaning you and, primarily, the company.

I guess the company you work for doesn't have a large impetus for security. What business sector are they in?

Regards,

James

egibbs · #23 Post by **egibbs** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 7:27 am

JHEM wrote:I guess the company you work for doesn't have a large impetus for security. What business sector are they in?

Hey James - I'll bet you lunch he works for either Accenture or Ernst & Young...

JHEM · #24 Post by **JHEM** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 9:31 am

egibbs wrote:Hey James - I'll bet you lunch he works for either Accenture or Ernst & Young...

That's cold Ed!

Funny as hell, but cold.....

I was going to bet on one of the credit reporting agencies that appear to be so cavalier when it comes to securing our personal data.

Or the FBI!

Seen these?

http://www.newsinferno.com/archives/949

http://www.cbronline.com/article_featur ... 2141ACC0AC

Regards,

James

koolzero · #25 Post by **koolzero** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 1:39 pm

JHEM wrote:
koolzero wrote:I don't see how you can say that I'm playing russian roulette
That was a plural "you're", meaning you and, primarily, the company.

I guess the company you work for doesn't have a large impetus for security. What business sector are they in?

Regards,

James

We install a program called Safeguard that encrypts the drive and makes it so no one can access the drive unless you boot it and enter the password. Even if you put the drive into another computer the drive won't show up.

thorn · #26 Post by **thorn** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 9:31 pm

koolzero wrote:I wrote a document (with pictures) on how to take the laptop apart to pull the battery do you think this would be of any use to anyone? If so does anyone know of some place I could host the document?

May I have 1 copy of the document(with pics) you wrote?

Thanks!

JHEM · #27 Post by **JHEM** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 10:20 pm

thorn wrote:May I have 1 copy of the document(with pics) you wrote?

Watch the movie: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-50233

Regards,

James

thorn · #28 Post by **thorn** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 11:08 pm

JHEM wrote:
thorn wrote:May I have 1 copy of the document(with pics) you wrote?
Watch the movie: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-50233

Regards,

James

Thanks for your reply.

Could you please tell me where I can find the movie to replace the LCD for T41? The lcd of my T41 is not work, I want to buy a used one from ebay and replace it by myself, but do not know how to disassemble it.
I had removed all screws, keyboard and trackpad.

Thanks.

egibbs · #29 Post by **egibbs** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 7:03 am

koolzero wrote:We install a program called Safeguard that encrypts the drive and makes it so no one can access the drive unless you boot it and enter the password. Even if you put the drive into another computer the drive won't show up.

Safeguard is good - at least the data on the drive will be safe if the machine is stolen - but not setting the SP is a major hole.

I know you're just the Private, not the General. But unfortunately you are the one who will have to deal with the users who swear they never set the SP, and they have no idea why the machine is locked, and what do you mean you can't unlock it?

Ed Gibbs

JHEM · #30 Post by **JHEM** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 8:15 am

thorn wrote:Could you please tell me where I can find the movie to replace the LCD for T41? The lcd of my T41 is not work, I want to buy a used one from ebay and replace it by myself, but do not know how to disassemble it.

No movie, but complete instructions are given in the Hardware Maintenance Manual for your system: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-46464

Regards,

James

Anyway to clear a bios password?

Anyway to clear a bios password?

Re: Anyway to clear a bios password?

Re: Anyway to clear a bios password?

Who is online