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T61 BIOS and won't boot

T60/T61 Series
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Reznik
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Joined: Thu Jul 05, 2018 5:06 am
Location: Canada

T61 BIOS and won't boot

#1 Post by Reznik » Sat Jul 14, 2018 3:05 pm

Hi all,

Does the T61 have a jumper to reset the BIOS password? I've not only locked myself out but now it won't boot whatsoever due to RAM being swapped out. I've removed the CMOS battery for a couple of hours and even booted it without the battery and still prompts for password. Full story below.

I made a bit of a error today. The good news is I bought four T61's, $50CDN. I couldn't test on site (dead batteries, no access to power). I was at a car show today with a auction going on next door and someone had won a few storage lockers, won more than he could load into his trailers and was selling items in the parking lot. 3 out of 4 boot. 1 has a fan error. Installed Ubuntu MATE on first one and happy with that, have a lot of old spare DDR2 RAM so started to upgrade from 2GB (1x1) to 4GB (2X2). First one fine... second one without realizing has BIOS password and now won't boot as it's noticed the change in RAM.

Have I essentially bricked this machine? The next one also has a locked BIOS but boots because I haven't touched the RAM. Issue with that is everything except the hard drive is in the exlude list for booting. So I can't boot from USB/optical drive to re-image this machine either. Third one is likely to have this issue as well if I replace the fan.

https://i.imgur.com/Ie3eGRi.jpg

RealBlackStuff
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Re: T61 BIOS and won't boot

#2 Post by RealBlackStuff » Sat Jul 14, 2018 3:16 pm

T61 does not have a BIOS reset button/jumper/whatever.
The password is also not stored in the BIOS.
Read the very last Section 5 at the end of this page: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=14339
See if that helps.
Lovely day for a Guinness! (The Real Black Stuff)
Lenovo: X240, X250, T440p, T480, M900 Tiny.

PS: the old Boardroom website is still available on the Wayback Machine
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Reznik
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Jul 05, 2018 5:06 am
Location: Canada

Re: T61 BIOS and won't boot

#3 Post by Reznik » Sat Jul 14, 2018 3:32 pm

RealBlackStuff wrote:
Sat Jul 14, 2018 3:16 pm
T61 does not have a BIOS reset button/jumper/whatever.
The password is also not stored in the BIOS.
Read the very last Section 5 at the end of this page: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=14339
See if that helps.
Thanks. My understanding is that the only option is board replacement. That's too bad because they aren't worth putting money into.

Trzyzet
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Re: T61 BIOS and won't boot

#4 Post by Trzyzet » Sun Jul 15, 2018 8:09 am

They are some magicians which can reprogram chip with password and remove them. :wink:

This is a lot of work so it won't be cheap ofc.
T400 With 8GB RAM, undervolted T9600 and Radeon 3470 on Linux Mint and Win10Pro
X41Tablet with 2GB RAM, Pentium M 1.5GHz, mSATA mod with 64GB SSD, Bsel_0 mod

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