Help: being asked for Power-On password after BIOS update

[wusuli]

I updated the BIOS of my T61 last night. Everything seemed being on the right side: Rebooted (requested by the BIOS updating process) , logged in, did some programming work, put into stand by, then waked it up in this morning and checked my emails.

However, after I shutdown the notebook and tried to power it on later, I was prompted with "Swipe your finger to authorize access or press Esc to enter the Power-on password". I have neither setup any passwords for Access-Authorization or Power-On, nor have been asked for any passwords before other than the Vista-login one. Anyway, I swiped my finger, and was notified my fingerprint was found and matched. I was then asked for the power-on password (a big lock icon right beside of a small console icon). Of course, I do not know the password. I tried the NULL password (i.e. directly press the "Enter" key), although no magic happened.

I do not know how to handle this problem. I will truly appreciate your any helps and advices.

Thanks


mod edit: title edited for better clarification.

[erik]

update:

it appears as if this issue was indeed caused by the most recent BIOS update.   mark @ lenovo posted the following over at forums.lenovo:

All,

Thanks for alerting us to this issue. These BIOS updates apparently produced a very rare and unique side effect in which a random character power on password was set during the BIOS update. This occurred in less that 1% of systems, and as such was not found during pre-release testing.

Lenovo has temporarily removed these files from the web to update the code to address this issue and the files will be re-posted once the update is confirmed and re-tested to ensure no re-occurrence of this symptom.

For the majority of the population, the BIOS update proceeded smoothly without the noted issue with a Power on password being set. No further action is required for these customers as their systems should function normally.

For those who were affected, the Power on Password can be removed by removing the CMOS battery (the one that looks like a watch battery) from the system temporarily, and allowing the memory to drain. Reference the Hardware Maintenance Manual on the e-support site for your particular system if you feel comfortable performing this activity yourself.

At a high level, these are the steps to follow:

  1. Turn off the computer.
  2. Remove the battery pack.
  3. Remove the backup battery
  4. Turn on the computer and wait until the POST ends. After the POST ends, the password prompt does not appear. The POP has been removed.
  5. Reinstall the backup battery and the battery pack.
      Note: Some ThinkPad systems have the ability to reset the Power-on passwords in the ThinkPad BIOS setup utility if a Supervisor password has been set.


If you do not feel comfortable performing this activity, or if you are not able to successfully remove the power on password following those steps in the HMM, please contact service for assistance.

i apologize for locking your thread.   we don't allow discussion of password removal and i didn't believe that a simple BIOS update would cause an issue such as this.   hopefully the above information will be of help.