Thinkpads Forum

Greetings,

First of all I want to say that I'm aware of the forum's policy - that you cannot talk about how to "crack" passwords. That's fine -because that is not what I'm asking for in the question(s) below.

I need to disable the BIOS password for my secondary hard drive that resides in the Ultrabay. Any kind of guidance on how to solve my dilemma would be greatly appreciated. I have been in contact with Lenovo support (IBM) but they couldn't help me either. The secondary hard drive functions/runs OK - its just that I would like to remove the password for convenience reasons and actually to gain even more security (read below under background).

When booting the computer and pressing F1 to get into BIOS I enter the supervisor machine password - no problem. I'm then asked to enter the password for the secondary hard drive (the primary hard drive password has been disabled by me). I enter a password for the secondary hard drive and have now access to BIOS and I'm able to change all passwords except for the secondary hard drive! That option is grayed out (unavailable). So that is the problem. How can I disable the password for the secondary hard drive?

I guess it won't even help if a replace the hard drive in the Ultrabay with a new one - because the password is stored in BIOS no matter what hard disk is put in the Ultrabay?

Background
I want to remove the secondary HD password to be able to make "hot-swaps" with the DVD-burner.
Also, Computrace LoJack was recently installed on the computer - so in case of a theft - it can be auto-traced via Internet. So I have disabled the normal Windows password login because I think it's better if a thief actually uses the computer (aka easy to start up the computer) - because it means that it will be easier to track him down.

Description of my boot startup procedure:
a) Pressing F1
b) Enter BIOS supervisor pw - OK
c) Enter pw for secondary hard disk - OK

In BIOS I can then select (and how it looks like);
- Security
- Password
Using Passphrase
- Current Setting Enabled

Supervisor password Enabled
Lock BIOS Settings
- Current Setting Enabled
Set Minimum Length ...
BIOS password at unattended boot Disabled

Power-On password Disabled
Hard Disk1 password Disabled
Hard Disk2 password [User+Master] <---- NOT ACCESSIBLE (Grayed out)

It was me that created all the passwords some time ago - but I must have screwed up when entering the User&Master passwords for the secondary hard drive - and just can't understand how to undo it. As described I can enter a password for the secondary hard drive - and this is the same master pw that was used for the primary hard drive (which pw has recently been removed by me). It might be that somehow when creating the User+Master pw for the secondary HD I screwed up and entered the Master pw (used for primary HD) as the User pw - I really can't recall.

The bottom line is that I want it removed but don't know now - and Lenovo support in Sweden can't help me either

TIA.

Hmm.... I might be missing the point entirely, but give this a shot:

Remove your primary HDD and put your secondary HDD in its place. You might be able to access the passsword options by going to the 'primary' HDD password section and deleting it from there. That's how I would do it first. There's no need to have an OS on the drive either, as all you're doing is messing around in the BIOS.

Are you entering the user password? Normally, the master password will allow you to do a security erase, not access the data.

Hi,

Thank you LegendaryKAB and richk for your replies - they led me to think in a new bright light

It turned out to be a bug in the BIOS code for version 2.26 - that made it impossible to change the BIOS password for the secondary hard drive (Ultrabay).

I first tried to reset all Client Security Solution settings, disabling as much as possible - but to no avail.

After downgrading the BIOS to version 2.25 I was able to disable the Ultrabay password - and I'm one happy puppy

It could have been a combination of the two above actions - I don't know.

The passwords had been entered in a BIOS version prior to 2.26 - cannot recall which version though - and somehow the newer 2.26 version can't correctly handle a password for the Ultrabay entered with an earlier BIOS verson. Go figure...

Anyway, all is now rosy - problem solved!