Thinkpads Forum

I have a ibm x60 tablet which was working all well and dandy, till yesterday morning when i tried to boot it up. When it boots up it beeps twice and shows Error 0167 the system has been tampered with and Bios check date and settings. Then it asks for a password which i wasn't aware was present on the laptop.

What do i have to do to solve this problem? 

I bought this laptop second hand and I did not tamper with the laptop, whatsoever.

Welcome to Thinkpads.com
It looks like your CMOS battery is (near-)dead. On average these last ~5 years.
The previous owner may have put a password on it, which now rears up its nasty head, because the CMOS-batt. is a goner.
Contact him/her if, after replacing that battery, it still asks for a password.
If that's not possible, contact Nick at www.reflowrepairs.co.uk in Newcastle, who may be able to help you further.

RealBlackStuff wrote:Welcome to Thinkpads.com
It looks like your CMOS battery is (near-)dead. On average these last ~5 years.
The previous owner may have put a password on it, which now rears up its nasty head, because the CMOS-batt. is a goner.
Contact him/her if, after replacing that battery, it still asks for a password.
If that's not possible, contact Nick at http://www.reflowrepairs.co.uk in Newcastle, who may be able to help you further.

Thanks for the quick reply. I have another x60 tablet which has a broken screen and used the battery from that, still no luck. I'll contact Nick and see what he says.

If not i'll try to replace the broken screen of my old x60 and replace it with the screen from this one.

Final question,

Is it possible to hack the bios to get the password before i try anything to drastic?

Please note that public discussions on methods to circumvent Thinkpad BIOS (aka, supervisor) or hard drive password systems is not allowed on this forum. About the only thing we can post is the factory's usual response to this type of problem: replace the motherboard. As RBS suggested earlier, contact Nick for more information / assistance.

This is a fairly typical situation. User buys a used Thinkpad without ever trying to access the BIOS system. The seller either did not know there was a BIOS password (never checking him/herself), personally set the password but neglected to mention it when selling the system or knew the system had an unknown password and was simply trying to push the problem to somebody else. Once the CMOS battery dies, the laptop will automatically request the BIOS password each time the system is started, until the date and time is corrected. You have to access the BIOS to set that information so, no password = no booting system.

Also, please confirm the numeric error code. I can't find 0167 in the X60 Hardware Maintenance Manual.

rkawakami wrote:Please note that public discussions on methods to circumvent Thinkpad BIOS (aka, supervisor) or hard drive password systems is not allowed on this forum. About the only thing we can post is the factory's usual response to this type of problem: replace the motherboard. As RBS suggested earlier, contact Nick for more information / assistance.

This is a fairly typical situation. User buys a used Thinkpad without ever trying to access the BIOS system. The seller either did not know there was a BIOS password (never checking him/herself), personally set the password but neglected to mention it when selling the system or knew the system had an unknown password and was simply trying to push the problem to somebody else. Once the CMOS battery dies, the laptop will automatically request the BIOS password each time the system is started, until the date and time is corrected. You have to access the BIOS to set that information so, no password = no booting system.

Also, please confirm the numeric error code. I can't find 0167 in the X60 Hardware Maintenance Manual.

Sorry about asking that question.

The error is actually Error 0176