Thinkpads Forum

Hello,

I am trying to enable virtualization on a Lenovo Thinkpad T410 laptop at my workplace. I have read elsewhere that I need to initialize Virtualization in my laptop's BIOS (in VirtualBox, I am told I need to "enable Virtualization Technology intel VT-X"). It has the i5 520M CPU and BIOS is at v. 1.28 (likely never updated in its 5 year life span).

In the BIOS, under Config -> CPU (I have looked in other parts of the BIOS already, but there are no other Virtualization options except in this directory), I see the following options

Core Multiprocessing........................Enabled

Intel(R) Hyper-Threading..................Enabled

Intel(R) Virtualization Technology.....Disabled

Intel(R) VT-d Feature........................Disabled

Now, you would think I should simply be able to scroll down to the last two to enable ... that's not the case. I can scroll up and down (with up and down arrows) between Multiprocessing and Hyper-Threading, but not the last two.

I have read this thread:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 47#p731447

The solution described does not help me as I can't even scroll down to Virtualization to attempt to enable it.

Does anyone know of a solution?

Do you have a supervisor password set?

AIX wrote:Do you have a supervisor password set?

When I go to BIOS --> Security, it shows that a supervisor password is enabled, but I never set anything and I doubt that the person who had it before me did either. I just updated to the newest BIOS so I believe it is just the default setup, I've been reading that some manufacturers block you from supervisor in BIOS by default... To get into the BIOS setup I am just using a blank password which puts me in usermode. Any thoughts of how to get into supervisor mode?

If it says the supervisor password is enabled, then it has been set. Lenovo's official position is that if you've lost the supervisor password, you need to replace the motherboard.

However... (this is my knowledge of previous ThinkPad models from the early 2000s - I'm not sure that it will apply to the T410) there is a way to hack the security chip on the motherboard to recover the password. I've done it once to an A22m - it's not a difficult process but requires some skill with a soldering iron and a very steady hand along with a donor computer with a serial port. There's a couple how-to articles around somewhere...

theterminator93 wrote:If it says the supervisor password is enabled, then it has been set. Lenovo's official position is that if you've lost the supervisor password, you need to replace the motherboard.

However... (this is my knowledge of previous ThinkPad models from the early 2000s - I'm not sure that it will apply to the T410) there is a way to hack the security chip on the motherboard to recover the password. I've done it once to an A22m - it's not a difficult process but requires some skill with a soldering iron and a very steady hand along with a donor computer with a serial port. There's a couple how-to articles around somewhere...

Dang, I bought it used and I can't even return the thing. There's no password set by default? Because I've seen this same question asked here and on lenovo forums in the past, so it's a common issue, but I have yet to see a real solution... And I doubt that the person before me did anything with the BIOS, not many people play around with this stuff. I'm too scared of opening its guts and risking bricking it tbh.

Do you have any knowledge about installing an open source BIOS like coreboot without taking the computer apart?

With a supervisor password set, now you know why you can't change the BIOS settings as long as you don't use that password. Anyway, discussions about hacking the supervisor password aren't allowed on this forum.