Computrace Problems?

[nightninja96]

Hello, I just bought a ThinkPad R500 with computrace enabled, but not activated. What is computrace able to do or see?
Thanks

[TPFanatic]

Enabled
Not Activated

is the default setting.

Computrace is a service that some businesses pay for that allows to remotely disable stolen laptops. If you buy a used laptop with Computrace ACTIVATED you can call Absolute software to work out getting it disabled.

Generally you do not want to buy a machine with Computrace ACTIVATED.

If you will never want to get Computrace for this machine it is recommended to set it to PERMANENTLY DISABLED because it can cause trouble if it somehow gets activated. It is a rootkit that can install itself on your OS if it thinks it is activated. This can occur however if you boot an environment from a machine with Activated Computrace, then your machine will catch it like a virus.

personally I don't worry about it and just leave it Enabled or Disabled whatever.

[nightninja96]

I can't permanently disable it, and most of my bios settings are grayed out.

[RealBlackStuff]

In that case your BIOS is most likely locked with an SVP (SuperVisorPassword).

[nightninja96]

Hmm... It didn't show a password at start, but after removing the bios battery it does... I did the pin 4 and 5 bipass and I can't seem to remove the password, so I'm kinda at a loss...