Thinkpads Forum

Help me please , ia have Think Pad 770E , as i can unlock my HDD , i have fogotten my password
best regards

Check out http://www.nortek.on.ca/hdd_pw.html and/or http://www.ja.axxs.net/unlock/password_recovery.htm

N.B. I have no personal experience with either vendor.

Roirom...where do you live? Cheaper solution is hypnosis...if you were close, I could do that for you....better than 90% chance you'll remember your password. This is no joke....I'm serious.

Thought a while back to sell hypnosis for recovering forgotten passwords, on eBay, but since I'm not a licensed hypnotist, I could get in deep doodie for selling this service.

Replacing the small 8-pin surface mount eeprom (Atmel 24c01a) on the system board is not too difficult for someone with a little soldering experience. They only cost about $1 at DigiKey. I'm not sure if you can just install a blank eeprom, though. I pulled one from a working unit, read it, then programmed two new chips, one to replace the pulled chip as a leg broke off while pulling and the other for a system board with a power-on-password. I found programming software on the web and making a programming cable was very easy; it only took a serial connector, a few resistors, short piece of cable (4-wires), and a 10-pin sodip test clip (I couldn't find an 8-pin clip). I used to see folks selling preprogrammed chips on eBay for $10. I saw some rip-off selling them for $100 recently. (Maybe I should offer them a 50% discount. LOL)

Replacing the EEPROM on the motherboard will have [b]no[/b] effect on the HD password!

Nor is it necessary to remove the EEPROM to clear a Power On Password.

Regards,

James

JHEM wrote:Replacing the EEPROM on the motherboard will have [b]no[/b] effect on the HD password!

Nor is it necessary to remove the EEPROM to clear a Power On Password.

Regards,

James

Sorry, I meant Supervisor Password, which requires replacing the mainboard as per IBM; however, replacing to eeprom will do the trick. I've done this a number of times with 100% success, although I did have to repair one circuit trace with a small jumper wire when I overheated the board while removing the locked chip.

You are correct about the HDD password. This can be cured by unlocking the drive using a program called MHD3.EXE available on UltimateTV forums. All data will be lost however. I use an inexpensive adapter to connect the 2.5" drives to a standard IDE cable on a desktop.

Hope this helps.