Thinkpads Forum

I have a Thinkpad W530 with a fingerprint reader. In the past everything worked fine with the fingerprint reader, up to and including Windows 10.

Then I made the mistake of cleaning out the machine, and installing everything from scratch. Even in the BIOS I cleaned everything (reset the passwords, deleted the fingerprint data).

After installing Windows 10, I can easily enable the Windows login via fingerprint. I can add multiple fingers, and they all work. It appears though as if the fingerprints are not stored to BIOS. They remain in Windows only. Symptoms of this are:

1. I can not use a fingerprint to unlock the boot password. The familiar BIOS screen asking me to swipe the finger does not show, I only see the password prompt.
2. I can clear all fingerprints in the BIOS, and still log in to Windows with all of my registered fingers successfully.

Apparently with Windows 8 the Lenovo fingerprint software took care to transfer the fingerprints to BIOS. After upgrading to Windows 10 the fingerprints remained there, and were used to unlock the BIOS password. I had to re-swipe to login to Windows 10, probably because Windows 10 no longer shares the passwords with the BIOS. After having cleared the fingerprint data from the BIOS there seems to be no option to add them back.

Or is there? Is there something that I need to do? I also claimed the TPM chip with the new Windows installation, but this didn't change anything. TPM only seems to be used for Bitlocker, and not (or no longer) for fingerprint data.

If you had a BIOS password before, which you then reset, you must have entered the correct old password and entered either nothing, or a space, or a new password for that reset.
So to get into BIOS, you must either enter nothing, or a space, or that new password.
Once in BIOS there are several places to (de)activate the FPR.
Try setting the security chip to disabled.

Thanks!

I cleared all of the passwords (power on, hard disk etc.) by doing what you described. For the fingerprint data there is a specific menu point in the BIOS (Reset Fingerprint Data) to clear it. Of course I have "Predesktop Authentication" in the BIOS enabled.
After installing Windows 10 I re-added just a power on password. This new one is the one that I can't clear using a fingerprint.

Disabling the security chip didn't change anything, unfortunately.

A fingerprint does not CLEAR a password, it's just an alternative to bypass a password.
To clear the password, you must reset it as described before.
AFAIK you can still force the use of an FPR, even if your passwords are not set.
I never ever use FPR, because they are unreliable.

Sorry, my writing is not quite understandable enough...

What I want is to use the fingerprint instead of entering the power on password in order to boot the PC.
So when I say "This new one is the one that I can't clear using a fingerprint." I mean that I have to enter the password at boot. I am not asked to provide the fingerprint as I was before.

If I want to "clear" the password as in "remove", then I have to type it, as you say. One never could remove a password via fingerprint.

Have you got access to another palmrest with FPR from T420/T520/W520/T430/T530/W530?
Swap them out temporarily (even if the palmrest is the wrong size), you may have a bad FPR.

Unfortunately I don't have access. The reader works fine within Windows 10, just not for BIOS authentication. Also it worked before I did "Reset Fingerprint Data" in the BIOS. This makes me believe that Windows 10 no longer syncs the fingerprint data with the BIOS settings. The reader itself seems ok.

In case anyone else stumbles over this problem: The vendor of the fingerprint reader was bought by Apple. Therefore the latest driver available is from 2012. This driver does not sync the fingerprints to BIOS.
Luckily, the "ThinkVantage Fingerprint Software für Windows 8.1" still works with Windows 10.

What worked for me is to delete the Windows 10 fingerprints, and then install this software. After registering the fingerprints, everything worked as it did before when I used Windows 7 or 8.