R50: supervisor password reset?

[photonguy]

Hi all. I'm brand new here. A true noob. I've spent the past 3 days Google'ing a solution to my problem to no avail. And I see no mention of my specific problems here. So here goes...

I have a Thinkpad R50. It was running Windows XP for a long time. I decided I'd try Ubuntu. I started by booting 10.04 from a CD-ROM (which I made, by the way). It booted fine, and ran fine. Once into 10.04, I upgraded to 12.04. And then my system was SLOOOOOW. No great surprise there I guess. This is a laptop that's nearing 10 years old after all. So I attempted to re-load 10.04 via the CD. But, now the R50 is requiring a Supervisor Password in order to get into the BIOS in order to change boot sequence from the HD to the CD (or USB). I have no idea how or why a BIOS password is all of a sudden required.

So, after some Google searches...I opened up the guts of the R50 and disconnected the CMOS battery hoping that 12 hours without this battery, or the main battery, or being plugged in would reset things. Nope. Now, upon start-up it goes to a "System has been tampered with" message, and requires the supervisor password (which I have no idea what it is).

So, I'm officially in a pickle. I really don't wanna toss my R50 into the trash heap. But I cannot figure out a way around the "system has been tampered with" message.

I've read some results from Google'ing that reference shorting some jumpers together to reset the password?? Is there any other info available on this?

Any other suggestions?

Thanks all in advance.

[rkawakami]

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

There is no "jumper" to remove a supervisor (aka, BIOS) password. There was a jumper on much older Thinkpad systems to remove a power-on password. Here's what appears to have happened:

- Somebody had set the supervisor password. Given that you don't know it, it was probably a previous owner.
- If you had never attempted to access the BIOS until now, you would have no way of knowing it was set.
- Removing the CMOS (backup) battery causes the system date and time to be lost. Upon the next boot, the system will detect the loss of this information and force you to access the BIOS to reset it. If you don't provide the correct password, the system will not proceed any further.
- This is what is commonly known as "bricking" your system.

The forum has a rule against discussion of any techniques to bypass security systems (i.e., passwords). The only recommendation that we can give is the same as what the factory says: replacement of the motherboard.

[RealBlackStuff]

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