Power-On Password on A21m

[luke4010]

I have a couple screens for an A20/A21 that had bad boards. There is an eBay listing for an A21 with no screen, but it appears to have a power-on password. Is there a way to remove this without it turning into a supervisor password, or locking the laptop completely? I have also seen a new password chip on eBay you can buy to solder on the motherboard. Has anybody ever had luck replacing the password chip on this model? Or is there also a backdoor password I can use?

[RealBlackStuff]

Check this: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail. ... MIGR-59377
Any further discussion is not allowed on the forum.

[luke4010]

I ended up purchasing the A21 and it does have a power on password. I followed the instructions on the link you posted but to no avail. I can't even get into the bios. Is there something I'm doing wrong or is the motherboard locked?

[rkawakami]

Could be, for both questions.

Here's the situation... a power on password can be removed by disconnecting the AC adapter, pulling out the main battery and then taking out the CMOS (aka, backup) battery from the system for several seconds. This procedure is common knowledge and does not violate any of the forum rules; after all, it's published in the link provided by RBS. However... if there also happened to be a supervisor (aka, BIOS) password set, removing the CMOS battery will essentially "brick" the system. You will continue to get the password prompt. The reason why is that when the CMOS battery is removed, the BIOS will lose the date/time information. The system will then automatically force you into the BIOS so you can reset the date and time. If a supervisor password is set, you will see the password prompt. If there was only a power-on password, then you'll see some error codes and you'll be presented with the BIOS menu. This is the kicker... the power on password prompt is the same as the supervisor prompt, despite what the Lenovo Support page shows. Both are the "monitor lock" icon. If you have successfully removed the power on password by pulling the CMOS battery and you still see this lock icon, then you're dealing with a supervisor password.

[Saucey]

The worst power on password is that it states the password has been tampered with...
It wouldn't let you got to bios by pressing enter either, and time needed to be set, but with the password needed to be present.
Toss in a harddrive that has an OS, Linux seems to work more often then Windows.
But if not, its probably best to walk away from it, stripping it from all the components other than the motherboard.

I don't bother with those eBay buys, not worth it nor the perhaps criminal background it may posses.
Dispute the case with the seller?