ibm thinkpad t22 help please :(

[sarah55]

hiya
ive bought an ibm thinkpad t22 second hand from ebay
its got windows 2000 on it
and what happened is when i turned it on i tried to connect it to the internet but somehow
have put a password on the administrator account:(

ive been trying to sort it out all night and today/ been on various forums and asking for help etc
tried all sorts...safe mode ...etc/taken battery out and bios battery thing turned it on off etc
nothing seems to be working

Can anyone help me please. i need to go in the laptop and on internet but when i turn it on it asks for administrator password?

what do i do?

[RealBlackStuff]

Welcome to the forum.
Have a look at this article: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-59377
Do you get any of those locked icons?

Or is it Windows itself that wants a password?
Can you boot in Safe Mode? Press F8 repeatedly at startup, until you see the boot menu.

[Neil]

what do i do?

Contact the seller and get the password. Once you have the password you can change it to suit your preferences, or not use a password at all. If seller cannot or will not provide the password you should demand a full refund (unless it was advertised as having an unknown password and you bought it anyway).

[Robbyrobot]

tried all sorts...safe mode ...etc

Which means that you have no power-on, supervisor or HDD passwords, since otherwise you'd never get past the IBM splash screen. This is obviously a software problem.

Or is it Windows itself that wants a password?

That's the impression I have, and if that's the case the best thing would be to re-install the operating system.

[rkawakami]

Which means that you have no power-on, supervisor or HDD passwords, since otherwise you'd never get past the IBM splash screen.

Ah, actually, the system could have a supervisor (aka BIOS) password and it will get past the splash screen and start booting the OS as long as you don't actively attempt to access the BIOS (or remove the CMOS battery). I think we are going to need some clarification from sarah55 as to exactly what type of "password" is being encountered.

[Robbyrobot]

Ah, actually, the system could have a supervisor (aka BIOS) password and it will get past the splash screen and start booting the OS as long as you don't actively attempt to access the BIOS (or remove the CMOS battery).

True, but the OP also remarked:

tried all sorts...safe mode ...etc/taken battery out and bios battery thing...

To me, that means she took out the CMOS battery at some point.

However, I agree that calrification is required.

[sarah55]

hiya
thankyou guys for all your replys
its asking for an Administrators password. :S
i turn it on and it loads windows 2000 professional and then a small screen appears asking for administrators password.

ive tried safe mode but it still asks for admin password

tried all sorts , ive inserted a drivers manual cd(had one from a previous pc)
and it wont turn the cd on ?

just asks for administrators password.

[Neil]

Have you tried just leaving the password field blank and pressing "enter"?

[sarah55]

Have you tried just leaving the password field blank and pressing "enter"?

hiya
yes i have . but not working.

[Neil]

Did you contact the seller about the password?

[sarah55]

Did you contact the seller about the password?

he said he dissabled it before he sent it but gave it to me which isnt working.

[Neil]

Are there other user accounts without a password you can use? You don't have to be logged in as administrator to use Windows. In fact it's better if you are not administrator for most tasks. Although you need to be administrator for some types of maintenance.

Anyway, there are tools for changing forgotten passwords. Microsoft has one called ERD Commander. For Windows 2000 you will probably need an older version (2005 maybe).

Or, if the seller provided recovery disks, or the T21 has the recovery partition intact, you can reinstall Windows and set it up this time with your own password.

[sarah55]

Are there other user accounts without a password you can use? You don't have to be logged in as administrator to use Windows. In fact it's better if you are not administrator for most tasks. Although you need to be administrator for some types of maintenance.

Anyway, there are tools for changing forgotten passwords. Microsoft has one called ERD Commander. For Windows 2000 you will probably need an older version (2005 maybe).

Or, if the seller provided recovery disks, or the T21 has the recovery partition intact, you can reinstall Windows and set it up this time with your own password.

How do i do that please? i dont have any cds with it (got mu own manual driver and windows 2000? i think) ..which i cant get to use.i press f12 and clik on cd load but all i get is windows 2000 loading and enter administrators password,

how can i use it with another account?

[Neil]

...the best thing would be to re-install the operating system.

This is probably the best advice you have received so far. If you don't have Windows2000 installation CDs, you could place an ad in the Market Place forum here asking for T22 Recovery CDs and someone will likely be willing to sell you a set. Or, if you don't want to spend any more money, now might be a good time to learn Linux. Download and burn Xubuntu on a CD (or have a friend do it for you), then install that yourself, setting up passwords as you like.

[sarah55]

but i cant get the cds to load..ive inserted a "users manual and driver" cd but nithings coming up :S?>:(:(

[Neil]

You need a bootable CD not just a data CD.

[doctor bloomquist]

i've had similar problems when friends give me their laptops to fix, but don't bother to tell me the administrator password beforehand. I'm very suprised to read some of these replies - reinstall windows, or learn linux! I can't remember what software I last used to clear the admin password on windows 2000, I will look through my disks. In the meantime, have a look at this http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

There are a fair few of these password removers, as someone already mentioned. Most have in common downloading a CD image, burning it to CD, and booting the laptop from that CD instead of windows. If you're not comfortable doing that yourself, bend a chum's ear and have them do it.

[Robbyrobot]

I'm very suprised to read some of these replies - reinstall windows, or learn linux!

You shouldn't be. There's a great difference between a Windows password and a Thinkpad supervisor password - the one is a hardware problem, the other strictly software (Windows). And in this case, the software is obviously the problem.

[doctor bloomquist]

?!

If the BIOS password is set, how is reinstalling windows going to help?

[Neil]

If the BIOS password is set, how is reinstalling windows going to help?

Of course, it wouldn't. But BIOS password is not the case here. It appears that sarah55 doesn't know the Windows Administrator password. And since it's a new (to her) computer, with no software to loose, re-installing just might be easier and less time consuming than trying to learn how to use the tools needed to change the password. Or not.

[doctor bloomquist]

Fair point Neil - both methods will sort this problem - my view is that while both will certainly involve some fiddling around, whatever the software used, resetting the password is less draining than reinstalling windows, downloading the thinkpad specific drivers and unzipping them, installing etc.

Especially if the OS reinstallation route is already giving the poster problems...

Over to you, sarah55.

[Robbyrobot]

Having installed Win2k and WinXP many times on various Thinkpad T2x Models, I honestly don't understand what is supposed to be so hard to do. I never had to download any special drivers from the Internet for this, nor were there any particular problems during installation. If you want anything special such as the Battery Maximizer. you can download it from the Lenovo site and install it like you would any other progrem. But it is not absolutely necessary for operation.

And when a previous owner has been playing around with passwords, heaven only knows what else is knotted up in the system. A clean install is by far the best option, and is - my own experience - very easy to do.

[doctor bloomquist]

Robbyrobot, you have lots of experience reinstalling different versions of windows on many different thinkpads. Sarah55 is having problems just booting from the CD drive!

It's been a while since I last did an os install on a t22; the list of additional drivers on the lenovo site, for windows 2000, includes audio, modem, mouse/trackpoint, ACPI, Speedstep applet, video driver. You can get away without some but then what is the point of going to the trouble of a 'clean install' then cutting corners?

I should probably have mentioned earlier that reinstalling takes more time too; blanking a password, from burning the cd to clearing the admin pass, takes upwards of 5-10 minutes.

[Robbyrobot]

I should probably have mentioned earlier that reinstalling takes more time too

Assuming you know the password, which is apparently not the case here.

Anyway, my "experience" in installing operating systems shouldn't be exaggerated, since all I do is use a normal bootable install CD/DVD, same as everybody else. No magic there, and if anyone has problems even doing that, the problems will be insurmountable when they try to remove a Windows password without knowing it. If worst comes to worst, I'd advise looking up someone local who can help. Otherwise the OP is going to be running around in circles without knowing how to proceed.

As for the "special drivers" - that may have been important with earlier operating systems, but the current ones have them incorporated. I've never needed anything external for a T2x (except things like Batterymon).

[RealBlackStuff]

Have you tried a few random passwords?
Many laptops I know all use the same password: admin or Admin or ADMIN.

http://www.pchell.com/support/forgotadm ... word.shtml
http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administr ... _trick.htm