Need help - how to remove a supervisor password

[beeblebrox]

A colleague of mine left me with his Thinkpad T23 and asked me help him remove the password, which I am not able to do.

He left me a list with passwords which I tried and can get access to the machine.
Now, supervisor passwort, boot, hdd and Bios passwords are all totally different and it is a pain to memorize them (they are on a Post-it note attached to the screen... better don't ask).

I have tried several times to remove them in the BIOS.
Push F10 to save changes.
Boot the notebook... and it again asks for all the password. I am frustrated.

Anyone knows how to get rid of them? or maybe override the setup so that at least all passwords are the same?

[syhead]

for the T42 you have to put on the present passwords a put as new passaowrd **nothing** (leave it blank). then make sure you save changes and exit... si it that same with the T23?

now, if you lose the password, you'll need a new mainboard... but that's not the case, right?

[Leon]

To be clear, you are saying that you know the correct supervisor, boot, and hdd passwords (all three) and that (all three) work?

[beeblebrox]

To be clear, you are saying that you know the correct supervisor, boot, and hdd passwords (all three) and that (all three) work?

Yes, I have them here on the post-it. The problem is how to get rid of them. I tried to delete them, but whenever I reboot the notebook it asks me for the very same passwords again.
So I type them in again, go to BIOS, and delete them. Save, reboot and ... it asks for the passwords again.

It is like on a day in Punxsawtauwny.

[egibbs]

And you are following the correct procedure to remove a password (i.e. enter the current password and leave the new password blank)? Very strange.

One thought - some machines will let you into BIOS in read-only mode with an incorrect BIOS password. I've been fooled by that before - why aren't my changes taking? Oh - because I used the wrong BIOS password. Maybe try changing something else - boot order or something innocuous and seeing if you can save that change.

If you are in the BIOS in read-only mode you can clear the BIOS password by following the procedure in the Hardware Maintanenace Manual. I hesitate to suggest that though as I have a feeling the next post will be that it is no longer recognizing the Supervisor and HDD passwords after clearing the BIOS password, and that would be a *BAD* thing.

Rather than clearing them, what happens if you try to set them all to the same value?

Ed Gibbs

[edelrc]

I had the very same issue once with an Acer laptop...

At then end, I´d got to remove the passwords by just simply reversing the order that I was trying to remove the three passwords. .. I it took me 40min just to realize such a stupid thing

[beeblebrox]

I had the very same issue once with an Acer laptop...

At then end, I´d got to remove the passwords by just simply reversing the order that I was trying to remove the three passwords. .. I it took me 40min just to realize such a stupid thing

Thank you !

I did exactly the same. And it worked!
(Still don't know why...)