About a year ago I bought this laptop off eBay. It was a refurbished corporate lease return.
Now I’ve decided to upgrade it a little. I plan to add more ram, new battery, and install an internal wireless card.
Here is my problem. I need to change BIOS settings to use the internal wireless card, but it’s password protected. I have no clue what the password is.
Is there a way to bypass or eliminate the password? All I have found out so far is that pulling the system battery won’t do the trick.
I’ve also pulled off the bottom covers looking for a reset switch or connectors to short across to reset the BIOS. No luck. I didn’t want to go any further without asking for advice from someone who knows more about the topic.
Is there a default password I can try? Perhaps everything was reset before I bought the thing.
The question intrigued me so I did a quick Web search on that particular model. Normally, what Ken_Yap suggested would be the way (I’ve done it myself), but apparently, IBM has made it extremely difficult to reset the password. In fact, some of the posts I saw online were immediately closed (or the answers were actually deleted) because of concerns about DRM. :\
(I hate to say it, but the mods here might need to be aware of this. I did see a couple of suggestions online that I will NOT post here for that reason.)
I can say this much: IF you’ve stated the model number correctly, the password probably isn’t written into battery-backed-up memory. It’s written into EEPROM, which retains its contents even if you were to pull the chip and let it sit on a table for a week or two. (Or theoretically, forever, but you get the point.)
Hopefully, I’m wrong. You can do your own Google search, or contact IBM, and take your chances. IBM put that protection in there on purpose, for their own reasons.
I don’t have a TP so I can’t advise you on that. Even if I did, I would disclaim any responsibility for any consequences.
Maybe you can find a website that has a video or pictures about how to reach the button cell. Surely it has to be replaceable, because they run down in time?
You are correct, I found an article on ThinkWikki that says in fact the password is stored in EEPROM. I read the article but it could have just as well been written in Chinese. Didn’t understand much of what it said.
There is a way to do it. It involves soldering wires and connecting a second computer, etc.
It’s well beyond my abilities. I was hoping someone here knew of a simpler way. (grasping at straws I suppose)
You might not want to mess up with the BIOS for several reasons… being the most important of all, you can rend your equipment un-usable.
I did messed with one of my laptops BIOS, to enable some functions as they were disabled by the manufacturer, and dumping/flashing BIOS is easy, editing is easy aswell, but one wrong move and u got your equipment dead.
Keep in mind that most laptops (which wasnt my case) do not have video card BIOS, and those routines are usually shared with your BIOS, so if run across something weird while editing the BIOS image, thats most likely the cause.
Yes, I agree. I’ve decided to leave well enough alone. It isn’t broke so I’m not going to try to fix it. I’ll just have to use the PCMCIA card for wireless. I know it works.
I’m not saying it will work or it is the answer to people’s pleas, but it is an interesting concept. Myself, I would just love to see EFI coming forth with full strength, it’s about time people drop the Legacy BIOS, and so far as I know it, only Microsoft is still using it.
