How to bypass Lenovo Thinkpad power-on password?
My brother has a Lenovo Thinkpad laptop.
He decided to format his laptop, but after the format he couldn't power on his laptop because of the power-on password. The password is required at start-up.
My question is: what is power-on password and how do we bypass it? We tried to remove batteries but it did not work.
On any relatively new ThinkPad, there is no way around the supervisor password, short of attemping to short the power to some chips, which in untrained hands is a good way to fry the motherboard entirely. Unlike a lot of BIOS level settings, including passwords on some other machines, removing the CMOS battery will NOT reset a supervisor password on a ThinkPad.
Lenovo's remedy for this is a motherboard replacement.
The power on password can be reset by removing the CMOS battery for ten minutes. Manual for thinkpad Edge 11 & E10: http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/75y6925_01.pdf
Resetting power-on password is documented in the Hardware Maintenance Manual:
- Turn off the computer.
- Remove the battery pack.
- Remove the backup battery.
- Turn on the computer and wait until the POST ends. After the POST ends, the password prompt does not appear. The POP has been removed.
- Reinstall the backup battery and the battery pack.