I purchased a second hand ThinkPad from an ebay outlet. When it arrived I wiped windows 10 from it and installed ubuntu with no issues. It runs perfect without any weird fixes needed. However, after just checking the bios to see if I could change some settings, I realised it has a supervisor password.
I contacted the seller and they gave me a few to try but they haven’t worked.
They said their tech will be back next week and will contact me then but I may have to send it back.
My question is, will this be an issue in the future? Or does it depend on which settings are locked?
I don’t really want to send it back unless it’s critical, as I have a lot of work to do and my previous laptop is moments away from death.
I assume you could open it up and reset bios by shorting a couple of pins or pulling the CMOS battery. Google the ThinkPad model number and “bios reset”.
Note that if safeboot is enabled this could lock you out of the OS, but given that you were able to wipe the OS without accessing BIOS anyway, it makes me think it’s not.
Do with that information what you will, good luck.
The password will be stored in EEPROM in newer laptops. Removing the battery will not clear the password and could make things even worse since you won’t be able to change any settings that get reset.
The best thing would be to return it and find a different one that’s not locked.
Ah, that’s true. Big oof.
https://support.lenovo.com/au/en/solutions/ht036206-types-of-password-for-thinkpad
Reset forgotten supervisor password
If you forget your supervisor password, Lenovo cannot reset your password. You must take your computer to a Lenovo Service Provider to have the system board replaced.It won’t matter that much UNLESS a specific setting you might want is disabled such as virtualization.
Consider checking now if virtualization is enabled or disabled. If your BIOS settings are fairly permissive it isn’t that big of a deal. But if they are restrictive it can make it a pain in the ass to work around.
Try this
bios-pw.org doesn’t explicitly say it supports any Lenovo products, but I’ve had luck using them with Dell products before. No clue if this will work for you or if it’s a generic article meant to suck you in and grab ad revenue.
If it’s not an issue, it’s not an issue. If you need to change the settings at some point, you could look up if there is a way to reset the password. Or sometimes there are tools that let you change the EEPROM settings from linux, without needing to open the BIOS. Depends on the hardware.
You can either try to contact the seller and ask for the password or just erase the UEFI settings by shorting some jumper or something. There should be instructions how to do that for your specific model.
Good reason to only buy computers with free and open source BIOS.
Coreboot is great! I see a brighter future on ARM/RISC-V than x86 though.
