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Is there a way to reset/remove a BIOS password? Removing CMOS battery didn't help.

jscho
By jscho
in Operating Systems
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Some background (tl;dr at bottom), in 2011, I was given a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 11 by my high school as part of a government program (you may know which one), and of course everything was locked down; OS, BIOS, everything. Not a problem, it wasn't technically my laptop. Last year I graduated, and if we graduated, we handed in the laptop to the IT guys at school and they would put a fresh Win7 image on it, unlock the BIOS and all that. The laptop was now ours, forever. I own it.

The IT guys put the Win7 image on it, but they didn't unlock the BIOS password, and for my university course I need to know basic Linux (for now). It's not a very powerful system at all, 2GB RAM, 1.1Ghz dual core Celeron, so a virtual environment is just not happening on it (don't even think the CPU supports VMs :lol: ) and Linux isn't going on my desktop, I game on it, and I just won't be bothered to use a VM on it. I want to 'force' myself to use Linux (Mint) day-to-day by having it on the laptop and taking it to class and such to take notes on, study on and just fiddle with in general.

School holidays just started (my holidays coincide with my university's holidays) and I thought it'd be a really good holiday project to install Linux and have fun configuring it and stuff, but the BIOS is locked down, the school is closed so I can't take it in, and I was really keen to give it a go.

And so, to my point, is there a way to bypass/remove/reset the BIOS password so I can enable booting from the USB? I have already tried a tonne of programs to remove it, Plop Boot Manger too. Removed the CMOS battery and left for a day. Nothing so far. Anything else? Even tried backdoor passwords. It's a Phoenix BIOS if interested.

 

[tl;dr] Locked BIOS was supposed to be unlocked for me. Wasn't. Can't boot from USB to install Linux. Help please. I've written some things I've tried in the paragraph above.

Thank~

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can you flash the bios?

 

contact the highschool dickheads?

We can't Benchmark like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to shove more GPUs in your computer. Like the time I needed to NV-Link, because I needed a higher HeavenBench score, so I did an SLI, which is what they called NV-Link back in the day. So, I decided to put two GPUs in my computer, which was the style at the time. Now, to add another GPU to your computer, costs a new PSU. Now in those days PSUs said OCZ on them, "Gimme 750W OCZs for an SLI" you'd say. Now where were we? Oh yeah, the important thing was that I had two GPUs in my rig, which was the style at the time! They didn't have RGB PSUs at the time, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big green ones. 

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My understanding is that on TPs the supervisor password cant be reset short of getting a replacement motherboard, have you tried asking your old school for the password?

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Theoretically bios passwords are supposed to be unsurmountable (I mean, if resetting cmos was enough what would be the point?). Unless you can get someone to give you the actual password or @techguru 's exploit works you can't do much about it.

Don't ask to ask, just ask... please 🤨

sudo chmod -R 000 /*

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HOLY FUCKING SHIT THAT LOOKS DANGEROUS

We can't Benchmark like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to shove more GPUs in your computer. Like the time I needed to NV-Link, because I needed a higher HeavenBench score, so I did an SLI, which is what they called NV-Link back in the day. So, I decided to put two GPUs in my computer, which was the style at the time. Now, to add another GPU to your computer, costs a new PSU. Now in those days PSUs said OCZ on them, "Gimme 750W OCZs for an SLI" you'd say. Now where were we? Oh yeah, the important thing was that I had two GPUs in my rig, which was the style at the time! They didn't have RGB PSUs at the time, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big green ones. 

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My understanding is that on TPs the supervisor password cant be reset short of getting a replacement motherboard, have you tried asking your old school for the password?

 

I wanted to do this as a holiday project while I have the time, and my old school is closed for holidays haha. I could wait until school goes back but yeah, wanted to do it as a project :P

 

HOLY FUCKING SHIT THAT LOOKS DANGEROUS

 

It's well beyond my skill set :P

 

I guess I'll have to wait to get the password from school. Cheers for the input guys :)

                    Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 | Intel Core i7 4790k | Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming GT                              Notebook: Dell XPS 13

                 16GB Kingston HyperX Fury | 2x Asus GeForce GTX 680 OC SLI | Corsair H60 2013

           Seasonic Platinum 1050W | 2x Samsung 840 EVO 250GB RAID 0 | WD 1TB & 2TB Green                                 dat 1080p-ness

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Can you boot from other media instead of USB, like a DVD? Did you also remove the laptop battery when you took out the cmos battery? When do you see the password prompt, is it when you enter the bios? The password is most likely store on some TPM module that's why removing the cmos battery doesn't work.

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