Posted on Tuesday, March 02 2010 @ 5:00 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
The Register
reports Lenovo refuses to reset hard drive (BIOS) security passwords on its ThinkPad laptops. The only solution the company offers is a replacement of the machine's motherboard:
The Chinese hardware manufacturer refuses to reset hard drive (BIOS) security passwords for laptops even if they are covered by warranty. Lenovo, which bought IBM's ThinkPad laptop business in 2005, cites security concerns for this established but little-publicised policy.
While official Lenovo channels offer only the expensive fix of replacing a machine's motherboard, costing perhaps $400 plus or around the price of some new machines (like the X100e here), a variety of password recovery tools will do the job for around $80. Sure enough Google search "reset Thinkpad password" turns up various tools, which we haven't tested and therefore can't endorse, that claim to do the job.
