My friend gave me their old laptop before they left town. I was going to install linux on it and use it for a server.

I have basically given up doing anything because the BIOS is locked with a Secure Boot supervisor password which I guess they forgot about being there.

I’ve sent a message asking if they happen to remember it and would feel comfortable sharing it if it is not one they use for anything else. But the odds of both those things being the case are slim and I don’t feel good about trying to get someone to share any password. Especially since it was so kind to just give me the machine in the first place. It’s not practical to physically get the device and the person together in the near future.

It’s impossible (or past my skill level) to install linux on this thing without the freaking password. I did manage to install windows. Last time I did that it was win2k. It will boot OK but I can’t use that to circumvent the lock. But Ubuntu and a couple other distros are no gos.

It is so fucked that computers can be rendered bricks like this. Obviously yet another way to design in obsolescence disguised as a security feature. Encryption is one thing; this is independent of any data.

Gaaaaaah I spent most of the weekend trying to install linux on this otherwise perfectly functional machine. I think it’s toast though.

  • dead [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    26·
    1 year ago

    I once bought a 2014 era thinkpad laptop that was locked with a supervisor password and I was able to remove it by using tweezers to short 2 pins on the password chip.

    1. I located the password chip on the motherboard. I think it was an 8 pin chip.
    2. I press tweezers to 2 pins. I don’t remember which pin this was. I think it was gnd to something else. The intention here was to make the chip unreadable.
    3. I enter the bios and navigate to the screen for setting a supervisor password. Because the motherboard could not read the chip, the mother board thinks that there is no password.
    4. When I have the “set advisor password prompt” open, I removed the pin short. I typed a new password and press accept. The bios overwrites the old password on the chip.
    5. Reboot the machine and remove the password by typing the password that you created.