Service Forum

[upjeeper]

i recently bought a pair of used IBM R52s, one has a password, but i don't think it's the supervisor password. When i boot the computer up a small lock appears on the upper left hand side of the screen. i swapped the hard drive from one to the other and the password appeared to follow the same hard drive to the other machine, so evidently this system lock is stored on the hard drive.

any ideas?

[victor]

The solution is to unlock the drive or to get a new one.
The fact is that R52 and T43 have a big problem with third party HDs. They support only the IBM firmware HDs, so if you buy another one from a shop, will not work properly in the laptop.

The solution in this case (apart from paying all your beer money to buy one form IBM) is to update with the IBM firmware. And believe me, for the new BIOS versions and embeded controller, this trick won't work all the time.

Another way is to buy a Fujitsu drive (up to 60G) those seems to have less compatibility problems.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-62282

Or to unlock using my HD security tools, which are a bit too expensive just for one drive.
_________________
Victor Voinea
ALLservice HQ, Romania.