Service Forum

[Borjis]

Dear Victor,

My Lenovo ThinkPad X201 is locked by Supervisor Password.
I have been reading lots of post and messages on the forum about this issue and I think this is the correct place to solve it.

Just want to confirm, because all the posts related to my TP are more than one year ago, that the procedure is valid for my computer.
I have already downloaded R24RF08 and in the PDF inside, there is not listed my ThinkPad X201. Could you please confirm that the procedure will work on my TP?

I appreciate the work done in this forum, it is really helpful.

Kind regards

[victor]

Hello,

Yes, obviously.
_________________
Victor Voinea
ALLservice HQ, Romania.

[Borjis]

Hello Victor,

I managed to extract the data in EEPROM, but I'm not able to find the password using IBMPass. There are some blank characters in the hex positions,

Could you please have a look to it?

I have just send it to your support email.

Kind regards

[Borjis]

Hello Victor and Bob

Following your instructions, I managed to unlock my Lenovo.

Thank you very much for your detailed instructions and your supports

[bob]

Hi Borjis,

You're welcome. Enjoy your laptop and..Happy Holidays!

[gicu4you2006]

Hello Victor!

Following your instructions (also by phone), I managed to unlock my Lenovo X201i.

Thank you very much for your detailed instructions and your support!
Cornel

[victor]

You're welcome, Cornel!

Cu placere, oricand!
_________________
Victor Voinea
ALLservice HQ, Romania.

[zelbinion]

Just wanted to add my 2 cents -- I was able to unlock two x201's with Victor and Bob's help. Just so everyone is aware, the supervisor password on the x201 is encrypted by the TCPA, so you will need to purchase a license to the W24RF08 utility and purchase the "additional service" to get a set of custom eeprom images that you will need to write back into the chip to clear the password.

The picture in this thread: http://www.allservice.ro/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3521#3521 for the x201 (as of 16 March 2015) shows a picture of the backside of the main board, and shows the express card cage bent upwards in order to reach the SCL and SDA pins. I wasn't able to get a good contact to the chip this way, and I had a hard time bending the cage back into place, so here's what I did:

1. I used the circuit diagram for the SIPROG interface (this is simpler of the two circuits, using only an rs-232 cable, two resisters and two diodes) to create an rs-232 to i2c bus interface.

2. I disassembled the x201 and removed the main board, then turned it over.

3. I peeled back the black cover over the main board to reveal the eeprom chip

4. I loosened one of the screws on the heat pipe retaining bracket and slipped the ground wire between the main board and the bracket and then tightened the screw back down.

5. I touched the SCL and SDA probes to the correct pins on the eeprom for all reading and writing operations. At no time did I solder anything to the board itself. If you choose to do it this way, you need a steady hand, and it helps to have a second person to operate the other computer for reading and writing the eeprom. If the probes slip off the chip while reading or writing, you could corrupt the data dump, or write corrupted data into the chip. However, I decided to risk that rather risk damaging the board by trying to solder wires to it.

6. While you have to have the laptop keyboard plugged into the main board in order to turn the laptop on and off, I used an external monitor and an external keyboard for everything else, since the flex cables are so short it is hard to use the internal keyboard and LCD screen when the main board is upside down.

I sent an updated image to Victor via e-mail that shows the chip location in more detail. Hopefully he'll update the image in the thread that has all the pictures of eeprom locations for thinkpads.[/img]