Service Forum

[janko_wodnik]

Hello everyone!

First, I have to apologise for my English, which could be even more funny than my story itself.

Here is the story:

I have decided to revert my Thinkpad X41 to X40 because of energy saving and other related problems when booting from non-ThinkPad PATA drives (legendary BIOS ERROR 2010 recived after instaling CF to IDE adaptor).

I put the lid from X41 to X40 (it already had a crippled LCD panel). I took apart most of both thinkpads according to IBM service manual. I also disconnected CMOS batteries as it has been shown in service manuals. After puting both of the sytems together, X40 booted normaly, so I did not bother with checking whether X41 is still operational. Few weeks later I have put an announcement on the internet to sell the still working remains of X41 (quite a good piece of computer for embeded/industrial system). When I powered on my X41 it asked for SV pasword. I was quite suprised that it still remembered the password after losing BIOS settings. I typed the password I have set some time ago and... it mismatched!

It was even more funny that I've set the SVP only a few days before switching the systems. Someone had asked me how to set passwords on computers, so I showed how to do this on my X41. I was really upset with this, I was wondering if everything is OK with my head (Alzheimer, Schizophrenia or something like that) and why this password doesn't work.

Finally, I have found how to obtain my own password from eeprom of my IBM TP on the internet. The most valuable informations how to safely do this I've found down here, on ALLservice.ro, that wasn't so suprising after I discovered that thinkpads.com doesn't provide such kind of information.

The password I have set on my ThinkPad was "FRANEK". But the password I retrived from my eeprom was "FRANE" (only last "K" was missing) and it is really funny, isn't it?

So, I guess removing CMOS baterry (or just clearing the CMOS memory) MAY result in losing orginally stored SVP password just by truncating it a little. A little to make some days really nervous.


And this is the happy-end.
It couldn't be done without our ALLservice forum, great thanks to all of You, especially for Victor!

P.S.

I have some photos of eeprom with wires placed just with the use of sticky tape without soldering, so they are somewhat funny. I have a dump of eeprom too, if anyone needs

P.P.S.
Great thanks to Majkel for spellcheck

Edit: 31.05.2008
There are some photos + eeprom dump.
Fell free to copy/use/share/modify those files.
http://rapidshare.com/files/119114288/IBM_X41_pass_off.zip

[victor]

You're welcome to post the pictures, thank you.

There's no way clearing the CMOS would affect/truncate the SVP.
In my opinion, you simply forgotten the "K" for the SVP but the POP was set "correctly". As a result, everytime you started up and entered "franek", this was for the POP, and clearing it up revealed the problem.

Well done and best of luck!
_________________
Victor Voinea
ALLservice HQ, Romania.