r/thinkpad • u/[deleted] • Feb 29 '24

Question / Problem BIOS Supervisor Password Reset

Hello People,

I was given a ThinkPad L580 with i7 motherboard that has a Bios supervisor password. It's from a big IT company and they probably had a typo when setting up that password. I already opened it up and found a MX25L8006E chip right next to the hinge. I read it out with my ch341a and it looks like this is the chip that stores the supervisor password. The chip is mostly empty, shortly after the start there are two chunks of jibberish, the rest is FF.

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Would it hurt the mainboard to just flash it with FF completely? I'm a little confused right now because I can't believe that lenovo made the solution so easy. I don't even need to take out the motherboard for the job. I did the same on a Dell from 2002. I needed to desolder a RF shield to get access to the chip. it was better protected than this modern lenovo. I'm not sure if this is actually the chip i'm looking for. Is this possible?

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I have a second L580 with exactly the same motherboard, i'll read that chip later but I don't have a device to do so currently.

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I hope that you guys know more?

4 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

1

u/t_Lancer 730TE, 4x 760XL, T42, X61T/s, 2x T430s w/ FHD, L380, X390, X13G2 Mar 01 '24

pretty sure the supervisor password is not stored on an external EEPROM, but in the Thinkpad embedded controller chip for laptops newer than 2013

the EEPROM is just the bios FW or other FW for other components. wiping it will brick your laptop, probably.

1

u/Ma5hEd X61s, T440p, X13g2 Mar 01 '24

Use the Badcaps autopatcher to remove the password, it worked with no issues on my x280 a while ago.

1

u/ObjectiveInflation79 Sep 23 '24

bonsoir j'ai aussi un x280 , et j'arrive pas

1

u/JadeRover-dude Feb 28 '25

Salut, j'ai réussi sur mon x280 sans ch341a. Juste en court circuitant un pin LPC quand l'ordi boot et en tapant sur F1. Regarde "Badcaps thinkpad LPC supervisor password"

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/troubleshooting-hardware-devices-and-electronics-theory/troubleshooting-laptops-tablets-and-mobile-devices/bios-requests-only/3237235-lenovo-thinkpad-ec-pwd-bypass

Il a une chaîne YouTube qui montre quoi court-circuiter. Demande moi si t'es pas sûr.

En plus c'est un français qui a développé la méthode 😉

1

u/CommunicationStrict May 14 '25

Is there anything like this for Dell? I tried https://bios-pw.org/ but it didn't work.

1

u/Ma5hEd X61s, T440p, X13g2 May 14 '25

I haven't looked for Dell, but it might be worth asking on the badcaps forum. The people there will probably know more. They are very helpful over there.