----- Original Message -----
From: "Jules Richardson" <jules.richardson99 at gmail.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 1:58 PM
Subject: Re: IBM Thinkpad 600e can't get past password prompt...
Ray Arachelian wrote:
Al Hartman wrote:
I bought a thinkpad 600e for a friend several
years ago on eBay. She put
it in storage for a year, and when she pulled it out the backup battery
has died. I replaced it, but now the unit is asking for a password.
You could get an external 2.5" USB<->ATA enclosure, move the drive to
that and get at the data that way.
It's weird how the manual states 'hdd replacement' for forgotten password,
rather than just saying it needs to be reformatted. I assume that was just
an error in IBM's terminology (and they really don't do something like
screwing around with the drive firmware :)
You're probably onto something, though - I bet they just goof around with
the MBR or something to stop the drive booting (so with a bit of effort a
new MBR could be written via another box, or the filesystem read out 'raw'
and accessed as a loopback device under Linux / *BSD)
(I don't have an suitable 2.5" adapter with me here, or I'd do some tests
with my 600E - I've not got anything on its drive that I want to keep
right now anyway)
cheers
Jules
Seems like the drive itself is locked so moving the HD to another machine
will not help.
There are auctions on ebay that will unlock the machine itself (solder in an
unlocked security chip) but that will not let you get into the HD that is
locked.
Places like this:
http://www.pwcrack.com/harddisk.shtml can unlock the drive
if you like paying $100 and letting somebody else get into your data.