IBM Thinkpad Security Model A21M

This is my first posting on the board.

I have a customer that brought me a thinkpad model a21m. The machine has a security lock on it and will not allow any access: not from floppy, CD or hard disk, not even a BIOS setup. He claimed a terminated employee had it and "forgot" the password. The machine does its power up checks and then drops into security mode. In the upper left corner of the screen appears the number 1, under the number is a flowchart symbol for a hard drive, to the right of these is a padlock in the locked position and to the right of that is a flashing cursor with an entry line for a seven digit password. The salesman that I talked to told me it was impossible to crack. If this is level 2 security only a hard drive change can beat it, if this is level 3 security then a system board change is needed. Either of these is too expensive. Does anyone know how to get into this machine? I don't mind sending it to IBM even, as long as it is not too much money.

Thanks,

You should look at this thread: <a href="http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum3/noncgi/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=32&t=000327" target="_blank">http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum3/noncgi/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f =32&t=000327</a>

Same situation as you. What I figure is that IBM has some sort of proprietary encryption and locking scheme based in hardware on both the main board and hard drive. The guy in this thread was able to get a replacement HD and recovery CD without any problems, if you're trying to recover the data of the HD, it may be another story.

IBM has chip based security going on here. You need to have the drive and or MB rescanned with the proper credentials to unlock, or have the master power on and BIOS passwords. It really sux for users who really need it unlocked, but it is good for corp. security if the laptop gets stolen. If it really does belong to the guys company, than it is registered with IBM and his tech dept would know the master password for that model.