Xcame

Sorry for beeing so late with my reply. I'll try to put it all in one long answer. I received the laptop with the words: "Here. We had this lying around for ages because the guy who set the password doesn't work here anymore and noone knows the password, found some videos online, that you can bridge two contacts to bypass it. Want to give it a try? It's useless anyway" Free laptop? Sure! So I found the videos like this, too and gave it a try. Should have done some more research in the beginning... but having IT background myself I just assumed that the BIOS would skip the password check if it received invalid response when the method is called... So I tried to get the "correct timing" but I failed every time. And that last time the laptop made beeping noises (which I can't recall exactly) but kind of like "missing RAM". And from that moment the laptop didn't boot anymore. That means: The mainboard started, the hdd spun up, the fan spun up shortly, the cpu started to get warm, the F1 Key lit up shortly but the screen stayed black. I assumed I blew a fuse while trying to bridge it and that It might just be missing screen backlighting, but the screen stayed completely off. Checked with a good known USB keyboard with CAPS-Lock light if it turns on during boot. But it didn't. Removed the ram. Beeping but no booting (as expected). Tried the wildest combinations of power draining. Disconnected the internal battery, disconnected, the CMOS battery, tried the built in "reset button". But not luck. Took the laptop to work and used a CH341A programmer with Clip to see if I blew the Winbond 25Q128FVSQ, but to my amazement It detected the chip and I could read the contents. Then I thought I might be able to get a fresh BIOS from the Lenovo BIOS Update Package. But while looking at the procedure of how to extract it form the updater.exe or the iso I found an (seemingly) already extracted BIOS here. I emptied the chip, programmed it with the bin aaaaaand: The screen turned on. The POST started and then it failed with a CMOS Time error (I expected that) and a Error 0183 Bad CRC in Security Settings in EFI Variable - Press F1 to start Setup. Pressing F1 results in a Supervisor Password prompt (little guy besides the lock) On the original BIOS I could just hit enter an came at least in a read only mode into the BIOS settings. But now I just received the crosses (after three tries) and a "stop signaling hand" I was intrigued, that the flashed BIOS might have a password set (although at that time I learned, that the password seems to be stored on another chip) So I checked again on the website where I downloaded the bios.bin if there is a note like "password is 1234 or something" Unfortunately I didn't find anything. But another post on the same website here wich leads to another google drive with another binary. Did a Hex diff and saw that it is indeed different. cleared the chip. flashed the second bios. Laptop boots (with another Logo) but still the Bad CRC error came up and the F1 Setup prompted for a password. Just for the kicks I flashed the original BIOS I read from the chip in the beginning to check if it magically boots again, but no it doesn't. Reflashed one of the downloaded. Boots again (still prompting for a password) Then I thought: Maybe I can use a Open Source Bios like libreboot or coreboot. But I learned that the bios has to be signed from the X240 upwards because of Intels BootGuard Then I stumbled across this post and thought I could give it a try because it seems like you're kind of deep into the matter and you might have a solution or a hint of what I can do. At this point I'm thinking about: 1 ) Maybe I do the effort to extract the bios from the official Lenovo bios update 2 ) I try to research where the password is stored and if it is possible to replace the chip (or clear it) Because now that I saw the laptop came back to life again I'm kind of intrigued that I might get it back working completely again. Sorry for the long story. Hope I didn't miss anything. Any help is appreciated Kind regards Xcame

Hi Klem, I Somehow managed to brick my bios. It wont go into POST, even CAPS-Lock LED didn't on a connected keyboard didn't respond. I took a dump, found a "fresh" BIOS, flashed it onto the chip, it goes into POST again but it has a supervisor password set. Any chance to get rid of it? After it started with the new BIOS i tried the bricked dump again, just for fun. Still didn't work. Flashed the new BIOS a second time, and it boots again but still wants a SVP (after telling me error 0183 Bad CRC in Security Settings in EFI Variable). I can upload both binaries if you see a chance to get it working again.