Thinkpad 390 unable to boot to floppy or cd

[happykappy]

Trying to boot to either floppy drive or CD. Am able to get into bios. Can see the power up and list of drives to boot from. Unable to change the priorities of these drives. Some have a + in front of them. Not sure what that means. When I click enter, it beeps, but nothing happens. When I go into bios it asks for password and I press enter key, it says OK and then goes into bios. I presume there is no password. When I go into password, all the changes are grayed out.
Someone installed windows XP on this system which is a 6 GB drive and partitioned in 3 gb each. Not much space on either partition, about 6-900 mb. Would like to make one partition.

 

[ski]

It appears that a BIOS password has been configured, and pressing Enter at the PW prompt allows you to enter BIOS but you cannot make any changes.
When you're prompted for a password, see if typing in a new one overwrites the old one.
If that does not work, then post the make and model of the computer, or the MB. You can use Everest, Belarc Advisor, or Sisoft Sandra to find the MB's make and model.

 

[happykappy]

This is a IBM Thinkpad 2626 FOU.

Went to IBM web site and they state that there is no way to bypass the password.
This is a used PC and the user obtained it second hand from another user with no documentation or info.
Is there a way to override the bios password, because without it can't do a thing.
Would putting a new hard drive force it to go to a CD or floppy since there would be no OS.

 

[G0AOZ]

No, it might force it to try and go into the BIOS, but you'd still be requested for a password.

You'd need to remove the small CMOS battery which will be located inside the laptop, or find a "Clear CMOS" jumper on the motherboard.

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[edfair]

If this is like other laptops with "theft deterrent" the password is encrypted on the hard drive and is impossible to remove.
If IBM is like DELL they can provide a one time password that will allow access long enough to change it. But you have to jump through hoops to prove ownership, otherwise you are considered as probably holding stolen property.


Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.