ThinkPad Supervisor Password

[DCMASP]

I have recently purchased an IBM Thinkpad at an auction, it all works well but alas it has a supervisor password set and the previous owner doesnt know what it is. Its only an old 486 and isnt worth me sending it to th US to have it password removed does any one know if IBM had common passwords that they used?
Thanks in advance

[DCMASP]

Oh well either everybody thinks Ive pinched it or this is nearly an impossible task.
Could some one out there in Techo land answer the following question?
The only reason I will need to get into the bios is if the cmos battery goes flat and the date and time need resetting if this happens I have a wonderful new paper weight!
Is it possible to change the cmos battery without loosing these settings (eg if I do it quickly) if I can do this then this old machine will work for a couple of more years any advice will be appreciated.
Thanks

[RobRich]

Possible methods:
http://users.powernet.co.uk/sysserv/page125.html

Good Luck,
Robert Richmond

[DCMASP]

Could anybody advise if this would work?

1 Back up Cmos settings using CMOS Viewer
2 Booting machine into windows 95, lifting keyboard up thus putting machine into suspend mode
3 Changing the CMOS battery ( physically quite easy)
4 Restarting machine (this way the machine will be coming out of suspend mode and will not need to go through post) and restoring the CMOS settings using CMOS Viewer

I understand the Thinkpad is unique with its supervisor password being held in an eeprom on the motherboard and no amount of removing of batteries will reset the password (IBM says that the board will have to be replaced)

I would appreciate your advice on this and do not hold you in anyway responsible if this whole thing fouls up

[RobRich]

Possibly. You may also try a program called killcmos.exe , as this app resets all CMOS settings without destorying the base BIOS code.

[cyclone2]

http://www.securiteam.com/securitynews/Bypassing_BIOS_passwords.html