Thinkpads Forum

With the global pandemic shutting down all my fun activities like baseball and movies, I've taken to doing some cleaning and going through some of my old computers and trying to give them new life.

I have a Thinkpad T61 with XP that I wanted to update, however in my infinite wisdom, I set the supervisor password a decade ago and it was set to only boot from the HDD.

I found several pages and videos on how to jump the EEPROM chip to rid the SuperVisor Password(SVP). After a couple hours of tearing the T61 down to barebones and trying to jump it at just the right time, I finally got it.
However in my efforts, the once occasional error I got during failed attempts seems to now be permanent.

"Error 0189 Invalid RFID configuration information area"

When booting the Thinpad seems to hang during the boot, then flashes the error. If I press F1 I can go to the BIOS. If I hit Esc, It will boot Windows and everything seems to run smoothly enough. I upgraded the XP to Win 7 32 bit, and I intended on upgrading to 10 or Ubuntu ultimately.

I also intend on upgrading the BIOS to the Middleton BIOS from (2.17 to 2.29) which will allow me to upgrade by HDD to an SSD and get the full SATA II speeds.

Is there anyway to get rid of the Error 0189 I get everytime I boot without swapping out the system board or soldering on a new EEPROM? Trying to get some key upgrades without going the route of swapping the system board or testing my terrible soldering skills.

Go into BIOS, then press F9 to load Defaults, then F10 to save it.
Reboot and try again.
If no luck, try to update BIOS with e.g. Middleton's BIOS.

Greetings from across the pond, I realize this is a 4-year old thread but I'm desperate and I will try anything.

I locked myself out from a Lenovo T61, I tried the well documented solution of removing the battery pack, opening the palm rest, disconnecting the backup battery for a few minutes, pressing the power button a few times to drain the motherboard of any residual electricity, then reassembling again ... but it did not work. The icon tells me it is a PoP (e.g. a computer icon to the left of the lock, appearing at boot time) but the failure to erase it points to a SVP also being present.

As a last resort, I am about to find the eeprom chip and try shorting the two pins (5 & 6) together and hopefully then get into BIOS and remove (all) the security password(s).

My question is where exactly is the eeprom chip located? Instead of disassembling the entire laptop and go looking for the chip I am hoping if you can point me to the right direction.

This T61 is a type 7661 product ID is 7661VE1 and was made back in Aug 2009.

Can you please help?!

May I suggest you READ some forum posts on this page?
The solution is staring you in the face!