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    Special precautions when buying used Lenovo laptop ?

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by hhhd1, Nov 23, 2014.

  1. hhhd1

    hhhd1 Notebook Consultant

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    It seems that Lenovo laptops comes with pretty tight security measures, like anti-theft protection and some comes with TPM.

    According to I have read, some of those features can never be disabled once enabled, like anti-theft protection, and removing of the BIOS battery doesn't work here either.

    What to look for in a used laptop to make sure nothing like is done, and the security settings is not enabled in an irreversible way ?
     
    hhhd1, Nov 23, 2014
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  2. ajkula66

    ajkula66 Courage and Consequence

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    Well, on newer machines, make sure that the Computrace is not installed (pressing F1 then entering BIOS will reveal its existence or lack thereof), or that it has been deactivated if it's there - a simple phone call to them will reveal the truth.

    Everything else - apart from HDD/SSD passwords which are usually irreversible - is really not that much of a big deal. We can't discuss hacking Supervisor passwords around here, but you can check whether one is enabled by entering BIOS...and verifying security settings there.

    Good luck.
     
    ajkula66, Nov 23, 2014
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    hhhd1 likes this.
  3. hhhd1

    hhhd1 Notebook Consultant

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    Thank you, that is very helpful information.

    I googled the supervisor password and power-on password thingy .. won't discuss them here.

    I wonder if it is possible to know if the computrace is enabled or not without entering bios, since sometimes it could be locked via supervisor password, or the screen is broken and bios is not accessible on external monitor ..

    I google this, I am not sure of what I found, but, if computrace is enabled, there should be an extra process or service running all the time, even on a fresh windows installation .. which apparently gets injected by BIOS on boot , or something like that.
     
    hhhd1, Nov 25, 2014
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  4. ajkula66

    ajkula66 Courage and Consequence

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    Well, you can see BIOS on external monitor and don't buy a password-locked machine unless the password is known...done... :D
     
    ajkula66, Nov 25, 2014
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  5. phamhlam

    phamhlam Notebook Evangelist

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    So you are saying that it is possible to crack the password even on new machines (T440s? I want to know if my data is safe.
     
    phamhlam, Nov 27, 2014
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  6. ajkula66

    ajkula66 Courage and Consequence

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    Your data is on the HDD/SSD, correct?

    If your HDD/SSD is password-protected and data encrypted that is beyond reach of ordinary hackers.
     
    ajkula66, Nov 27, 2014
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