Lenovo Understanding the Hard Disk Password for Your Laptop

Attention: All the personal files and settings will be deleted after you restore the computer to the factory default settings. Ensure that the user has made a backup copy of all the data before restoring the computer to the factory default settings.

To restore the computer, do the following:

1.Move your cursor to the bottom-right corner of the screen to bring up the charms. Click Settings

➙ Change PC settings ➙ General.

2.In the Remove everything and reinstall Windows section, click Get started.

Advanced startup options

Advanced startup options enable you to change the startup settings of the Windows operating system, start the computer from an external device, or restore the Windows operating system from a system image.

To use the advanced startup options, do the following:

1.Move your cursor to the bottom-right corner of the screen to bring up the charms. Click Settings

➙ Change PC settings ➙ General.

2.In the Advanced startup section, click Restart now ➙ Troubleshoot ➙ Advanced options.

3.Restart the computer following the instructions on the screen.

For more details about the Windows recovery solutions, refer to the help information system of the Windows 8 operating system.

Passwords

As many as three passwords might be needed for any ThinkPad notebook computer: the power-on password, the hard-disk password, and the supervisor password.

If any of these passwords has been set, a prompt for it appears on the screen whenever the computer is turned on. The computer does not start until the password is entered.

Note: If only the supervisor password is set, the password prompt does not appear when the operating system is booted.

Power-on password

A power-on password protects the system from being powered on by an unauthorized person. The password must be entered before an operating system can be booted. For how to remove the power-on password, see “How to remove the power-on password” on page 34.

Hard-disk password

There are two hard-disk passwords:

•User hard-disk password - for the user

•Master hard-disk password - for the system administrator, who can use it to get access to the hard disk even if the user has changed the user hard-disk password.

Note: There are two modes for the hard-disk password: User only and Master + User. The Master + User mode requires two hard-disk passwords; the system administrator enters both in the same operation. The system administrator then provides the user hard-disk password to the system user.

Attention: If the user hard-disk password has been forgotten, check whether a master hard-disk password has been set. If a master hard-disk password has been set, it can be used to access the hard disk drive. If no master hard-disk password is available, neither Lenovo nor Lenovo authorized service technicians

Chapter 4. Related service information 33