Locked out of bios need to reinstall Windows 10 help

Hello:
So I have a lenova yoga 1.... well let me back up a bit.... I have had this computer for about 4 years ago. When I first got it I had some provlems with booze and benzos. So my memory is a bit shot from those days. Since went through the hell of getting off benzos and back on my feet. At some point in my year of intoxication I changed my bios password and set my bios to only boot from the hard drive. No way around the bios with lonova computers short of a new hard drive. Its been sitting on a shelf for a few years but thought I would take another stabe at it. My thought was to remove the HD from the computer and somehow install windows on it up until the point it starts gathering information from the computer. Being at this point the hd would be in a case in a different computer. Then take the hard drive and put it back in the yoga and finish the install. Will this work or is there an easier way? I would like to install win 10 and the comuter and win 7 on it but at this point getting anything on it would be good to go for me. Or should I just get a new mother board and get on with it. Thanks in advance

Doug

If it's a BIOS password and not a hard drive password, you will need to locate the CMOS battery and remove it to discharge the cap and reset the BIOS. If it is a hard drive password then you will need to replace the drive. These passwords are stored in the hard drive controllers.

Neemobeer said:

If it's a BIOS password and not a hard drive password, you will need to locate the CMOS battery and remove it to discharge the cap and reset the BIOS. If it is a hard drive password then you will need to replace the drive. These passwords are stored in the hard drive controllers.

Apparently for a Lenovo only the power on password can be reset that way...

A forgotten Supervisor password will prevent access to the ThinkPad BIOS setup utility. If the Supervisor password has been forgotten and cannot be made available to the service technician, there is no service procedure to reset the password. The system board must be replaced...

https://support.lenovo.com/gb/en/doc...ht036206#super

So, if you can pick up another motherboard cheaply enough and have the skills to fit it that would seem the best long-term solution.

Yeah, Lenovo and its forerunner IBM likes to do things differently.

Yeah it's the bios password and no way to rest with out new MB. What I was trying to figure out was to take the hard drive out and install windows on it and then reinstall the hard drive but I don't think thisnweill work or at least without my limited knowledge in this matter. My other thought was to partition the hard drive and put windows install on one partition and reboot and install off the install but from what I can see is windows 10 is either an ISO or a USB and I tried to have the USB install media put on the hard drive and it wouldn't work bexouse it wasn't a USB drive. Basically anyway to install windows 7/10 or any version of windows on the hard drive out of the computer and then install the hard drive and have it boot up and finish the windows install or finish it up any way. The computer came with win 7 I think. I have several win 7 lisence It may have come with win 10. Thanks

I would recommend taking the hard drive out of the computer. Put it in an operating computer and delete all the partitions on it. At the very end of the hard drive create a 5 GB partition, format it as FAT32. Mark the partition as active. Download the Windows 10 ISO file. Mount the ISO file. Copy the files and folders from the mounted ISO file to the FAT32 partition.

Put it back in the Lenovo computer and it should boot into Windows setup. Select the custom install option and select the remaining unallocated space on the hard drive to install Windows to.

MiniTool Partition Wizard Free is an easy program to delete/make/mark active the partitions with:
Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free

Learo2000GT said:

What I was trying to figure out was to take the hard drive out and install windows on it and then reinstall the hard drive but I don't think thisnweill work or at least without my limited knowledge in this matter.

Well, I've seen advice on other threads here that suggests you could get a working Windows 10 onto the hard drive with another PC then put it back into the Lenovo. It should be able to sort itself out...

Unlike Windows 7. Windows 8/10 is very forgiving. If you take out the HD and put in another MB, Windows will boot and recognize the missing drivers and will attempt to install them.

Moving Current HDD with Win10 to another PC (different motherboard)

Not sure what you'd need to do to sort out the licencing/activation once it's back in the Lenovo though.

edit: Just seen NavyLCDR's suggestion - that looks the better way to do it.

Bree said:

edit: Just seen NavyLCDR's suggestion - that looks the better way to do it.

The reason I suggest putting the install files on a partition on the hard drive is if the need arises to re-install Windows it will be there (as long as the hard drive does not crash). And the user can update the install files to the latest available simply by downloading the new ISO file and copying over the old files on the install partition.

Doing it this way basically sets up a dual boot situation between the installed and operating Windows 10 and the installation files. The user must be careful, though, to not reformat the FAT32 partition holding the install files because that is where the boot files will end up being. If they do reformat the partition and copy updated install files to it, the dual boot will be lost and they will boot into setup only, but that is a fairly easy fix to add the operating Windows 10 installation back to the boot menu.

Thanks so much. This is a great forum. Just looked at it and it actually came oreinstalled with windows 8. I can't remember if I upgraded with windows 10. This happened a long time ago and it's been collecting dust. I have plenty lisence for all versions of windows except 10, my finally out come would to have windows 10 on it but don't want to pay full version price. Recommendations for what os to use for inital install? I will be damn sure to make a disk image once up and running. Thanks again this is a great forum.

Ps I thought about a new MB but the computer is about 3 years old at this point and I really don't want to invest money into it. Probally end up being used by my kids.