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I'm locked out of my ThinkPad

I have an old IBM ThinkPad that was given to us years ago that I have been trying to clean up. This morning it would not let me open Windows, so I opened up the Thinkpad page and I saw where it said password and I changed them. Now all I get is a black screen with some numbers at the top and I can't get past that. I have been going to different sites and one said that with the ThinkPad I have lost everything. I also read about a disc I can buy from PCbeginner.com. What should I do?
I've used ThinkPads over the years – and I've had my fair share of hardware issues - but (luckily) I haven't experienced this problem. They're making things difficult for us, but here are two sites that offer potential solutions:
ThinkPad Password Solutions
BIOS password security chips

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This was first published in June 2006

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