ERROR 0199: System Security – Security password retry count exceeded.

[helge]

I just want to share my experience with being unable to boot my ThinkPad X220 due to entering a wrong supervisor password.

Thanks to great support by Lenovo Denmark, I was able to resolve this issue - what better than to share the knowledge with the rest of the Lenovo community.

PROBLEM:
You have entered a wrong supervisor password (SVP) three times and thus presented with the following error during boot-up:

ERROR 0199: System Security – Security password retry count exceeded.

Your only option is to press <F1> to enter BIOS setup.

It is not possible to boot any OS nor enter ThinkVantage recovery.

SOLUTION:
If you have lost the SVP, chances are you will need to have the system board replaced by Lenovo.

However, if you do manage to regain your SVP but are unable to get rid of the "ERROR 0199" message, try this:
1) Enter BIOS setup utility with your SVP
2) Press F9 to restore default settings
3) Press F10 to save settings and reboot

BACKGROUND:
Even if you regain your SVP, it may be troublesome to get rid of the 0199 error.
In the X220/X220i hardware maintenance manual, the instructions are to enter BIOS setup and press F10 to save the settings, which did not work in my case. Changing security settings, disabling/changing passwords, clearing the security chip - nothing seemed to get rid of the error.
I called Lenovo support and was instructed to restore the default BIOS settings. While not making much logical sense, restoring to defaults somehow triggered the error to disappear.
I think this is a bug in the BIOS. The error should have disappeared after entering the correct SVP and saving settings with F10, as instructed by the manual. Restoring default settings does not seem related to clearing the state of the security system.

Anyway, I am just happy that I can use my laptop again :-)

[helge]

Oh, and besides the X220/X220i maintenance manual I linked to before, the same information is present on this webpage: Numeric error codes - ThinkPad General

I think the documentation should be updated with the additional instruction of loading default settings,

[jamesselix]

thanks for the workaround! worked for me too. def a bug in the bios it seems. we have an X220 and i was setting the supervisor password so i could then capture the bios settings to a file to deploy but may wait until an update is released to resolve that bug. my users would not appreciate that at all

[iamjason]

I had a Lenovo SL410 with the same issue. Luckily this worked for it as well. Thanks

[Cleo_Lenovo Administrator]

Hi All,

Could anyone of you provide me the bios version that you have and facing this issue as described by user helge, please? Sound like a bios bug.

Also, thankful for sharing by user helge with the rest users here. Kudos!

- Cleo

[helge]

The same day as my original post, 2011-10-24 at 09:43:51+0200, I updated to BIOS package version 1.22 (8duj11us).

I believe this was just after I recovered my X220, so I was probably running version 1.21 when encountering the bug.

Unfortunately, I am not exactly sure about the version, so I have uploaded a .zip with the WINFLASH.LOG and BIOS.BAK files from the update to 1.22. Maybe you can work out which version I had prior to that update.

X220_BIOS_111024.zip

[Mikethof]

I have this error but when I go into bios my keyboard does not work. Also an external USB keyboard does not work either. Any ideas?? Thanks!