Apologies if this is post is not specific to TDE; but honestly, I don't know what to make of it.
I said awhile back that my system seems to be getting unstable, though I cannot determine the causes. This has been happening more frequently over the past year or more ... ever since I mentioned that we had some flooding here (last winter?), and it seemed to affect our network here in this building. (I ought to add, if it is not evident, that I have no control over the network; my complaints too many to repeat here, and may not be related.)
I am still in the process of moving, so I don't have a lot of time to spend chasing down bugs, if that's what this is; I keep hoping that these issues will resolve themselves with a system upgrade.
We have stretches of a week or two where the network seems fine, then out of the blue, suddenly my machine starts freezing up any time I have a network connection; sometimes, indeed, the open connection is there and available, but I have not actually logged into the network.
Usually I disable the network if I am not using it, but when I first boot up, the network is always there and available. And sure enough, my machine freezes up. I just went through this earlier today: when I went online to check my email first thing this morning, it wasn't more than five minutes and the machine froze up; I waited more than half an hour, then decided to do a hard shutdown, and boot up again.
Then, as soon as I booted up and got into the Trinity desktop, the same thing happened, and the system froze up. (I wasn't online, just that the network was available.) At last, it seemed that the machine recognized mouse movement, and I somehow got it running more or less normally again. My mouse icon showed a kind of crosshair icon, which is not actually available to my mouse; so I was a bit puzzled about that.
Then, once I got into my working desktop, started setting up, I noticed that some autostart programs had not started,: audacious, for example, had to be started manually. Also, tdenetworkmanager crashed, and lately has been crashing rather a lot.
After all was set up and I was getting into my work, I noticed in my home folder 5 plaintext files (or at least, they seem to be text files); they are named:
builtins getopt locale signal sys
-- but they have no content. It may be that they are some different kind of file; the system just tells me that they are empty documents.
Nothing like this has ever happened before, and I am concerned about these strange manifestations of files, apparently without any doing on my part. They have rw-r-r permissions, under my user name; which to me indicates that they are supposed to be files that the system must be able to read. For my personal stuff, which the system doesn't need to read, I make the permissions rw only under my user name.
If anybody can offer some insights, of suggestions about how to unravel this mystery, I would be grateful.
Bill
P.S. I just did a system upgrade. I am still running Devuan Daedalus, waiting for the next LTS release, whatever and whenever that will be.
On Mon November 10 2025 00:08:39 William Morder via tde-users wrote: (snip)
After all was set up and I was getting into my work, I noticed in my home folder 5 plaintext files (or at least, they seem to be text files); they are named:
(snip)
Do you have any malware detection? You might want to run "debsums -s" and then "clamscan -i -r --cross-fs=no / /home".
(Omit /home if it is on the same partition as /.)
Depending on the size of your data and the speed of your disks and processor these may take anywhere from tens of minutes to many hours.
--Mike
On Mon, 10 Nov 2025 00:08:39 -0800 William Morder via tde-users users@trinitydesktop.org wrote:
[snip tales of system flakiness]
If anybody can offer some insights, of suggestions about how to unravel this mystery, I would be grateful.
If all else fails . . .
I'd start by keeping notes on when it freezes—day, time of day, how long the computer was on, what software was open. Maybe there's a commonality you haven't spotted yet.
When you have time, attach it to a different network (there doesn't have to be an exit to the Internet—just borrow an old WRT54G or something). If it's still freeze-prone, you'll know for certain that the issue is internal to the machine and the building network has nothing to do with it. If it suddenly becomes healthy, start checking for local wireless ISPs you can use to avoid the building network.
The level of this misbehaviour makes me think it's more likely to be a core system component (CPU/mobo/RAM/root drive) going on the fritz. There's a good chance that the network hardware is part of the mobo, which could account for why the network *seems* to be the source of all this. If it's a wired network, unexpected conditions on the cable during the flooding might have damaged a chip. Maybe switching to an add-on network card or dongle will be enough to keep it limping along, I don't know.
Run memtest on it when you can, since that will eliminate one possible source of trouble (although not the most likely) with minimal effort. Good luck.
E. Liddell
Anno domini 2025 Mon, 10 Nov 00:08:39 -0800 William Morder via tde-users scripsit:
[...] If anybody can offer some insights, of suggestions about how to unravel this mystery, I would be grateful.
Hi Bill!
IMO either your WiFi card crashes the kernel and you have reiserfs for your system - or you got a stupid kind of malware (e.g. lawful inspection) on your system. Might even be an accidentally activated "seurity feature" like Computrace and newer (check your BIOS to see if that stuff is permanently disabled). Or an attack using ATM (or later versions) of remote management tools in the BIOS (again, check that it's deactivated).
If you suspect WiFi: remove the WiFi card (or preliminary disable it in the BIOS - might not be of big use), get a OpenWRT compatible router, use that for your Internet access. If your system is stable: well done.
If it's the second: boot from a live-ISO of your choice, make a backup of all your data. Choose one of the infamouse AV live ISOs (e.g. one of the list at https://www.itechtics.com/rescue-disc-virus-scan/ ) , scan for malware. That snakeoil might not be of great use, but when you are desperate ...
... and when you are at it, use adecent kernel! I run Devuan ceres since ages and never had big issues. At least use excalibur as it's out now.
Nik
Bill
P.S. I just did a system upgrade. I am still running Devuan Daedalus, waiting for the next LTS release, whatever and whenever that will be.
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On Monday 10 November 2025 05:51:43 Dr. Nikolaus Klepp via tde-users wrote:
Anno domini 2025 Mon, 10 Nov 00:08:39 -0800
William Morder via tde-users scripsit:
[...] If anybody can offer some insights, of suggestions about how to unravel this mystery, I would be grateful.
Hi Bill!
{snip}
... and when you are at it, use adecent kernel! I run Devuan ceres since ages and never had big issues. At least use excalibur as it's out now.
Nik
Bill
P.S. I just did a system upgrade. I am still running Devuan Daedalus, waiting for the next LTS release, whatever and whenever that will be.
Hi, Nik!
Indeed, a long while ago, there was this guy, Nik, in my TDE users group, who recommended that I install Devuan Excalibur; and it totally messed up my system.
:-/
No problem; I had to do a system reinstallation, anyway, so this was just a little time lost. I just went back to my Daedalus system, and everything was fine again.
Well, yes ... fine ... for a while ... until all this weird stuff started happening over the past year or so.
I try to keep my kernel version up-to-date, but usually trust that to be upgraded with the rest of the system.
When I tried Excalibur before (at least a year ago, maybe longer), it was not then given LTS status. I keep checking Devuan for the next LTS release, but that's one of my few complaints about Devuan: sometimes, they don't communicate too well. I still cannot make out whether Excalibur is now stamped as an LTS release or not -- although I do see that Daedalus now is oldstable.
If Excalibur is indeed an LTS release, and I can just change my sources.list and upgrade, then I agree, it's time to make that change.
When I get a little time later, I will try some of those suggestions from Mike Bird and E. Liddell.
For what it's worth, I did try my machine on another network for just a few days, when I made a trip up north back around the 1st of September; everything was fine there, no problems at all. Of course, it's a small town, not so much competition for bandwidth, so that could be part of it. My laptop never got out of the bag for more than a week, rather than being always on.
Otherwise, I have to pack up my computer gear and go to the public library or somewhere like that. It can be done, but for me right now that's a bother. As I said, I am in the midst of moving; trying to pack up everything, relearning how to live out of a backpack. My computer gear seems to claim much of my time; especially when I have to pack or unpack it. Life is short, and getting shorter.
It might be a good idea, as was suggested, to turn off the wifi in the bios, then to use another way of accessing the network. I do have an old wifi antenna buried away, which still worked when I used it with my desktop. I wonder if I could get it working with this machine? Also I was looking around for a yagi antenna, but haven't thought much more on it yet.
And to those on the TDE mailing list who maybe don't like reading so much: Trust me, I haven't even told more than a few bits of what's going on here. For example: I have a huge hole in my floor, and now occasionally see rats the size of dachshunds; I got some rat poison when the building was inspected a few days ago.
This is just a tiny snapshot of what's happening here. I am just trying to stay sane, and keep my focus on getting moved up north. I thank everybody for their patience, as my life sometimes spills over into public places. Any help or suggestions regarding my computer issues will be much appreciated, as at least I can try to get control of that one thing.
Bill
On Monday 10 November 2025 10:26:53 William Morder wrote:
On Monday 10 November 2025 05:51:43 Dr. Nikolaus Klepp via tde-users wrote:
{snip}
... and when you are at it, use adecent kernel! I run Devuan ceres since ages and never had big issues. At least use excalibur as it's out now.
Nik
Okay, so I have been pondering an upgrade to Excalibur. After doing a bit of searching, it does seem to be an LTS release.
However, I also read about this new development, named usrmerge, for example: https://www.devuan.org/os/announce/excalibur-usrmerge-announce-2024-02-20.ht...
Note this part: "first ensure there is sufficient disk space to accomodate the merge"; by which I assume that they mean on my root partition. It shouldn't touch my home directory, I believe. (I hope!) On my root partition, nowadays I keep about 20 gb to spare, just for this kind of thing.
My home directory is rather cluttered with too much junk at the moment, and inconvenient to do a backup, but I can manage it, maybe over the weekend.
I wonder if this usrmerge was implemented earlier, when Excalibur was still in testing?
Bill
Anno domini 2025 Mon, 10 Nov 18:22:57 -0800 William Morder via tde-users scripsit:
On Monday 10 November 2025 10:26:53 William Morder wrote:
On Monday 10 November 2025 05:51:43 Dr. Nikolaus Klepp via tde-users wrote:
{snip}
... and when you are at it, use adecent kernel! I run Devuan ceres since ages and never had big issues. At least use excalibur as it's out now.
Nik
Okay, so I have been pondering an upgrade to Excalibur. After doing a bit of searching, it does seem to be an LTS release.
However, I also read about this new development, named usrmerge, for example: https://www.devuan.org/os/announce/excalibur-usrmerge-announce-2024-02-20.ht...
Note this part: "first ensure there is sufficient disk space to accomodate the merge"; by which I assume that they mean on my root partition. It shouldn't touch my home directory, I believe. (I hope!) On my root partition, nowadays I keep about 20 gb to spare, just for this kind of thing.
My home directory is rather cluttered with too much junk at the moment, and inconvenient to do a backup, but I can manage it, maybe over the weekend.
I wonder if this usrmerge was implemented earlier, when Excalibur was still in testing?
usrmerge has been there for at least 2 years. It gave me repeated problems when upgrading systems, but not recently - well, might be 'cause I've been thgrough that upgrade process all along. In the end it's just moving binaries to diffenet places and not doing it well. Nothing breaking, but installation will not proceed if you run into an issue till you move stuff by hand.
Nik
Bill
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On Monday 10 November 2025 23:15:29 Dr. Nikolaus Klepp via tde-users wrote:
Anno domini 2025 Mon, 10 Nov 18:22:57 -0800
This is sort of still related to the previous thread, so I wanted to keep it as a sub-thread for reference; but now maybe I need at least to branch it off into something new.
I tried upgrading my system, as all seem to agree that now is the time. However, things did not go smoothly.
First I tried just changing my sources.list (currently running Devuan) to point to excalibur repositories, then attempted to upgrade directly from daedalus to excalibur. This seemed to work just fine, until sometime shortly after I installed usrmerge, my network connection totally disappeared; by which I mean, no wifi available at all.
After that, I tried to do a minimal installation with my USB and the chimaera image; then immediately upgraded to daedalus, then again immediately upgraded to excalibur. And only then did I attempt to continue with the installation of other packages. However, while I can upgrade from chimaera to daedalus, I cannot upgrade from chimaera to daedalus, then to excalibur. I did not try to upgrade directly from chimaera to excalibur; I have heard, from others who tried it, that skipping over a release tends to create problems.
The only other odd thing about the installation was some line asking permission for some packages to do with postgresql (something or other, about 4 or 5 packages). No, I did not take notes, although I know that I probably ought to have done; however, I must plead extenuating circumstances. (Some of this I mentioned before, more gory details are available upon request.)
At present, I cannot use another machine for comparison.
If there is something basic that I am missing here, and anybody out there has a clue, please help. Otherwise, I seem to be stuck in my daedalus system (which is now oldstable), and cannot upgrade to excalibur.
I believe that this could be caused by one of two things:
1) When I upgraded from chimaera to daedalus, I was unable to use a daedalus installation image. I tried putting it on a USB, but when I booted it up, the graphics were all scrambled, and I was unable to proceed past the opening screen. (I described this is some detail, way back when....) So I put my chimaera image on the USB, installed from that; then I upgraded from there to a daedalus system (by changing the repos in my sources.list.) I know this seems a bit convoluted, but when I cannot make out what's on the screen, there is not much else I can do. This seems to have been a problem with the graphics card, or something like that on this machine. I bought it new only a couple years ago. It may be that, new or not, it was already obsolescent, and now maybe can only be trashed.
2) I never use non-free software. I mean, up until now I have been able to avoid it, and my network has always been fine. It may be that my network issues over the past year, the occasional hangs or freezing, is something to do with that. I prefer to stick with GNU/Linux free/libre software, but maybe there is a way around it, such as using a wifi antenna, and turning off the wifi in the bios.
3) This brings me to a fresh surprise: I can no longer get into my bios. I disable UEFI, and am using grub to boot, which has worked well. Then I started getting a window, right after boot, asking if I want to continue a normal boot, go into bios setting, a recovery startup and something else. (There were 4 choices; I will try to take a photo with my next boot.) When I tried to get into the bios, I was asked for a password; but I don't use a password to protect the bios. I used to create an admin password, but it is a bother, when nobody else ever touches this machine, and no ordinary person would be able to get into it, anyway, if they ever got their hands on it.
If I didn't create a bios password, then who did? And is it possible for me to get back into my bios? I don't make changes often, but it would be nice to own my own machine. I keep thinking that maybe this has something to do with disabling UEFI and using grub; except that for a while, nothing changed.
This simplest solutions that I can think of at the moment is for me to buy a couple extra flash drives, so that I can put a genuine excalibur installation image on one of them. Then that possibility will be ruled out (that is, that I might succeed installing directly from the excalibur image). But if I put excalibur on a flash drive, and I get the same scrambled screen as when I tried it with daedalus, then I have no way to go back to a working system ... at least, not without much more trouble.
If anybody out there has some idea what might be going on, I would appreciate the help. At the moment, I have got my daedalus system back and working normally; but I would like to move forward. It may be that I will have to buy yet another laptop, one with hardware that can meet the demands of newer systems.
Also, by the way, I hesitate to upgrade to the latest TDE release; since I already have problems, I felt that this could only complicated matters even more.
I am unsure how to proceed, if I can proceed at all. It may be that I can hold off upgrading until I get myself completely moved out of the city. Then at least I will have all my things in one place, and life is much slower there, and I won't have to manage so many disasters all at the same time.
Bill
пт, 14 нояб. 2025 г., 01:56 William Morder via tde-users < users@trinitydesktop.org>:
On Monday 10 November 2025 23:15:29 Dr. Nikolaus Klepp via tde-users wrote:
Anno domini 2025 Mon, 10 Nov 18:22:57 -0800
This is sort of still related to the previous thread, so I wanted to keep it as a sub-thread for reference; but now maybe I need at least to branch it off into something new.
I tried upgrading my system, as all seem to agree that now is the time. However, things did not go smoothly.
First I tried just changing my sources.list (currently running Devuan) to point to excalibur repositories, then attempted to upgrade directly from daedalus to excalibur. This seemed to work just fine, until sometime shortly after I installed usrmerge, my network connection totally disappeared; by which I mean, no wifi available at all.
After that, I tried to do a minimal installation with my USB and the chimaera image; then immediately upgraded to daedalus, then again immediately upgraded to excalibur. And only then did I attempt to continue with the installation of other packages. However, while I can upgrade from chimaera to daedalus, I cannot upgrade from chimaera to daedalus, then to excalibur. I did not try to upgrade directly from chimaera to excalibur; I have heard, from others who tried it, that skipping over a release tends to create problems.
The only other odd thing about the installation was some line asking permission for some packages to do with postgresql (something or other, about 4 or 5 packages). No, I did not take notes, although I know that I probably ought to have done; however, I must plead extenuating circumstances. (Some of this I mentioned before, more gory details are available upon request.)
At present, I cannot use another machine for comparison.
If there is something basic that I am missing here, and anybody out there has a clue, please help. Otherwise, I seem to be stuck in my daedalus system (which is now oldstable), and cannot upgrade to excalibur.
I believe that this could be caused by one of two things:
- When I upgraded from chimaera to daedalus, I was unable to use a
daedalus installation image. I tried putting it on a USB, but when I booted it up, the graphics were all scrambled, and I was unable to proceed past the opening screen. (I described this is some detail, way back when....) So I put my chimaera image on the USB, installed from that; then I upgraded from there to a daedalus system (by changing the repos in my sources.list.) I know this seems a bit convoluted, but when I cannot make out what's on the screen, there is not much else I can do. This seems to have been a problem with the graphics card, or something like that on this machine. I bought it new only a couple years ago. It may be that, new or not, it was already obsolescent, and now maybe can only be trashed.
- I never use non-free software. I mean, up until now I have been able to
avoid it, and my network has always been fine. It may be that my network issues over the past year, the occasional hangs or freezing, is something to do with that. I prefer to stick with GNU/Linux free/libre software, but maybe there is a way around it, such as using a wifi antenna, and turning off the wifi in the bios.
- This brings me to a fresh surprise: I can no longer get into my bios. I
disable UEFI, and am using grub to boot, which has worked well. Then I started getting a window, right after boot, asking if I want to continue a normal boot, go into bios setting, a recovery startup and something else. (There were 4 choices; I will try to take a photo with my next boot.) When I tried to get into the bios, I was asked for a password; but I don't use a password to protect the bios. I used to create an admin password, but it is a bother, when nobody else ever touches this machine, and no ordinary person would be able to get into it, anyway, if they ever got their hands on it.
If I didn't create a bios password, then who did? And is it possible for me to get back into my bios? I don't make changes often, but it would be nice to own my own machine. I keep thinking that maybe this has something to do with disabling UEFI and using grub; except that for a while, nothing changed.
This simplest solutions that I can think of at the moment is for me to buy a couple extra flash drives, so that I can put a genuine excalibur installation image on one of them. Then that possibility will be ruled out (that is, that I might succeed installing directly from the excalibur image). But if I put excalibur on a flash drive, and I get the same scrambled screen as when I tried it with daedalus, then I have no way to go back to a working system ... at least, not without much more trouble.
If anybody out there has some idea what might be going on, I would appreciate the help. At the moment, I have got my daedalus system back and working normally; but I would like to move forward. It may be that I will have to buy yet another laptop, one with hardware that can meet the demands of newer systems.
Also, by the way, I hesitate to upgrade to the latest TDE release; since I already have problems, I felt that this could only complicated matters even more.
I am unsure how to proceed, if I can proceed at all. It may be that I can hold off upgrading until I get myself completely moved out of the city.
Honestly, I think this is most sensible plan. (Slackware user).
Then at
least I will have all my things in one place, and life is much slower there, and I won't have to manage so many disasters all at the same time.
Bill
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On Thursday 13 November 2025 15:41:19 Andrew Randrianasulu via tde-users wrote:
пт, 14 нояб. 2025 г., 01:56 William Morder via tde-users <
{snip - the long version}
If anybody out there has some idea what might be going on, I would appreciate the help. At the moment, I have got my daedalus system back and working normally; but I would like to move forward. It may be that I will have to buy yet another laptop, one with hardware that can meet the demands of newer systems.
Also, by the way, I hesitate to upgrade to the latest TDE release; since I already have problems, I felt that this could only complicated matters even more.
I am unsure how to proceed, if I can proceed at all. It may be that I can hold off upgrading until I get myself completely moved out of the city.
Honestly, I think this is most sensible plan. (Slackware user).
My system is running just fine again, everything seems stable. For my normal use, which doesn't require internet too much, I can probably put this off at least for a few more months.
But I wonder, is it possible for me to upgrade the kernel, or to get up-to-date security patches, while still using daedalus as an oldstable release?
If I could at least keep my system stable and secure until then, that would be great.
Bill
пт, 14 нояб. 2025 г., 04:17 William Morder via tde-users < users@trinitydesktop.org>:
On Thursday 13 November 2025 15:41:19 Andrew Randrianasulu via tde-users wrote:
пт, 14 нояб. 2025 г., 01:56 William Morder via tde-users <
{snip - the long version}
If anybody out there has some idea what might be going on, I would appreciate the help. At the moment, I have got my daedalus system back and working normally; but I would like to move forward. It may be that I will have
to
buy yet another laptop, one with hardware that can meet the demands of
newer
systems.
Also, by the way, I hesitate to upgrade to the latest TDE release;
since
I already have problems, I felt that this could only complicated
matters
even more.
I am unsure how to proceed, if I can proceed at all. It may be that I
can
hold off upgrading until I get myself completely moved out of the city.
Honestly, I think this is most sensible plan. (Slackware user).
My system is running just fine again, everything seems stable. For my normal use, which doesn't require internet too much, I can probably put this off at least for a few more months.
But I wonder, is it possible for me to upgrade the kernel, or to get up-to-date security patches, while still using daedalus as an oldstable release?
Generic wikipedia says Daedalus will be supported until 2028?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devuan
Devuan page list it as "maintained" so I think this includes updating kernel (within 6.1 branch)?
https://www.devuan.org/os/releases
I poked package website and packages for 5.0 seems to be last updated 30 oct 2025?
http://deb.devuan.org/devuan/dists/5.0/main/binary-amd64/
May be ask on their mail list about support status?
If I could at least keep my system stable and secure until then, that would be great.
Bill
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Anno domini 2025 Thu, 13 Nov 14:55:20 -0800 William Morder via tde-users scripsit:
[...] 3) This brings me to a fresh surprise: I can no longer get into my bios. I disable UEFI, and am using grub to boot, which has worked well. Then I started getting a window, right after boot, asking if I want to continue a normal boot, go into bios setting, a recovery startup and something else. (There were 4 choices; I will try to take a photo with my next boot.) When I tried to get into the bios, I was asked for a password; but I don't use a password to protect the bios. I used to create an admin password, but it is a bother, when nobody else ever touches this machine, and no ordinary person would be able to get into it, anyway, if they ever got their hands on it.
If I didn't create a bios password, then who did? And is it possible for me to get back into my bios? I don't make changes often, but it would be nice to own my own machine. I keep thinking that maybe this has something to do with disabling UEFI and using grub; except that for a while, nothing changed.
If it wasn't you ... I would really start thinking ... SVPs do not happen by chance and as said the remote access feature is on by default till you turn it off in the BIOS. Please post your laptops type - might be somebody on the list knows a way to clear the SVP and flash a clean BIOS. Anyway, if this happened to me I'd get a different laptop, no matter how old that might be.
Nik
Bill
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On Friday 14 November 2025 00:53:49 Dr. Nikolaus Klepp via tde-users wrote:
Anno domini 2025 Thu, 13 Nov 14:55:20 -0800
William Morder via tde-users scripsit:
[...] 3) This brings me to a fresh surprise: I can no longer get into my bios. I disable UEFI, and am using grub to boot, which has worked well. Then I started getting a window, right after boot, asking if I want to continue a normal boot, go into bios setting, a recovery startup and something else. (There were 4 choices; I will try to take a photo with my next boot.) When I tried to get into the bios, I was asked for a password; but I don't use a password to protect the bios. I used to create an admin password, but it is a bother, when nobody else ever touches this machine, and no ordinary person would be able to get into it, anyway, if they ever got their hands on it.
If I didn't create a bios password, then who did? And is it possible for me to get back into my bios? I don't make changes often, but it would be nice to own my own machine. I keep thinking that maybe this has something to do with disabling UEFI and using grub; except that for a while, nothing changed.
If it wasn't you ... I would really start thinking ... SVPs do not happen by chance and as said the remote access feature is on by default till you turn it off in the BIOS. Please post your laptops type - might be somebody on the list knows a way to clear the SVP and flash a clean BIOS. Anyway, if this happened to me I'd get a different laptop, no matter how old that might be.
Nik
Laptop specs are:
Lenovo Ideapad 3 15 15.6" laptop - AMD Ryzen 3 - GB Memory
128 GB SSD came installed, then was replaced with a 2 TB SSD which got fried (or something)
Now I am running the machine from a 256 gb USB flash drive. Everything worth keeping is saved on external drives.
I boot using GRUB, disabled UEFI
After doing some research about Lenovo laptops and SVP set on the BIOS, I find that it seems to be a pretty common complaint. Apparently it is possible to reset the BIOS, or flash it, but that will be a new experience for me. I wonder if it is possible to do it now, without bricking my machine.
As I keep complaining, I am in the midst of moving. I don't want to get into deep waters, technically speaking, where I will need to dig out all my computer gear. I am trying to keep my life simple, pare everything down to a minimu, so that I can get myself and the rest of my stuff out of the city.
Also, I don't want to have to go out and buy a new laptop just yet. If I can put off any major changes like that for another few months, that would be better for me.
Still, from what I read, it looks not necessarily impossible ... so if anybody can suggest how I can reset my BIOS, or at least remove the password, short of bricking my machine, that would be appreciated.
Bill
Bill
Anno domini 2025 Fri, 14 Nov 18:11:17 -0800 William Morder via tde-users scripsit:
On Friday 14 November 2025 00:53:49 Dr. Nikolaus Klepp via tde-users wrote:
Anno domini 2025 Thu, 13 Nov 14:55:20 -0800
William Morder via tde-users scripsit:
[...] 3) This brings me to a fresh surprise: I can no longer get into my bios. I disable UEFI, and am using grub to boot, which has worked well. Then I started getting a window, right after boot, asking if I want to continue a normal boot, go into bios setting, a recovery startup and something else. (There were 4 choices; I will try to take a photo with my next boot.) When I tried to get into the bios, I was asked for a password; but I don't use a password to protect the bios. I used to create an admin password, but it is a bother, when nobody else ever touches this machine, and no ordinary person would be able to get into it, anyway, if they ever got their hands on it.
If I didn't create a bios password, then who did? And is it possible for me to get back into my bios? I don't make changes often, but it would be nice to own my own machine. I keep thinking that maybe this has something to do with disabling UEFI and using grub; except that for a while, nothing changed.
If it wasn't you ... I would really start thinking ... SVPs do not happen by chance and as said the remote access feature is on by default till you turn it off in the BIOS. Please post your laptops type - might be somebody on the list knows a way to clear the SVP and flash a clean BIOS. Anyway, if this happened to me I'd get a different laptop, no matter how old that might be.
Nik
Laptop specs are:
Lenovo Ideapad 3 15 15.6" laptop - AMD Ryzen 3 - GB Memory
Ok, I hava 2 Lenovo Ideapad 3 17 (17aba7) here. I had to install additional 16GB RAM recently (8 GB onboard) 'cause firefox ran out of memory all the time and in doing so it focked up the whole machine. Same happened when using virtualbox.
For the password: have you tried this https://www.windowsdigitals.com/reset-bios-password-for-lenovo-thinkpad-idea... ? But you need a second computer for internet access and I don't know if the system is disabled permanently after 3 wrong tries ....
Nik
128 GB SSD came installed, then was replaced with a 2 TB SSD which got fried (or something)
Now I am running the machine from a 256 gb USB flash drive. Everything worth keeping is saved on external drives.
I boot using GRUB, disabled UEFI
After doing some research about Lenovo laptops and SVP set on the BIOS, I find that it seems to be a pretty common complaint. Apparently it is possible to reset the BIOS, or flash it, but that will be a new experience for me. I wonder if it is possible to do it now, without bricking my machine.
As I keep complaining, I am in the midst of moving. I don't want to get into deep waters, technically speaking, where I will need to dig out all my computer gear. I am trying to keep my life simple, pare everything down to a minimu, so that I can get myself and the rest of my stuff out of the city.
Also, I don't want to have to go out and buy a new laptop just yet. If I can put off any major changes like that for another few months, that would be better for me.
Still, from what I read, it looks not necessarily impossible ... so if anybody can suggest how I can reset my BIOS, or at least remove the password, short of bricking my machine, that would be appreciated.
Bill
Bill
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Have you considered cleaning your computers? As in, physically cleaning the hardware. There might be some dust/liquid damage/ant colony living there that might make your computer less stable.
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Andrew Randrianasulu -
Dr. Nikolaus Klepp -
E. Liddell -
Mike Bird -
rave002＠o2.pl -
William Morder