I joined this forum simply to put this up there for people to see. I am by no means a car whiz or claim to have a great vast of knowledge about mechanics. I am just a guy with a small tool set and a little bit of common sense who got tired of my wife complaining that her car wouldn't start and had to wait for 10 minutes to reset her stupid security system. What you need to disable the Passlock system in a 2001 Alero is a set of star bits, a 9/32 ratchet bit and ratchet with an extension, electrical tape, wire stripers,needle nose pliers, and about 45 minutes. Make sure your car is turned off. I literally just finished this about an hour ago.
Steps:
1. Use your star bits and remove the 3 screws underneath your steering column and pop the two halves apart. Take the top half off (I tried to get the bottom half off for a few minutes and gave up, but I was still able to do it with the bottom half on.)
2. Take your 9/32 bit and take the 2 screws off of the black plastic around your instrument cluster and take that off. Carefully take the wiring harness off of the trip reset button.
3. Still using the 9/32 bit remove the 4 screws around the instrument cluster and remove it and set it on the dash to get it out of the way.
4. By now you should be able to see the ignition cylinder on the right with 3 wires coming out of it (should be yellow, black, and white) and they are all pretty small and should be wrapped in some kind of black tape cloth like stuff. Take your needle nose pliers and gently tug on those wires and expose as much as possible. They should be kind of wrapped around and then disappear towards the stereo. You will only get about 6-7 inches of wire to play with. Remove the cloth tape and cut the yellow wire and the black wire. Make sure you leave enough room in case you mess up you can easily fix it. I am pretty sure that the white wire here controls the theftlock on the stereo but am not sure.
5. Strip the wires on the side away from the ignition cylinder and splice them together (I went ahead and stripped both sides just in case this didn't work or stopped working later I could easily fix it back.) Use your electrical tape and wrap it up real good.
6. Try to start your car. When I tried to do this the security light came on and it wouldn't let me start it. I had to go through the 10 minute relearn process. Once the process completes you should be able to start your car just fine, but notice that the security light is on and will stay on in your instrument cluster. I was able to start my car 4 or 5 times and drove it a little bit with no problems at all other than the security light being stuck on.
7. Place the wires back inside and reverse the first part of this and you should be good to go.
I tried just cutting the yellow wire, but when I did that the car would star them immediately die.
I hope this helps somebody out there. We were about to buy a new car just because of this freaking security system. I am not sure why GM hasn't done some kind of recall but as far as I can tell this is going to work.