locked hdd

[jay51]

hello,i have a acer laptop here from a customer,kids went into bios and set a password,cant boot to vista now,keeps asking for hdd password and after 3 tries reboot,been messing with it for over a week,, its in pieces now lol...is my only option,new hdd and hope laptop dont lock it to?

thanks

[SugarJ]

No clear_cmos jumper?

[jay51]

Originally Posted by SugarJ

No clear_cmos jumper?

clear_cmos did not work hdd still locked,

[SugarJ]

That sucks. Can you access the drive in another machine? They're usually SATA drives.....

Also, did you remove the battery while clearing cmos? Can you boot to a USB key or DVD? You could probably flash a new BIOS, which should erase the lock if it is BIOS based..

[jay51]

c&p from another forum

the password is stored on the hdd circuit (similar to an eprom)

forget about removing it yourself. unless the data is worth it, it will be chaeper just to buy another drive.

have not tried it in another pc yet.worth a shot

[SugarJ]

Ouch. Unless you can access it from another machine (not likely), it's new HDD time.

[jay51]

found these guys @ $85us Nortek - ThinkPad Password Solutions: Power On, Supervisor, Hard Disk Password Removal
i think new hdd might be the way to go,orig. hdd has no data worth any value

edit: If you have a password protected unit that is not manufactured by IBM and you require our services, we request the entire system (including A/C adapter) is shipped to us for a No-Charge evaluation. Once the unit is evaluated, we will forward password removal options and pricing details.

more than 85 omg,lol

[SugarJ]

New HDD, I picked one up from NCIX for my son's acer for about $60....

[jay51]

hopefully there will be one onsale, new deals start tonight :)

[sswilson]

As long as you have the backup disks, and there's nothing on the laptop that's needed, I can't imagine it'd be less expensive to go the password removal route.