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BIOS/CMOS and HDD Password Nightmare!!

By ryanrichardson805 ·
I've been having significant problems with a Notebook I recently purchased. I bought it from a "trusted" source only to discover that there was a BIOS password on boot-up.

I succesfuly located the CMOS battery, unplugged it for about 4 hours and the BIOS embedded password is gone. Now I am being prompted
for the, 'HDD 0 Password'. Is there any hope of bypassing this?

If not i guess I can replace the hard drive but I have one concern. Is it possible that the HDD Password is stored in RAM memory somewhere on the motherboard, and is it possible that when i put a new HD in it will be transfered to the new device?

If anyone knows the answer to this, I would love to hear it. I'm paranoid about dropping the cash on a new HD just to have it be P/W protected.

Any help is greatly appreciated!!!

BTW- it's a Gateway 200STM

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by hughiemcginley In reply to BIOS/CMOS and HDD Passwor ...

remove the hdd and then restart the laptop.
then reinstall the hdd select it in bios and use a boot disk do an fdisk /mbr

should solve your problem

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by ryanrichardson805 In reply to

Thank you for responding to my question. I do appreciate it! Could you clarify though? So I should physicaly remove the HD and then reboot without the device conected to the motherboard? Then re-attach to the motherboard and boot-up with a boot disk and fdisk the sucker? Is that right? When I was initialy locating the CMOS battery I was forced to remove the HD from the motherboard to get underneath and I was still prompted for the PW upon boot up.

Sorry, I'm a little green.

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by rindi1 In reply to BIOS/CMOS and HDD Passwor ...

You won't be able to remove the harddisk password without the help of the manufacturer, and they only do that if you can proof you are eligible to the data on the Disk (Proof of purchase), and that for a good price, so your option is to buy a new disk (luckily for you 2,5" disks and that expensive anymore.

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by ryanrichardson805 In reply to

Thanks for the suggestion! So is it possible though that the HD password could be transfered to a new hard drive? Is the password only on the physical drive and not sonewhere in memory on the motherboard?

Thanks for your help.

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by rindi1 In reply to BIOS/CMOS and HDD Passwor ...

No, the password is somewhere on the disk. The reason for this is to make it impossible for sensitive data to get stolen, which can happen rather quickly with laptops, since they are taken everywhere. There is no data to get out of a newly bought disk, so there is no reason for a notebook manufacturer to waste time and money for a "feature" that doesn't make sense or isn't necessary. Also, you were able to reset the bios password.

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by ryanrichardson805 In reply to

Great - I'm buying a new HDD tomorrow in that case. I just wanted to be sure. Thanks for your help.

-damnmad

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by ryanrichardson805 In reply to BIOS/CMOS and HDD Passwor ...

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