Dell D600

**danIT** · 10th May 2007, 11:21 AM

We have a couple of Dell D600 in the school,
one of them was taken home last night and returned today with a hard drive password, the member of staff assures me one was never set, and i beleive him he comes from an IT support back ground an knows what hes doing.

Its a white screen which prompts for hard drive password, if i remove the hard drive i can access the bios but no options in bios for hard drive password protection?

Its strange as one has never been set?

any ideas?

I dont beleive its a bios password, but actually something to do with an EPROM chip which over rides the hard drive to ask for pwd.

**Butuz** · 10th May 2007, 12:23 PM

The Dell machines allow you to set paswords in the bios for accessing usb drives, accessing hard drives, accessing floppy drives.

Reset the CMOS / unplug the PC take the battery out for 15 mins. Should fix you up.

Andrew

**plexer** · 10th May 2007, 12:31 PM

Presume it's a laptop? if so the above advice won't help.

Ben

**danIT** · 10th May 2007, 01:18 PM

It is a laptop, and you right this wont fix this problem.

Ive heard about shorting out the chip on the motherboard, but seems quite drastic?

**Ashers** · 10th May 2007, 10:18 PM

I can't remember exactly the way to het this out but I remember that you lost data, if you can get in to the BIOS, which I think you can't then you can switch the setting off. Otherwise pop the HDD in to another machine that doesn't support the Password protected HDD and try a reformat. Apart from that try Dell Tech support, I think the Web support is free if not fast

**mac_shinobi** · 10th May 2007, 10:39 PM

your best bet would be to get the service tag off the of the machine(s) and give dell tech support a ring. they will then give you a password which is equivalent or a backdoor password to it which will unlock it and clear it.

Had this issue before when i was working at kingswood school and that was the only way around it without too much of a head ache.

**kingswood** · 11th May 2007, 07:09 AM

It is the only way around it. Dell have a master password that resets this sort of thing. And I'm sorry to say- it has to be *explicitly* set in the BIOS to activate. In other words, your techie friend who had the laptop did indeed set it. Sorry.