Regina wrote:
>Hi,
>My brother passed away a week ago and left us a computer with no 
>passwords.  It is a Toshiba computer running xp 2005.  At startup it boots 
>into a screen that says 'enter your HDD password' it never gets to the 
>windows boot screen.  I'm being told that the only thing I can do is send 
>it to Toshiba and they want $425 to fix it.  Any ideas on what to do or do 
>I have another paper weight for my desk?>>

I'll assume your heading is correct, and it's a bios password that's 
required, although the error message you quote appears to refer to a hard 
drive password.

I hope I'm wrong, but I believe you have a high-quality paperweight. I know 
that Dell, and doubtless other manufacturers, will at the owner's request 
build a password into the machine's bios. This is supposed to be a security 
measure to deter theft, though I doubt its effectiveness. Would a thief 
stop to consider whether it might be bios-protected?

Short of replacing the motherboard, which would hardly be cost-effective 
unless you happen to be a skilled laptop technician, there seems there's 
nothing else you can do. Unlike hard drive passwords, bios passwords cannot 
be defeated. They can only be unlocked by the manufacturer.  Even then, you 
have to supply them with proof of ownership if you do not have the current 
registered owner's authority. In this case, they would require to see 
either probate or a formal certificate of administration, plus authority 
from the executor or administrator of the estate to yourself.

I've seen the same problem mentioned several times in readers requests in 
various computer magazines.

At $425, I imagine they must have to replace the motherboard.

If it's only a hard drive password, I guess (but don't know for sure) that 
you could simply replace the hard drive---a much more economic proposition, 
assuming the machine is fairly new.

If it's only an XP logon password, then reformat of the hard drive would 
fix that. XP passwords are, following an XP security update issued about a 
year ago, now practically impossible to break. Before that, there was 
software capable of doing it. That software no longer works (unless there 
is some newer version I haven't heard of). I speak from experience here---A 
few months ago, I was asked by a 14-year old kid to help him log into his 
near-new computer on which he already had a lot of expensive data. He'd 
entered a 13-digit complex logon password to stop his little sister getting 
into his new new shiny computer. He'd saved it and logged off before he 
realised he hadn't written it down. Ouch. An expensive exercise.

Don Penlington.

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