dell laptop harddrive

[mousey4207]

i acquired a 60 gb ide laptop harddrive from a friend i wanted to see if it worked when i try to boot from it it asks for a password ive tried to go into the bios and it wouldnt let me change the password in the bios without the original password is there any way to unlock the drive any suggestions appreciated

 

[mousey4207]

any suggestions at all

 

[Denithor]

Is the password protecting the BIOS or the new hard drive? When does the password come up?

What you probably need to do is boot from an OS disk and then format the 60GB drive. Then you can use it either for a clean install or to copy your stuff intact from the original drive in your laptop.

 

[mousey4207]

it asks for hdd password b4 it will boot into a cd rom

 

[Denithor]

I don't think I've seen this problem before, you do have the CD set to boot before the hdd, right? Because it sounds like the computer is still accessing the hdd before the cd drive.

Do you have any way to hook it into another computer as a secondary drive (or on USB adapter)? Format there when not a bootable drive...