I bought an HP Elitebook 8460p on eBay and it came with a password-locked Hitachi hard drive which I was told is the original hard drive. I don't know the password for the drive and running the diagnostics tools I see the hard drive is healthy. I tried booting the notebook with Hiren's BootCD 14 and 15 but couldn't find a way to retrieve or reset the password (I don't know, maybe I missed something). I was once told the password is stored somewhere in the computer. How can I unlock the drive? Any suggestions?
My post above assumes that you have a locked hard disk drive. Many laptop drives have this facility. They use a user password but there is also a manufacturer's master password. Read the link I posted.
Other possible boot passwords include a BIOS boot password and a password for a third-party whole drive data encryption suite that encrypts every sector of the drive.
Are you trying to recover the data on the drive or simply reformat the drive for use?
Thanks for the replies.
I would love to recover the data because the hard drive has fresh install Windows 7 Pro.
I cannot even get into BIOS. When I boot the laptop it prompts directly for the hard drive password and I don't know the password.
I don't think so. I got in touch with the seller's company after I bought it. It's a computer company from NY. They have website and everything. They sell those laptops everyday. They offer tech support as well.