my computer was running fine and normal, until two days ago.
i rebooted, and left my ipod plugged in. normally in this scenario, the computer will boot to the dell loading screen as it always does, and the progress bar will stick at about 95 percent. so i press power, unplug the ipod, and restart normally. this time, however, on reboot i came up with a "Hard disk #***********-A95B, the primary system HDD, is protected by a password authentication system" message...a *similar* message has been discussed at length on these boards. it seems that very few people have the exact same message...there are more starting with "This computer, #blahblahblah"...
and from what i've heard, HDD passwords are close to impossible to break. if anyone can help me out, i would like to know how this could have happened, and what i can do to [at the very least] preserve the data on the disk or remove the password.
the curious thing is that after reading the forum, i came under knowledge that a password can be generated using information from my computer...which was unsuccessful over the phone with dell. they provided me a password which they had "generated," and it did not work. however, the tech support woman was almost arguing with me that the HDD password was the same as the bios/system password. i have seen other peoples' messages, and they are seemingly different (system/computer password as opposed to hard disk). am i wrong to think that if i were to put my HD into another 5150, the data would still be locked? i am still able to get into bios on my computer...
...which brings me to the fact that i'm getting eleven asterisks instead of a code, followed by the "bios standard" a95b (which is why they insist that it's a bios password). does this mean that (potentially) my hd is not actually the problem, but there is a motherboard short causing it to not be recognized properly?
help is desparately appreciated. thanks :]
i rebooted, and left my ipod plugged in. normally in this scenario, the computer will boot to the dell loading screen as it always does, and the progress bar will stick at about 95 percent. so i press power, unplug the ipod, and restart normally. this time, however, on reboot i came up with a "Hard disk #***********-A95B, the primary system HDD, is protected by a password authentication system" message...a *similar* message has been discussed at length on these boards. it seems that very few people have the exact same message...there are more starting with "This computer, #blahblahblah"...
and from what i've heard, HDD passwords are close to impossible to break. if anyone can help me out, i would like to know how this could have happened, and what i can do to [at the very least] preserve the data on the disk or remove the password.
the curious thing is that after reading the forum, i came under knowledge that a password can be generated using information from my computer...which was unsuccessful over the phone with dell. they provided me a password which they had "generated," and it did not work. however, the tech support woman was almost arguing with me that the HDD password was the same as the bios/system password. i have seen other peoples' messages, and they are seemingly different (system/computer password as opposed to hard disk). am i wrong to think that if i were to put my HD into another 5150, the data would still be locked? i am still able to get into bios on my computer...
...which brings me to the fact that i'm getting eleven asterisks instead of a code, followed by the "bios standard" a95b (which is why they insist that it's a bios password). does this mean that (potentially) my hd is not actually the problem, but there is a motherboard short causing it to not be recognized properly?
help is desparately appreciated. thanks :]