Suddenly my laptop Hard Drive has a password?


  1. lister
    Posts : 259
    Windows 7 Panasonic CF F9 (used to have CF F8)
       New #1

    Suddenly my laptop Hard Drive has a password?


    I have 2 laptops - the hard drive for one of them is now suddenly asking me for a password.

    I never set any password on it -

    The only explanation I have is this:

    1. I set the BIOS password on one laptop (which has a dual boot)
    2. I made a backup image of the Windows OS on an external drive using that dual-booted machine
    3. I then installed that backed-up image on the other harddrive using the same machine - and that caused the password....

    Bottom line, I don't get much information online due to people being cautious to help remove passwords due to theft but - if there is an obvious thing please let me know b/c this Hard drive has now become a paperweight....

    Thanks!!
      My Computer
    Quote Quote

  3. alphanumeric
    Posts : 4,466
    Windows 10 Education 64 bit
       New #2

    If you don't care about the DATA on the drive try this. Delete all partitions, create new ones, and format the drive. Then see if its usable again. Some laptop BIOS will let you set a password to the hard drive, that you have to enter before the OS will load. I thought that was stored in the BIOS but maybe in this case it actually does something to the hard drive. If it just modifies the boot sector wiping the partition should clear it, hopefully anyway.

    EDIT: Another option would be to go to the drive manufacturers web site and look for a utility to restore the drive to factory condition. Sometimes referred to as low level formating or zeroing the drive.
      My Computer
    Quote Quote

  4. Wrench97
    Posts : 78
    Win 7
       New #3

    What Brand and Model Laptop?
    Toshiba had an issue with Bios set passwords being mysteriously set and a Bios update to prevent it.
      My Computer
    Quote Quote

 

  Related Discussions
Hello! Long story short, my external hard drive suddenly became unallocated. I've seen some youtube guides, posts on other forums, posts on sevenforums, but I can't figure it out -- the solutions for some of these forum posts don't work for me. And so I decided to make a new thread in the hope of...
Hard Drive suddenly slow
in Hardware & Devices

Started copying at 138MB/s and now wont copy ANY file anymore more then 2MB/s. Im analysing defragmentation software now, and while my 2 partitions and 1tb external drives were done in mere seconds, my problematic slow 2,5tb drive is taking 5 minutes already now to analyse. Best part is that...
Hard drive suddenly full
in Hardware & Devices

Hi, My hard drive is really full. I have only got less than 3 GB space. I have tried deleting all the unwanted programs, files. It still stays full. Please help.
My Dell Studio XPS 16 motherboard failed but I was able to get the hard drive out of my computer and connected to my desktop using a case that makes it act as an external hard drive. I now am trying to copy the old files from the Dell hard drive to my new computer's hard drive but some of the...
Our family laptop (HP Pavillion g7, Windows 7) suddenly needs a password to log in. We did not have a password set for this computer. We were on it this weekend and it did not require a password. Can not log in safe mode. If this is a virus, how do we get rid of it?
Our Sites
Site Links
About Us
Windows 7 Forums is an independent web site and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Microsoft Corporation. "Windows 7" and related materials are trademarks of Microsoft Corp.

 © Designer Media Ltd
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 05:06.
Find Us