locked hard drive

[zaphad1]

well heres an easy thing i think not!
I bought a laptop ibm thinkpadb 600 on ebay and the hard drive is locked its not the bios or the the start up or admin cos ive swapped them around>
Al i want to do is merely access and format the hard drive thats all.
. It wont give me access
it gets recognised when connected to another computer but then just comes up with this rubbish not accesible,
the bit i want is the master boot record cos thats where it is.
i need to to get access to it in a word>
I dont mind erasing the whole lot

Any ideas?
the password lock is definetilely on the hard drive i dont want to retreive anything just want to format it.

 

[Jackiefrost9]

The exact message would help, at least it would help me.

 

[zaphad1]

there isnt a message that i can rmember it just says unable to access it<
this is on a windowsxp pro computer
it finds the drive ok tells how many mbs it is cylinder head and all that
but as soon as you click on it it says not accessible
Ive tried dos
you get loading driver banana etc
and cant get it from there
I have found a thing that might work tho partition table doctor

 

[Super-D-38]

have you tried this?..
don't know if it will work but..

"To unlock the hard disk drive

unlock x:

The x represents the letter of the hard disk drive that you wish to unlock. For example, if you needed to unlock the C: drive, type c in the place of x."

 

[zaphad1]

No i havent i couldnt get hold of the dos version that has it
the dos ive got is a boot up disk.
I searched high and low for it on its own on the internet with no joy
Whats happening is you cant normally even get access to it in dos at all
thanks for replying regards Mark>
Ps looking on the web it seems unlock is used for something else.
pps you cant even fdisk it or do anything.
ppss its an ibm drive and im begiining to think you have to read it and acces it from a totally diffrent os to an ibm compatible windows type of thing as this will read it differently ie linux mac or something which i havent got anyway.

 

[Super-D-38]

Bummer, can you contact the seller? does he know anything about it? Maybe who locked it in the first place.

 

[JohnWill]

Some IBM and Toshiba (and possibly other brands) come with password protected hard disks as an anti-theft measure. If you don't have the password for the hard disk, you're pretty much out of luck. The easiest way around the problem is to purchase another hard disk.

 

[zaphad1]

Yes thatd be the best thing its only a small hard drive 4 gig
Thanks for all the help,
regards Mark

 

[JohnWill]

I'd check the specs for the laptop to see what size disk it'll accept, you may have to do a BIOS upgrade for larger disks, or perhaps a drive overlay.

 

[zaphad1]

its the slim 9.5 mm type
I bought 2 of these ibm thinkpad 600 s on ebay sold as faulty untested
ive got one up and running so far
first time id ever had a look at a laptop lol
the first thing you need is the manual for it to refer to from ibm homepage
this tells you error messages etc.

At first they both had error 161 163 192
on systemboard check you get
dev001
err 91
fru3610 or fru 3810
means the cmos battery is dead
In case anybody else has these problems too
heres a summary of things i had to do
1 get an ac adaptor , mine came with no psu so i couldnt even tell what they were like for a few days,
2 replace the cmos battery it was dead,
its a cr2025 type cheap and easy to replace .

Different thinkpads have different batteries so check first.
3 fdisk the old hdd in dos with a dos boot up disk I downloaded from the internet,
and then format it it had 2 non dos partitions on it lol
It came with an external floppy which was handy.
4 the cd drive didnt work at all.
What was happening was it had a foam pad on one side that kept making them stick, the solution was to rip it out with a piece of bent wire with a hook at on end till the cd spun freely.
ps this is not generally recommended
lol they must have made cds smaller then
5 Install an os i had win98se
6 The cd kept spinning too much and couldnt find files during install
because the hole in cd was fractionally too big
thinkpad cd drives are made to an exact spec which normally fits the hole in a cd
the solution to this is a little blob of blue tack to hold it still.
7 Get and install the bios upgrade from ibm homepage
8 Get and install the track point driver from ibm webpage

9 Install the display driver downloaded from ibm
the one you need is called neomagic or neograph or something circa 2001
I originally tried the newer one and couldnt do anything with it
so was stuck with 16 colours and a resolution of 640 x 480 for a few days.
The one you want changes the display adapter NOT the monitor .
Anyway one works fine but one has a locked hard drive,
i just need a new hard drive I think then Ill get that one going.
Thanks for all the help
regards Mark

 

[JohnWill]

I was actually referring to the capacity of the disk, but obviously it has to also physically fit in the machine.

 

[zaphad1]

Your right.
I havent got a big disk to test it anyway yet, so i have no idea what size the bios will go up to and accept.

 

[zaphad1]

I was just trying to get them going as they are.