[deedster]

I went into the BIOS on my Asus G1 running Windows Vista Home Premium and password-protected my hard drive. Somehow, I entered the 20 letter/symbol/number password in wrong, twice, and I cannot get into my laptop now. Is there any way I can remove the password without erasing my data?

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That was clever wasn't it?

Moving a locked hard disk to another machine will not unlock it, since the hard disk password is stored in the hard disk firmware and moves with the hard disk. Also, adding a new (unlocked) hard disk to a locked machine may cause the new hard disk to become locked. Also, note that hard disk lock passwords cannot be removed by reformatting the disk, fdisk or any other software procedure (since the disk will not allow and reads or writes to the disk, it cannot be reformatted.) You can test to determine if your hard disk is locked by attempting to access it in another laptop.

[Neil Jones]

That was clever wasn't it?

Moving a locked hard disk to another machine will not unlock it, since the hard disk password is stored in the hard disk firmware and moves with the hard disk. Also, adding a new (unlocked) hard disk to a locked machine may cause the new hard disk to become locked. Also, note that hard disk lock passwords cannot be removed by reformatting the disk, fdisk or any other software procedure (since the disk will not allow and reads or writes to the disk, it cannot be reformatted.) You can test to determine if your hard disk is locked by attempting to access it in another laptop.

[deedster]

I know that my hard drive is protected, I need to know what I can to do remove my password.

[Neil Jones]

Not a lot is the honest answer.
Theoretically flashing the firmware of the drive is one option but of course this will always carry a risk with it that if it does work, the computer will think the drive is not formatted. Plus if it goes wrong the drive is most likely electronically defunct.

[Murray S.]

Howdy:

About all you can do now is send the system to a certified service centre and have them reset or remove the password.

Murray