Not sure how to proceed with this laptop repair.

[ram57ta]

Friend of mine has a buddy with a 2yr old Toshiba Satellite L505 that he bought new. He went on a trip and when he gets home and tries to turn on the computer it asks for his BIOS password. Since he never set one...he's lost. Get to reading on the net....and apparently this has been an issue with several of these Toshiba's because of a glitch in the original BIOS...not to fear...I found a trick that resets the bios password by using a jumper on the motherboard. SO....bios password is gone...now the computer asks me for a HDD#1 password...the Hitachi drive is locked and he doesn't know the password...can't do shit with it even with advanced hard drive tools. No prob...he went to Frys and picked up a new 500gb drive for me. He originally made A (1) recovery DVD. Prob is...I grabbed a spare HDD I have and tried that disc he made...all it does it ask for recovery disk 1...which of course he doesn't have. SO....anyone got an idea of how to unlock the OEM Hitachi 250gb HDD that apparently has insane security features built in...or should I tell him to call Toshiba and order the OEM Win7-64bit recovery DVD set for 29.99 plus shipping...in addition to whatever he paid for the new 500gb HDD...plus whatever Im charging for the labor. My UPGRADE copy of Win7-64bit wont activate using the key on his computer.

[stang2be]

I'm guessing its time to get the oem disk from the vendor. I hate they don't like to include recovery disks any more and just a recovery partition. If the original drive is locked/married to the board you shouldn't be able to unlock it or the vendors costs to do it would likely outweight the benefits.

Now might be a good time to sell your buddy on an external back up solution?

[ram57ta]

Wow...talked to him about it and discussed the options and he said he prefers XP over 7 anyway...so problem solved.

[Txstang1]

0000 ?