Encrypted Hardrive

[watermelon]

Iv come across a laptop formaly used for business that I may use. All

the business files have been removed as you would expect but the

hardrive is encrytped, requiring a password every time I turn it on

and numerous other security features.

 

What must I do to go about removing all these? Its running win 2k.

 

Thoughts were putting the hardrive in another computer and formating,

reinstalling windows etc. Would this work?

[chiswick_john]

If you have a software install CD just boot from this and reformat the drive and then install you OS.

[jay_blocksom]

<BLOCKQUOTE><I><B>Andrew Waterman, jul 22, 2005; 06:27 a.m.</B>

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Iv come across a laptop formaly used for business that I may use. All the business files have been removed as you would expect but the hardrive is encrytped, requiring a password every time I turn it on and numerous other security features.

</I></BLOCKQUOTE>

 

How, exactly, did you "come across" this laptop PC, without the original owner giving you all the various tools that would have come with it, and the basic access info (passwords, etc.) you would need to use it/them?

 

<BLOCKQUOTE><I>

What must I do to go about removing all these? Its running win 2k.

</I></BLOCKQUOTE>

 

Go back to the person you "bought" it from, and ask them for the passwords, the original distribution media for the OS and application software, etc.

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[beauh44]

Does the laptop ask you for the password at boot-up, prior to loading the OS? It sounds like it's a power-on password that's set in the BIOS. There should be a way to go into the setup of the laptop - the keystroke sequence is usually (but not always) displayed immediately after giving the password. For example there may be a message that says "Press F10 to enter setup..." that displays briefly on the screen immediately before the OS loads. Go into the laptop's setup and you should see a security setting where you can change or remove the password.

[will_perlis]

"How, exactly, did you "come across" this laptop PC, without the original owner giving you all the various tools that would have come with it, and the basic access info (passwords, etc.) you would need to use it/them?"

 

It's obvious you've never worked in a corporate IT department of even modest size. Orphaned and locked-up computers are quite common.

[jay_blocksom]

<BLOCKQUOTE><I><B>Will Perlis, jul 22, 2005; 10:44 a.m.</B>

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It's obvious you've never worked in a corporate IT department of even modest size. Orphaned and locked-up computers are quite common.

</I></BLOCKQUOTE>

 

Only if said IT department is horridly mis-managed.

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(In point of fact, I *am* the "IT department" for most of my clients, and have been such for over 20 years.)

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[will_perlis]

It has nothing necessarily to do with the management of the IT department. People quit without notice, people get fired and banned from buildings, people die, people forget passwords, and people lose disks and documentation. It's all part of people being messily human.

 

To insinuate this computer was irregularly acquired is unwarranted based on the (lack of) evidence.

[jay_blocksom]

<BLOCKQUOTE><I><B>Will Perlis, jul 22, 2005; 11:43 a.m.</B>

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It has nothing necessarily to do with the management of the IT department. People quit without notice, people get fired and banned from buildings, people die, people forget passwords, and people lose disks and documentation. It's all part of people being messily human.

</I></BLOCKQUOTE>

 

This is the wrong venue to debate this further; so I'll simply note that each and every one of those scenarios can be (and should be) reliably dealt with through proper management procedures.  This is not to imply that the occasional oddball exception *cannot* rarely occur; but that is a far cry from presuming they would routinely or "commonly" lead to (unrecoverably) "orphaned and locked-up computers".  Proper management procedures *anticipate* such "life incidents" as you mention, and have reliable contingency plans in place to cope with them.

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[walter_degroot]

where i worked at an IT dept "we" were an IBM PARTNER.

the surplus and older ibm thinkpads were sold to a third party reseller and who knows where they went after that.

 

the ibm thinkpads used a scheme that would not be cleared or corrected by resetting/ shorting the cmos. even some ibm desktops.

 

we were told by ibm to "take it to an IBM dealer"

who presumably clear the locked system.

 

because of data security issues, we were not allowed to send things outside,

we even smashed working / removed hard drives.

the laptop drives would respond to a few slaps on the table

desktop drives would require a hammer.

This was sad but done on company ORDERS.

 

this security lock issue fix was not explained despite being an " ibm partner"

we did reset cmos on compaq systems and did so all the time when we had a system that was returned from a terminated employee.

 

I never found out how it was done and the guru of thinkpads is now dead.

[will_perlis]

"...each and every one of those scenarios can be (and should be) reliably dealt with through proper management procedures."

 

Of course. But in the real world, entropy increases.

[mark_houlder2]

makes me glad I have an IBM laptop :)

[akajohndoe]

I have a CD that has an old bootable copy of DOS 6.2 on it. There is also a copy of FDISK. So, I can completely eliminate prior partitions, including NTFS, and then lay down my own copy of my own OS.

[jay_blocksom]

<BLOCKQUOTE><I><B>D N, jul 25, 2005; 12:49 a.m.</B>

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I have a CD that has an old bootable copy of DOS 6.2 on it. There is also a copy of FDISK. So, I can completely eliminate prior partitions, including NTFS, and then lay down my own copy of my own OS.

</I></BLOCKQUOTE>

 

You're "starting in the middle" by presuming that you can even get far enough to boot that CD.  In many cases (including, probably, the one under discussion), that's an invalid assumption. 

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For example, IBM ThinkPads (among others) can have both a Supervisor Password and a dedicated Hard Disk Password, each stored independently in NVRAM on the mobo and drive controller, respectively.  This is quite a different matter than the (lame) CMOS-based "power-on password" schemes often used in desktop systems (which can be very easily reset/wiped by shorting a couple of pins on the mobo and/or removing the battery powering the CMOS memory).  These passwords, if activated, must be entered *before* the system will boot from *any* media; and there is *NO* user-accessible reset function if the password is lost/unknown.  (Well, in the interest of completeness, I will note that there are, at least potentially, some "unofficial" ways around both of these; but I will *not* explain further in a public venue -- nor via e-mail to anyone I do not already know well, so don't bother asking.)

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[cenelsonfoto]

If this is a formerly corporate computer, they would not have "removed" files only to leave security schemes in place then dump it into the market. Any IT manager worth his salary would have wiped that laptop's ass bare, removing any inkling of operating system as well as "files". If it were leaving <i>my</i> company for the outside world, I would low-level the piss out of it before letting it leave my sight.<p>

I am not suggesting this is a less-than-legitimate acquisition, only that if this indeed came to you with an OS on it, it was not "cleaned" according to my concept of clean. Having purchased off-lease and obsolete computers from major corporations, I know whereof I speak... I've never seen one escape IT with an OS intact.<p>

Now, that being said - If you feel this is a keeper, I would definitely reduce the OS to rubble, purge the drive, and start from scratch. What you do is up to you.

[watermelon]

lol forgot about this question, seems you all have fun ideas of me stealing Mi5 laptops but sadly not - a resigned company machine.

 

You're "starting in the middle" by presuming that you can even get far enough to boot that CD. In many cases (including, probably, the one under discussion), that's an invalid assumption.

<br><br><blockquote>

For example, IBM ThinkPads (among others) can have both a Supervisor Password and a dedicated Hard Disk Password, each stored independently in NVRAM on the mobo and drive controller, respectively. This is quite a different matter than the (lame) CMOS-based "power-on password" schemes often used in desktop systems </blockquote><br>

That sounds like it, yeah. Deffinetly not a normal power-on password but it doesnt look like compaq's own eithor. <br><br>

My origanal question was would formating be good enough to be able to re-use an encrypted disk?