MHV2040AT Madness

Hi Geeks, I come in peace.
I always wanted to be a Geek but got distracted buy the necessity to be a food source.
Was a bench engineer in the early noughts. Used to fix up second hand PCs and ship to Africa.

Ok, this is the story so far: -

I got a laptop and the Number 7 key failed.
The boot up password set in the bios has the number seven in it.
So I take the laptop to bits and remove the battery to clear the password.
This clears the boot password but now the password is on the HD.
So I buy a caddie and USB the disk to my PC.
The computer saw the disk and installed some MS drivers.
Windows 2000 can see the HD in the Device Manager as a generic USB storage.
My Computer folder can see nothing.
That’s it, help if you can.

My head is telling me I need something like Partition Magic to talk to the HD and induce it to ask me for the password and all will be fine. Just put back in the lap top, job done. (no number 7 though, which is ok as not used for arithmetic).

HD is Fujitsu MHV2040AT 40 GB

An ‘A’ drive boot disk for USB seems a bit far-fetched.
Any ideas?

 

Hi

Sounds like you've gone all out!

Maybe try something SLIGHTLY simpler. Have you tried connecting a USB keyboard to the laptop in order to type the password in?

 

Yep, USB not work at BIOS pass Level.

 

Alright, just making sure. Unfortunately, most laptop hard drive passwords can only be entered from that model laptop... do you have data you NEED off the drive? I don't suppose there's any chance using compressed air on the keyboard fixes the number 7 key.

 

Keyboard has circuit stuck open on 7 key.
Don't need data but do need operating system.

 

Honestly your best bet would be to either replace the keyboard, or the hard drive. Obtain a Windows install disk and use the Windows key printed on the sticker on the bottom of the laptop to reinstall the OS.

Laptop keyboards are typically $110-130, but you can simply get a new hard drive for MUCH less than that.

Your only remaining option of which I'm aware would be to somehow find a way to manually close the circuit on the 7 key to input the HDD password.

I haven't done much work with passworded laptop HDDs though... there could be an application out there that does what you want (allows you to input the password from another computer with the HDD acting as an external drive).

OR one option you could try is to use a bootable Linux live CD (Mint or Ubuntu are my personal favorite Linux live distros to use) and boot into Linux with that on the laptop and see if you can access the HDD using Linux.

 

Ok, I will let you know how I get on and what I do.
Thank you very much for your thoughts.
Kindest Regards
Chris

 

Everything I've read seems like what you want to do is not doable, even using a linux live disk.

 

At the moment I an trying to give the drive a letter via W2K Dick Management Servises. Next I will put the lap top back together and plug in a usb KB as well as booting from the CD ROM.
Wish me luck and a big thank you for your help.
Kind Regards
Chris