Accessing a BIOS protected Hard Drive using...

Good afternoon,
I have a Dell Inspiron 6000 (windows XP) that is not working. I purchased a hard drive enclosure to connect the old hard drive to a new computer. The new computer recognized the bridge and the hard drive but I can not access the old hard drive because I have a BIOS password...is there a way (or software I can download online) to access my old hard drive that have a BIOS password?
I do not want to format the old hard drive until I get my pictures/files..
thank you...

 

Hi, lostin08. Welcome to Major Geeks.

Did you set the password and do you remember it? Resetting the password is done in the Setup screen accessed by pressing F2 during the POST screen. You'd then expand Security on the left and go to the proper item (Administrative, Internal HDD, etc.) and blanking the password that was set. Then save changes and exit Setup.

To be able to do this though, you'd need to put the HDD back into the Inspiron 6000.

 

Hi..thank you for your reply.
I can not get the computer (Dell Inspirion 6000) on at all. I am frustrated because I want to access my picture (and files)...
any other suggestions??

 

ALso, I have the hard drive plugged to my new computer and I can see under device manager-disk drive, but nothing happens. I was wonder if there is a software I can download..any place maybe i can take the hard drive to get everything out...

 

I have used Recuva on computers I bought that I didn't know to account password to. I would boot with one of my drives and have the other drive as slave or secondary and run recuva- select find all files even not deleted-used for formatted or damaged drives. Don't know if it works with BIOS passwords or not but may be.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/recuva_portable.html

 

Unfortunately, because a password was set at the BIOS level on a specific machine, there's no other way to clear it so you can access your pictures. Even Recuva, as Imandy Mann suggests, won't be of any help because the drive's files can't be accessed.

Do you know why the Inspiron 6000 won't turn on? If we could at least get into BIOS setup on that machine there'd be a chance of saving your pictures. Otherwise, you've lost them.

I strongly suggest that in the future you commit to regular backups of your data files at least.

 

Thank you for the suggestion to back up the computer....I agree with and trust me I learned my lesson .
About 5 years ago while turning the computer on I got a message (after entering the password BIOS) while windows was loading (see below) I've tried starting it in safemode and every other mode possible and this is the message I am getting : "The application or DLL C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\UMPNPMGR.DLL is not a valid Windows image. Please check this against your installation diskette."

I have no cd or anything fir this computer. I kept the computer broken for about 5 years (because of the pictures) and decided to purchase a hard drive enclosure to get the things from the HD but was not aware that was not going to work because of the BIOS password....

 

Can you get the Dell 6000 to power on at all?

Fans, lights,beeps?

It should POST without the HDD to the Bios.

 

The computer turns on and everything, I enter the BIOS password, windows start to start u. i get the message (below) and the goes to a black screen...I dont have a cd or anything that came with the computer...

"The application or DLL C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\UMPNPMGR.DLL is not a valid Windows image. Please check this against your installation diskette."

 

If the computer which the HDD in question originally came in boots that far, you should enter the BIOS and remove the password.

With a Dell, it is most likely F1 or F2 at the splash screen during startup.

 

Are you certain you mean a BIOS password? I could be wrong, but I thought all a BIOS password did was prevent the computer from booting up if the password was not provided. It has nothing to do with encrypting a drive . . . again, as far as I know. You should have been able to put the drive in the enclosure and access it like you would any secondary drive. Sounds like what happened is your drive's OS partition has become corrupted (or that specific UMPNPMGR.DLL file, which is a windows service that controls Plug and Play functions. This service enables a computer to recognize and adapt to hardware changes).

If it were me, I'd try a boot CD like Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) 5.3.1

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/ultimate_boot_cd_(ubcd).html

Boot the new computer with it, and see if you are able to access the drive with any of the tools the disk contains. There are even BIOS password utilities that can be used to clear BIOS/CMOS passwords, but I'm not sure that would help you since the original computer is dead. There are several disk utilities that deal with partitions and the like . . . also specifically picture and data recovery tools. If you haven't used these utilities, research the ones you want to try and make sure you are familier with what they do and how to operate them. May not be what you need, but it's worth a try. Everyone should have this CD in their toolbox.

 

Admittedly, I missed a "flag" in your first post.

Quote:
"I do not want to format the old hard drive until I get my pictures/files.."

If your new PC tells you that the drive needs to be formatted before it can be used, it normally means your file structure is corrupt or the disk is damaged.

You will need a file recovery tool like Easeus, or Stellar Phoenix to recover your data if such is the case.

 

forgot to ask, what kind of bridge are you using?

 

I googled "how to reset bios password" and got several ways its done. One involved moving a jumper on the motherboard. One was to remove the cmos battery effectively resetting the cmos. One thread on Dell 6000 said dell uses a seperate chip to store this and other information. Don't know how much access you have to these parts But on one thread -

http://www.midnightmods.com/2009/07/dell-inspiron-6000-password-reset.html

a comment says Dell can give you a reset password if you can prove owner status.

There might still be a way if the dell fires up as far as the password screen.