Buwish this is not entirely true, there may be a lock on the actual drive. It is usally associated with the bios password and saved in a special partition. I bought a used laptop that wouldn't boot right for fairly cheao becuse of this. http://www.laptoptips.ca/security/hard-disk-password/ . There may not be much to do. If you bought the computer 2nd hand i would call the seller and see if they will help you out. If not you may have to contact some other places and see what they can do.