i just got a gateway solo 9300 off of ebay for parts. it has a 10gb hard drive in it. i tried to put it in another gateway 9300 and the hard drive has a password. is there anyway to bypass this or change the password?

You could erase the whole drive.

it wont let me boot to the cd-rom. without the password how do i erase the hard drive?

You would connect it to another computer or a drive enclosure as a slave drive.
Make sure that you're posting in threads apart from your own if you're here purley for computer help.

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Sounds to me that there is a BIOS password, not one that allows changes to BIOS, but one that allows access to the computer. This is common, and in higher security situations, it is required. Typically the machine will not boot without the proper password.

Sometimes (older motherboards) you can clear this by removing the cmos battery (and unplugging the machine) for a few minutes. In other instances, you need to be able to blow away the bios (bios upgrade, or other utility).

Alternatively, ask the previous owner about the password so you can start the machine.

I dont think thats the problem with CMOS. =/ Try going in to BIOS if it doesnt ask for a password i doubt thats the problem. but you can try that wouldent hurt. Anyways what I would do is low level format the drive and re partition it through dos. Then you can do whatever you want through windows xp professionals partition manager if you have windows Xp pro if not you can convert the drive to NTFS through other methods. I dont know exactly what you want to do with the drive 10 gigs isnt much. Although my input can be wrong im pretty sure you can do it.

Silentdark22 is right, i was reading so fast(just got into work), i missed that it went to a different PC. yes, low level format, destroy the partition table, the MFT everything. Some bios' can do this, others can't. Get DBAN (Boot and Nuke) and it will do a very good job of destroying anything, including personal data which is probably on there.

i tried windows xp disk nothing and i tried wipe drive and still nothing.

Maybe you could elaborate on "nothing" - how did you format the drive, and did it say that the format was successful, or was there an error message?

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goto Darik's Boot and Nuke (Hard Drive Disk Wipe) Follow the instructions to install on a floppy, boot that way. If you can't boot with a floppy, you can create a bootable CD (you need the boot image from somewhere) and wipe the drive.

When using the Windows CD, you need to use the option to install a fresh copy of windows, and delete the partition. But it appears that the MBR has references to the protection software. For that, I recommend booting to the recovery console using the Windows CD. then use the FIXMBR command. That should fix part of the problem, then use FDISK to destroy the partition.

I'd try the DBAN first (boot and nuke), it really is nice.

the computer wont boot to cd-rom. so i cant format the hard drive. it goes to please enter hdd password. i have pictures of what it is doing.

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The only other thing this could be is an actual password on the drive. Google tells me that the computer is a laptop, and some laptops and laptop hard drives do have a drive password feature, although I was not aware that this was found on any older machines.

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There has got to be a way to get around this.

so it goes straight from the gateway screen to the hdd password screen? with no F2 action? that computer is givin you the business son. ask the old user for the password if you cant do ANYTHING at all.

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He said he got it from Ebay. It could be rather warm, unbeknownst to the OP.