IBM T42 Hard Disk Password Removal

Earlier on today I was trying to perform a factory reset/restore of an IBM T42 laptop and I got this message on screen:

I did a quick reboot and entered the BIOS and there were no passwords set so this isn't anything to do with the BIOS so therefore it has to be a hard disk password (HDP).

There are two ways to remove a Hard Disk Password:

1. Remove it in the BIOS (you will need to know what the password is to do this)
2. Completely wipe (not just format) the hard disk drive using something like Active Killdisk

As this laptop was an eBay purchase I do not know the password, so option 2 it is then!

If you download and install Active Killdisk there will be an option on the Start menu (or whatever we're calling it these days) to create a bootable disc so you can then boot from the CD on your T42 and completely wipe the disk (including wherever they store the password).

All you need to do is select the hard disk drive you want to Erase/Kill and then press F10

 

You then need to enter ERASE-ALL-DATA to confirm you understand all data will be erased and then the erasing will begin..

 

You DO NOT need to actually erase the whole hard disk drive, the first thing it does is delete/remove all partitions/volumes on the drive so any data there is no longer readable.

I would say wait until it has done 2-3% and then press CTRL+S to Stop what it is doing.

The full sanitisation has technically FAILED (as you stopped it before it was completed) but that's not what we were doing, we just needed all the volumes/partitions removing/deleting and that has been achieved.

Now when I load the IBM Rescue and Recovery Rapid Restore (too many R's) I no longer get prompted for a password:

The Hard Disk Password (HDP) has been removed!