Arther my hard drive was "locked by dell" i had to use one of my old hard drives and install windows xp home edition (dell oem) and i have tried multiple drivers for every thing the touchpad hasn't worked since i reinstalled windows the first time nearly 3 months ago when i finally gave up on the dell oem. now I'm a a dead end with this notebook and cant hardly get it to run windows. its all installed and is on a different hard drive then the one that was locked. if any one has any information on how to get this laptop at least able to connect to the internet (my lan/modem drivers wont even work) i would really appreciate the help. my main goal would be to get it able to run counter strike source. with isn't a difficult task. after getting the notebook up and running I'm planing on doing some cooling mods/ paint and possible lighting mods. right now im on a dell GX150 i borrowed form a friend. the worst part is. it's from dumpster out side our school.
How is your harddrive 'locked' by Dell? Its impossible for someone to completely lock you out from reformatting a harddrive. In the past if I've want to re-install Windows on an Laptop, I've boot from the XP CD, removed the partition(s) on the setup screen & reinstall XP on a fresh partition. Windows should install a default generic touchpad driver for your laptop without the need for a dell driver. The dell driver will only give you extra features that the generic one doesnt include. If your touch pad isnt working then if could be broken & switched off in the bios.
I can't find my old hard drive right now but when i find it'll I'll take a pic of the screen i get right after boot. it comes up and says that dell has locked this hard drive or something like that and that i need the password, even if i boot from a disk (such as ultimate boot, windows xp install disk, ect. it'll go to the same screen) the touch pad was disabled. thanks for that i over looked it. __________________________ here is what i get when i boot my laptop. is there an "over ride" code for dell systems or anything like that?
hhmm... it may be that they've put something in the bios or put an invisible partition on the HDD that prevents you from formatting it. However, you say that you could installed XP on another drive then that would mean its a HDD thing. Can you boot of an XP CD & delete the HDD partitions from the original/old drive? edit.. It seems that the bios sets a password lock to that hdd serial number - the easiest solutions is to buy another HDD which wont be bios password locked. Or take the CMOS battery out of your laptop for 24 hours - this clears the password. However access the CMOS battery means taking your Laptop apart.
With the original HDD (the one thats messed up/locked) i can't boot from any thing. the other HDD is from a different laptop i had a while back, but it was also a dell.
okay well i did it. first time i booted with the "locked" hdd i got hard disk error. second time it was back to normal as in it was the saem old lock and same old not knowing the pass word, I'm trying ti again. _________________________________- yea it's not working i've just tryed it about 3 times and its the same thing each time
well i have my touch pad, i can always buy a new hard drive it was only a 40 gig any way. and it overheated allot. I'll prolly just buy a nice 160gig for it since the one thats in it right now sounds like a moped running on cooking oil. + its only a 30 gig. Thanks for all the help i really appreciate it.
next task is drivers im pretty sure i can handle this part I've done it a few times it just dells picky i have a driver cd a and none of them work with it, so i have to down load them all with a 46kbs connection :0
i have no proplem taking the system apart i've done it many time so i might do that it seems the best way and easiest for a short term thing.
it may work - i don't know if it saves the password to the CMOS & then checks it against the HDDs serial number when it boots. If it does this then clearing the CMOS will work. However, if the bios writes the password to the harddrive then clearing the CMOS wont work. But I don't think its the later, so if your comfortable in taking your laptop apart then give it a go.
alright man once again thinks for the help. I'll prolly still end up buying a new hdd just b/c 40 gigs isn't going to cut it.
