Very strange: my good old Latitude D505 ask for a harddrive password today!

I have never used a hardrive password before. Nobody has access to this laptop.
This morning it says "HDD is protected by a password..."
Pressing F2, I can see in the Setup that Hdd password is Disabled.
Trying to enable another password doesnot help.
Any suggestion?

On Mon, 6 Aug 2012 01:20:45 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

I have never used a hardrive password before. Nobody has access to this laptop.
This morning it says "HDD is protected by a password..."
Pressing F2, I can see in the Setup that Hdd password is Disabled.
Trying to enable another password doesnot help.
Any suggestion?

I do not see any answers.

My first guess was: attack by a hacker. Some hackers try to make people
pay for the release of their HDD.

Now, if the old HDD ALSO is not accessed, then something with the BIOS
seems to be wrong.

Can you open the computer and have a look at the CMOS part and the
battery? You have to find out if it is possible to reset the CMOS RAM to
the initial state, i.e. to erase all its contents. It must be fairly
easy to do it. See if it is possible to take out the battery (if so,
leave it out for a day, then try and see what happens when it is back
again). Or search for some kind of short-circuit points for resetting.
Ask the Dell support if there is such.

I have no idea about your computer, so I cannot help you with more
details on this.
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