Problems with laptops

[ssjheero_yuy99]

Hi, I have purchased a few laptops that were originally from the Forest Service. They were part of a government liquidation and have problems with them.

I have been trying to fix them but they are not working correctly. I am afraid that they have added some extra information to the motherboard, or some other added hardware, as when I pull the hard drive and boot they still display that they are US Government machines.

I have never flashed the bios before, and am wondering if that is the way to go with these. I have tried to run KillDisk, to zero out the hard drives, but it errors up.

So my question is if there is a way to easily reset the bios to factory settings, (pulling out the cmos battery, regular battery, and ac adapter doesn't seem to work.) And if it is possible to set up a laptop so that it will only work with one harddrive. As I have bought 4 of the same, but when i switch the hard drives around, they say that no hard drive is installed. when i put in the original ones, it sees the hard drives, but errors or freezes when I try to install or run a zero level format.

Anyone out there work for the forest service and know what they do to them to make them different from consumer laptops?

Thanks!

George

-----edit -- all added info is below ---------

Forgot to mention. The laptops are IBM Thinkpads A22m. Current Bios is Version 1.06 KXET33WW Date: 2001-09-05 Embedded Controler 1.01 Phoenis 4.0 Release 6.0.

The bios looks like it works fine. It just seems like it has extra security built in so that I can't use other hard drives, can't format and Can't install an OS. (unless the hard drives are all corrupt or something I guess).

----- End of edit ----------------

 

[turtile]

You can try reformating them in a different machine then putting them back in and installing them.

Can you access the BIOS without a password?

 

[ssjheero_yuy99]

Thats the thing, everytime i swap the hard drive into a different laptop machine it pops up that there is no hard drive installed. But if i put back in the one that it came with, it finds it. That is why I am wondering if there is a way that they could have added a program that could limit the machine to only accept the one designated hard drive. it is possible that they wrote the program themselves.

Yes, I can get into bios just fine, except for one machine that has a hard drive lock password. I can get into it without the hard drive installed but when I plug the hard drive back in, it won't let in into the bios without the password, and since I don't know the password, I figure that hard drive is a lost cause.

Thanks!

 

[turtile]

Did you try deleting each and every partition in the hard drive before the reformat?

Maybe there is a special boot partition causing this.

I think its a program called FDisk.

 

[chickenNcheese]

yeah im thinking along the lines of turtile. it is possible to create hidden partitions. try using yeah FDisk. having ERD Commander would help but its expensive.

can u actually do anything with the machines? like can u install an OS and stuff?

might wanna try using a live CD such as a linux boot disk. some types of hidden partitions will show up.

may as well give flashing the bios a go, by the sounds of it, it wont hurt.

 

[ssjheero_yuy99]

Thanks for all the help.

I figured that running a low level format would wipe them out, but I'll give FDisk a try. see if it does anything. Doesn't hurt.

I've never flashed the bios before, so I have no clue how to go about it. any help there?

Thanks!
George