Need info on "hacking" into a laptop

Sorry. Only thing i could think of for the title.

My neighbor informed me of a friend of theirs having an estate sale. Womens husband passed away several months ago and she is selling some of his stuff. They told me about a laptop for sale. So I took a look at it. Its a Dell Latitude D620. Surface is worn. Woman said it was her husbands "toy" but she knows nothing about computers and is willing to get rid of it for $200. It turns on, but it needs a password to get in. She hasn't found a charger for it yet either.

So, I can probably buy a replacement charger but am wondering about the laptop itself. If I boot from a XP disk, can I reformat the drive to get rid of the password? Would reformating get rid of the security problems, or would there be anything else I would have to figure out.

$200 is a good price but not if this is going to give me a lot of headaches trying to set this up as a "new" laptop I can access.

 

I don't think it's legal to ask here how to get around security measures like passwords.

 

discussion of hacking isn't legal here, sorry.


PS: if you're not concerned about the data, completely razing the HDD should get rid of the password. you'll have to reload the OS etc though.

 

No charger? passwords..... Sounds stolen to me.

Remember Karma is an absolute

On a lighter note, if it is legit - google a how to.

 

Yea. you should have seen this 80 yr old woman running down the street clutching the notebook. She dropped the charger and couldn't go back for it because three guys in wheelchairs were chasing her.

Now that thats out of the way. I am asking for legit help. I Googled this notebook and it seems to have a boatload of security features. Like I said, the woman knows nothing about computers, was never interested in her husbands laptop so she doesn't know a thing about passwords. She said her husband bought it 2 yrs ago. Best she can do is having her lawyer write me up a receipt as being sold "as is". I might make it easier for her and leave her (or her lawyer) the hard drive. A new one would make it a lot easier to set up.

 

don't take it bad - that smelling of a stolen laptop (no charger, no passwords) was not related to the old lady, i'd guess.

in case that there is an old lady and a lawyer, the best (and clearest) thing to do will be to replace the hard drive. both for the original (RIP) and the future owner.

 

Thank you.

 

I doubt it would be stolen...if you get the service tag from the bottom of the laptop, you could call Dell and see if they can check the purchase records of the laptop.

Check in the BIOS. I seem to recall that the admin password can reset the HDD password. However, if he had set up an HDD password, he probably would have set an admin password, so that may not be useful.

If you transfer ownership of the computer to yourself (through Dell's website), you can try calling Dell and ask them to reset the admin password.

If the system has passwords on it, I would be wary of paying more than $100 for it. You might wind up having to purchase a motherboard to get it working.

 

Buy a new hard disk, it's cheap these days. His HD may have lots of bloatware etc..

Talking about hacking, a friend of mine has a laptop to sell. It was HP brand. The seller said that it was a seized computer that was returned by police (probably for investigation or something) and it's all clear. I wanted to buy this for linux machine (i can't afford anything expensive). But I'm concerned that this laptop has been bugged by planted hardware chip. Is this possible or I just watch movie too much?

I understand that if it is software, I can just format/change the HDD, but if it is tiny hardware planted inside the laptop to trace, that won't look so good.

 

Easiest way would be to take it apart and visually inspect the motherboard. If you know what the motherboard is supposed to look like or have pictures or another system to compare it to, that should give you peace of mind.

I highly doubt they'll plant anything on there though. Not only would it be illegal, but also pointless and expensive.