2nd hand laptop has encription.. uhoh!

[PK71]

So I have acquired a decommission laptop from a friend who's firm is upgrading, that has safeguard encryption on. I am trying to format and reinstall windows but I cant seem to find away to bypass the boot up screen that still requires a password. To date I have just formatted the hdd in another computer but safeguard still keeps popping up on boot. Has anyone got any work rounds for this?

I have not used anything like this before so am unsure how it work. Does safeguard write something to the bios or has my format not removed the encryption? Im a bit miffed atm as to why this screen still pops up after formatting.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
Many thx.

[GoNz0]

what laptop and what is the encryption package ?

[peterb]

If it is drive encryption, reformatting the drive will not solve the problem as all reformatting does is reset the Master File Tables. Neither will reformatting help if the password is a BIOS function, although that doesn't usually provide encryption.

To see if it is drive encryption/password, power up the machine without the hard drive installed. If you still get a password request, it is a BIOS function.

Some BIOSs used to have a backdoor to by-pass that (which made it pretty useless) or you you could open up the laptop and clear the CMOS memory which holds the password.

If the drive is encrypted/protected using external software, you will need to completely wipe the disk. There are many ways to do this, personally I would use a linux machine to write 00 to every location on the disk - but there are some windows applications that will do the same thing.

If the protection is more sophisticated, such as using encryption or password protection applied BY the disk but controlled by either the BIOS or third party application, then a new hard drive may be your only solution if you can't get the password.

Safeguard is a product made by Sophos, so to remove all aspects of it from the disk, you will need to wipe the disk entirely (as I mentioned above). If you have a BIOS password as well, you will also need to reset too.

[PK71]

Thx chaps, the laptop is a Toshiba Portege and the software is Sophos Safeguard. I have installed a different hdd and the password doesn't show so id imagine that it is indeed just the disk that is encrypted. I have full access to the hdd on my desktop. I have not got access to a linux system. My OS is XP so I am after a way to completely format the hdd as Peterb has suggested but looks like I need to wipe the MBR in the process. Any recommendations of windows applications/software to do this for me? Many thx

[Splash]

Thx chaps, the laptop is a Toshiba Portege and the software is Sophos Safeguard. I have installed a different hdd and the password doesn't show so id imagine that it is indeed just the disk that is encrypted. I have full access to the hdd on my desktop. I have not got access to a linux system. My OS is XP so I am after a way to completely format the hdd as Peterb has suggested but looks like I need to wipe the MBR in the process. Any recommendations of windows applications/software to do this for me? Many thx

You got a USB key? If so then you can build a bootable disk with either DBAN or something similar to run a secure wipe of the disk. Dependent on the size of the encrypted disk, the interface and the CPU this *may* take some time.

[PK71]

Thx Spalsh, Im jsut looking at seagate's seatools for dos, just to confirm, this will do a low level format and to the best of my understanding this will overwrite everything on the hdd and give me a clean hdd? Oh and its a 320gb so I can expect a few hours to wipe? thx

[Splash]

I've never used Seatools for anything beyond getting an error code for a dying disk, but I guess it should work. Always used DBAN or dd for wiping disks.

[PK71]

ok thx I will try DBAN.

[PK71]

Hmm 17hrs... Any other options chaps? Would it be quicker to install ubuntu and do it via linux?

[Barry]

Just do it over night

[GoNz0]

low level formats take ages as it is sector by sector.

[Agent]

Hopefully it's not a firmware based lockout. They do exist.

[PK71]

Ok so I have access to the hard drive now but the MBR is broken and needs sorting. Not sure what happened but there we have it. Any tutorials/tools for fixing/replacing the MBR... Im so close I can smell it but every problem solved reveals a new one. grrr.
thx again for any help.

[Agent]

Don't avoid the swear filter, it's there for a reason.

The MBR is part of the boot sequence. You need to have a valid OS installed, which you probably don't have if you've formatted the drive.

Simply install the OS of your choice and the MBR will be updated as part of that. There is no 'fixing' it currently, because it's not broken

[PK71]

Sorry... Just another word for knackered were I'm from.

Unfortunately win7 doesnt agree. I did an advanced install deleted partition after the install said it cant find a partition to install to, created a new one and the same message came up again. I then put it in my other pc to check the hdd and patition magic is seeing at as bad. Tried to put a format on it but failed due to Knackered MBR.

edit: message is setup was unable to create a new sys partition or locate an existing sys partition.

[Agent]

What's the exact error, including any error codes?

I'd just boot Parted Magic and deal with it there. Not seen a thing that it can't solve.