Hello,
like several other people here I have problems with/because of DriveLock.
Back in 2005 I bought myself a brand new nw8240 mobile workstation, so nobody except me tampered with it. Recently I wanted to put the original Hitachi TravelStar HDD back in, and suddenly it's asking me for the DriveLock password. But I'm not aware of having ever set one (otherwise I'd been asked for the password at boot up).
It get's more cuirious as sometimes it's asking me for the "HDD bay password" and sometimes for the "multibay password" along with an "1782 disk controller failure" in the beginning. I double checked BIOS, and everything security related is turned of.
The current HDD I'm using doesn't show this behaviour, so the controller must be OK. That seems to be normal behaviour for a locked HDD.
Since trying to unlock the HDD with MHDD didn't work either (I figured out a password that returned OK, and could send it the ATA unlock command using the drive manufacturers master password...) I bought a brand new HDD. When I put the new HDD in it also asked me for a password!? I could confirm it by just pressing the return key, but I couldn't disable asking me for the password (I know it's in the BIOS).
Since the nw8240 is working perfectly aside of this DriveLock issue I'm not willing to throw it away, and would VERY much appreciate if somebody would tell me how this can be fixed. I'm an engineer, and don't shun to fiddle with the electronics etc. And I'm not trying to hack into someone's HDD just my own. I'd be willing to send it to HP if necessary, but I'm located in Austria thus gues it would be costly.
regards, Christoph