Acer Aspire One Hard Drive Locked

navyfamily

Honorable
Jun 27, 2013
3
0
10,510
I have an Acer Aspire One that has locked. During my conversation with Acer, I was told that if the netbook is not used for 90 days they have a hard drive & bios lock. I was told that the only way to unlock these would be to pay them for the unlock codes. This is incredible that if you don't use something you bought within a set period of time you will have to purchase something from the company to be able to use it again. I have the actual box, receipt & had registered it with Acer. Is there no other way to use this than pay them? It would almost be cheaper to just buy a brand new one. Is there anything I can do?
 

navyfamily

Honorable
Jun 27, 2013
3
0
10,510
I was told that it was to prevent theft. The tech told me that if it is not used often enough then the system automatically locks itself. The only way to open it is to purchase the restore program. The backup disk that I made when it was bought will not work. I can't reset it to factory specs because I can't access the bios.

I had never heard of the hard drive locking either. If I had known that it would do that, I would have made sure I started it up every month.
 
Yeah, the quote and link are unrelated to the BIOS and drive lockdown. That's still beyond me that they would do that... Unfortunately something like this goes against forum policy/rules to answer (password help). All password/credential recovery/help is prohibited due to security reasons.

If it's registered - and especially if it's still under warranty - can't you provide those registration credentials? Isn't that proof enough for them that it was NOT stolen (since it's supposedly to circumvent theft)?