Dell Hard Drive

I need to know how to unlock a dell hard drive. i tryed putting a new os on it and it just completly locked and i cant ask dell

>>1
Can't ask Dell?  Don't steal shit, bitch.

to old of a service tag wont help so think befoe you talk

You have everything you need.

Get the XviD codec pack and download VirtualDub - both free. Use Virtual Dub to grab the files. Use XviD video compression and whichever audio compression works best for you. It'll output as AVI, which AVI2DVD or Nero will burn just fine.

I can't remember which audio compression I use at home, but I know it's none of the MPEG based ones, since those desynced the sound when I tried them.

>>4
Uhh... wrong thread genius.

Anyways, what OS did you try putting on it?  What exactly do you mean "locked"?

If you have an install disk (don't use anything Dell gave you), you should be able to just clean the partition table and install from scratch during the first part of the installer.  Just delete every partition, make a new one, and install.

If you just want to wipe the hard disk completely, here's what to do:

Download a Linux LiveCD (Knoppix, Ubuntu, whatever) and boot from it.  Get to a terminal (command line) and type "fdisk /dev/hda" and hit enter.  (If it's an SATA drive, it'll be "fdisk /dev/sda".)  You should be in the fdisk program, and can hit 'm' to see a list of commands.  You want to hit 'o' to get a new partition table and then 'w' to apply the changes.  This will make it so you can install stuff on it like it was a brand new drive.  You should be returned to a command prompt, so enter "halt" and hit enter to shutdown the machine.  Then just insert an install disk and install the new OS.

Oh, and I'm going to assume you've already made backups of any important data.

thanks

dell doesn't make hard disks fag they use hitachi drives

>>7
It's pretty sad that you know the brand of hard drives that Dell uses.

>>8

It's pretty sad that you didn't. 

>>8

... and they actually use other makes too, they've used Western Digital and Seagate too in the past to my knowledge.

>>10
And rather stupidly some Maxtors too (guess what brand was in all the Dells at work that suffered hard disk failure). Most of the rest were, as you correctly stated, WDs and Seagates.

>>11
Yup - the only three Dells at my workplace that failed all suffered from 'Maxtor syndrome'  - must have been a bad time for Dell, and I'd like to have seen some of the communication that went on between the 2 companies.