Hard drive state set to "Frozen" in bios, no password registered ???

My ACER Aspire 5733 shows the HDD as "Frozen" in the bios and, obviously, won't boot to it.

There are no Administrator or User passwords registered, but it shows the HDD as "Frozen" in the bios Security screen.

If I take the hdd out, and reboot, its not there, as expected, when I put it back in, reboot, go directly to the bios, it now shows the hdd state as "Clear" just like the other two password states. BUT, if I then reboot, instead of Windows starting, it shows no bootable devices. Then when I check the bios again, the hdd state is back to "Frozen" and the other two passwords are still "Clear" as before.

Does anyone know how to fix this ?

I've tried quite a few restarts, and even with a whole other hard drive installed, it still does this.

Accepted answers

gn2

I seem to have fixed this.

It kept reverting to the "Frozen" state on the hdd even after doing the Acer recommended fix found here:http://acer.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/32674/~/bios-password-frozen#_ga=1.262809484.1609204961.1438903912

After trying the procedure, it still reverted to "Frozen" on the first reboot when installing Windows.

So what I did was this.

When I got it back to the state where all three Security Passwords read "Clear", for the very next restart, I updated the bios to the newest version. I used the pure DOS method.

After the shutdown when the bios update was done, the "Clear" state was still intact. I *think* the "Clear" state remains, as long as you go directly into bios after setting it to that, and the issue was that it wasn't saved when not going directly into bios. The next restart after the bios update, I started to install Windows, and THIS time, after the BIOS update, the first restart during the Windows installation did NOT result in a "Frozen" hard drive state.

So, I think there may be a bug in the second last bios for this device, as it didn't seem to be able to actually save the state of the hdd password correctly.

All comments

gn2

And to add to the mystery.

I just successfully followed the ACER provided instructions to fix the "Frozen" hdd state in my bios, proceeded to start installing Windows7. It found the hdd without any issue at all, began the install, and after the first reboot, the hdd is now AGAIN set to "Frozen" in the bios.

This is beginning to get frustrating.

gn2

I seem to have fixed this.

It kept reverting to the "Frozen" state on the hdd even after doing the Acer recommended fix found here:http://acer.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/32674/~/bios-password-frozen#_ga=1.262809484.1609204961.1438903912

After trying the procedure, it still reverted to "Frozen" on the first reboot when installing Windows.

So what I did was this.

When I got it back to the state where all three Security Passwords read "Clear", for the very next restart, I updated the bios to the newest version. I used the pure DOS method.

After the shutdown when the bios update was done, the "Clear" state was still intact. I *think* the "Clear" state remains, as long as you go directly into bios after setting it to that, and the issue was that it wasn't saved when not going directly into bios. The next restart after the bios update, I started to install Windows, and THIS time, after the BIOS update, the first restart during the Windows installation did NOT result in a "Frozen" hard drive state.

So, I think there may be a bug in the second last bios for this device, as it didn't seem to be able to actually save the state of the hdd password correctly.

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