Dell will not give any help to these people without verifying that they are the original and registered owners of these laptops. Their justification is that it is part of their security / anti-theft program, and keeps people from stealing their laptops or accessing their data.

There are however, several reasons that this is an extremely unrealistic approach to the matter of laptop theft.

• Many legitimate possessors of a laptop may:
• Be original owners who neglected to register with Dell.
• Have lost all the paperwork pertaining to their ownership
• Have bought it second hand from an original owner.
• Received it from their employer, and changed jobs.
• Bought it through a commercial or government liquidation sale.
• Bought it off of eBay or another auction site.
• Either legitimate or stolen, this would not be the fault of the possessor.
• Received it as a gift from a parent, spouse, friend, etc...; whom is dead, estranged, unreachable, etc...
• This password system does not prevent theft because:
• When stealing a laptop, either off a park bench, while slipping into an office, breaking into a home or car; a thief will not pull out their handy 'list of laptop models that are protected by an irremovable password", and leave the notebook there.
• Thieves steal according to opportunity, and even if they are aware that a laptop might be protected by a password, they will likely steal it anyway. If they can't break the password, they can just throw it away, as it did not cost them anything, and has no investment value to them.
• It also does not increase the likelihood of catching thieves, or the return of a stolen laptop because:
• Stolen laptops are often stolen along with other belongings which could likely include the original owner's identity and/or paperwork regarding the laptop.
• A thief who finds that the laptop they have stolen is protected by a password will not feel remorseful at this barrier, and seek out the legitimate owner so that they can return it.
• If a thief should call Dell and be unable to provide ownership information and the technician logs their caller ID, and reports it to the authorities:
• This is hardly grounds for a search warrant.
• By the time any action might be taken by police; the thief will likely have given up on the laptop and gotten rid of it, or passed it along to someone else. There will be no evidence, and no returned laptop.
• If authorities confiscate a laptop which they believe is stolen:
  • They may or may not be aware of their ability to find the owner through Dell.
  • The owner may never have registered.
  • They may not initially be believed by Dell tech support and decide not to press the matter.
• It also does not prevent the data on the laptop from being accessed because:
• Anyone who has the laptop in their possession can remove the hard drive in about 10 seconds, put it in another laptop or computer (or copy it to another hard drive) and access it.
• These laptops, to my best knowledge, come equipped with the ability to enable a Hard Drive password. This is what hard drive passwords are for! If the hard drive password is enabled, regardless of its circumventability, a second password will not make the data super secure. If one password can be thwarted, then 2 can be as well.

2. Introduction An explanation of what's going on with the laptop.
3. Step One Taking it apart.
4. Step Two Taking it apart, continued.
5. Step Three Reorienting things just a tad.
6. Culmination Actually doing the deed.
7. Afterwards So, now you want your own password.
8. Extraneous Some unnecessary information about the chip.