Hp swat lock

[Robin31234]

Hello. 

Last year I bought hp 840 elite book g7.

All was working perfectly fine till yesterday when I get my laptop lock.

Asking me to contact some weird number to get unlock.

What can I do In this situation ?

Is that legit or I have some virus ?

Thx

[Jupitero]

Hello.

The previous owner of the laptop has enrolled the machine in Absolute (Computrace) management which allows the computer to be locked and/or wiped remotely. Any time the computer is connected to internet the system tries to connect to the management servers and asks for instructions. So if the previous owner thinks the laptop is stolen, then he can just order the laptop to lock itself.

Your only option is to contact the original owner and ask them to unlock the laptop. The Absolute persistence module is implemented in the system board hardware and cannot be bypassed.

It may be possible that the laptop is not stolen: the lock was implemented due to failure in asset tracking - administrator has not been notified that it was sold.

[Robin31234]

Thanks for the information.

I purchased the laptop from someone who buys laptops from companies after projects and similar situations. I contacted him yesterday, and he told me that unfortunately, it has been over six months since the purchase, so the laptop is no longer under his warranty. I asked if he had encountered such a situation before, but unfortunately, I did not receive any feedback.

Is there any other solution to this situation? I paid a lot of money for the laptop, not to mention that I have a lot of my own data on it. Is HP able to provide me with the name of the company or any information to help me contact them or verify the origin of the laptop? And the last thing that bothers me: if the laptop was indeed "stolen or illegally acquired," why did it work normally for almost 8 months?

thank you

[Jupitero]

Hi,

If you cannot any replies from the seller, that's a red flag!

If the phone number is an internal phone number, try googling for it along with words "it department" or similar. Place a call and present your case. Best case: you will get an apology, an unlock code, and your laptop will be instantly operational as it was before.

If the person on the other end tells that the laptop is actually stolen, then you should pursue the seller since he's selling stolen goods which is a crime. At minimum you should try getting your money back.

I can't speak for HP but I don't think they will ever give customer information out unless the police is involved as well.

You could try contacting Absolute.com - which has sold the device licenses to the original owner. They might not either give any customer information either, but could forward your contact information to the original owner.

If the laptop was only locked - not wiped - the data is still there in the drive. If you can't Windows to start up anymore, the SSD can be removed and read in another computer.

For your last item - the Absolute Computrace is something that only large companies might invest in to track their assets since using it is not a free solution. The original owner may have thousands of laptops and perhaps your laptop was legitimately sold but someone forgot to update the asset list and now it was found missing during an annual inventory check. Or perhaps the laptop was actually stolen from storage room and no-one noticed the theft until now and the antitheft measures were then activated.