It may be too late to solve this problem but the process may be interesting.
Situation:
My niece's husband (nephew-in-law??)was given several (maybe 6)laptops by the boss at his job.
Car dealership (Chysler???)
Nephew is salesman (For many years)
Salemen are all issued a laptop with the company's software which is considered highly confidential.
Salesmen leaves (fired??) turns in laptop, which has been passworded....
Saleman enjoys the porno sites, laptop loaded with virus,trojans, etc.
Laptop won't boot. Saleman issued another laptop. Passworded and loaded with nasties the old machine goes into the storeroom with the others.
Boss runs out of laptops.
buys a half dozen new ones.
Nephew asks for and gets the unbootable jobbies, with a proviso that he can't dispose of them until all company info has been wiped. He is also forbidden to let them out of his possession until they have been cleaned.
I suggested he pull the HDDs and send them to me.
Forbotten, he can't let them out of his sight.
Besides, what's a HDD???
I then sent him some instuctions and links to software hoping to salvage something from the ordeal.
MiniPe seems like the tool to remove the nasties.
Next the password problem has to be solved.
If all else fails maybe the product IDs could be salvaged. I have no idea what type of license they're using but I sure hate to see a half dozen copies of XP wasted.
Salvage the drives?
He would have to pull them and wipe them himself and I don't see that happening.
After all, what can you expect from a car salesman?
Ideas???
(he may already have dumped those machines??)

What exactly is passworded, the login? Can he boot off a CD? Just wipe the drives. If the XP Product key is taped to the underside of the laptop, it can still be used. He'll just need a copy of XP to do the reinstall(s). A burned copy is fine (& legal) as long as the key is legit.

It maybe that the HDD drives themselves are protected with a password as they often are on corporate laptops in case they get stolen.

If that is the case then there is not a lot you can do about it without some very expensive equipment. Putting the HDD into another laptop won't achieve anything either.

Stuart

At $50k for a car they ought to be able to buy a tech person.

Put a live cd on and wipe the drive.

Get new OS to install on laptop or use the original disk if the eula permits.

I read it wrong and answer it wrong too. So get off my case you peanut.

More recent laptops are very well protected.

The passwords are stored on a chip other than the bios chip on the mboard that cannot be erased by removing the power to it. It's soldered into the mboard - it can be replaced with another chip already programmed, but most people don't have access to equipment to be able to do that, the chip must be programmed, and getting that done by an expert may cost you more than a used mboard with no passwords on it.
There is no software method of wiping the passwords, but if you can prove to the brand name builder you are the legitmate original owner, they MIGHT be able to help you remove them, but often these days they can't either.

If the hard drive is passworded (e.g. drive lock), there is info to do with that stored on the hard drive itself in an area not visible to the user by any normal method, and not accessible to normal wiping procedures.
Even if you replace the password chip or get another used mboard, you can't access the hard drive if you don't know the password for it.
The password on the hard drive can only be changed or removed on a small group of laptops made by the same maker that use exactly the same methods in the bios to do that, so transferring the drive to a laptop or other computer not in that group will make trying to remove the password fultile.
You can't wipe the passworded drive with any software unless you know the password, other than wiping it with some bulk erasing device, which would render the drive useless.

There are a very small number of experts on the web that claim they can remove the passwords on more recent laptops for a stiff fee, but most say they can't.
Removing the passwords is out of reach of the average person unless they're willing to spend those stiff fees, and even then it may not be possible in some cases.

If the boss or whoever can find out which passwords the salesmen used, then there's a good possibility you can restore the laptops to a working condition.

If the hard drives are passworded and the passwords are unknown, the cheapest way of dealing with that is to smash them with a sledgehammer or otherwise destroy them to satisfy the boss's desires, and get another hard drive. Maybe some of the laptops have no passwords otherwise.

Thanks guys...
These are the same alternatives I explored before and the project simply died. My sister thinks I'm wasting my time because the niece and nephew simply won't do what's necessary to recover those machines.
I'll make one more attempt but it doesn't sound encouraging. In addition to the laptops my niece has another half dozen or so desktop workstations that wouldn't boot, or were unusable because of malware and they stuck those in the garage and replaced them with new ones for her office.
There used to be a name for that! Too soon rich; too late smart!
Thanks again.

"In addition to the laptops my niece has another half dozen or so desktop workstations that wouldn't boot, or were unusable because of malware and they stuck those in the garage and replaced them with new ones for her office."

It's very likely you can get those working fine. You usually have no problem removing passwords on those, by clearing the Cmos or removing the battery, or by some other procedure.

I frequenty pick up litter while walking to to local mall and throw it into a garbage bin at a walkup apartment complex about halfway. One day I noted an open computer case on the top of the garbage - I removed a ram module, took it home and tried it on my computers - it worked fine. I came back later with coveralls on and found three complete computers and a newer empty computer case and all except two case side panels in there (fortunately, there wasn't much messy garbage in the bin at the time). One had a network card with boot rom on it I assume was used as a server or workstation on a network - it had a password. I removed that card, the computer then revealed it had Windows Server 2003 on it - that was passworded. I wiped the contents of the hard drive and was able to use everything on the working computer.
Another computer had Linux on it and it was passworded - I wiped the contents of that hard drive.
Some of the cases were bent or damaged from being thrown in the bin , one PS needed a PCB repair because of that, but nearly all the components were fine. The newest mboard was an Asus A7V133 socket A, 1ghz cpu; there was also an Abit AB-BH6 slot 1 440BX, and an Asus K7V slot A 700mhz. The empty case and two of the mboards and two of the hard drives and some of the ram have since been set up by me and given to people on disability that were unable to buy even a modest computer.

I have had little luck trying to save malware ridden systems. Nuke it from high orbit. It is the only way to be sure. Clean install from known good media.

I read it wrong and answer it wrong too. So get off my case you peanut.

People often say their computer won't boot when the actual situation is the computer will not boot into the operating system.
If the computer had anti-virus protection installed and running on it, it's very unlikely that malware could cause the computer to not initially boot, despite the possibilty the hard drive may be dead or Windows or whatever operating system may not load.