I know this should go under the bios request page and should be filled out with all the specs from rw-everything but since I am a new member it will not let me post there yet. Also I wanted to make sure this was possible first. I have a dell studio 1555 that I bought 2nd hand (which I completely regret now). Before you guys start screaming it, no its not stolen. I am happy to give the person who does the work all the serial numbers (and even pics if you really want) to prove its not stolen. I had tracked its history myself hoping to track down the original owner to have the computrace deactivated. I finally figured out that it belonged to a company that the guy I bought it from moms worked at. The company has since closed and the laptop was then sold to his mom which she gave to him and he in turn sold to me. I know it all sounds sketch just stay with me. I have emailed absolute (the company that makes computrace) to no avail. I emailed them all the info of the laptop as well as mine hoping they will email me back. I have already contacted the local police department and had the serial numbers ran to be sure it was not stolen either. Obviously the company when in business decided to have lojack for their equipment and activated computrace in the bios of the laptop I bought. Considering they have been out of business they have obviously not stayed current with their lojack subscription. Hence why absolute won't email me back and the cops never kicked down my door (which I ended up contacting them). Once this option for computrace is activated it cannot be disabled and the option is greyed out to change the setting. This really wouldn't be a problem since the laptop is not stolen and since the account is not current absulote has no reason to track me. The thing is the damn thing keeps installing the computrace spyware (rpcnet.dll and its regenerating too!) on my laptop that won't allow me to do certain things since it write protects the windows folders (i.e. I have never been able to install windows 7 service pack 1 on this laptop since it blue screens every-time it tries to write the new info). Computrace was also designed for vista so when one of the spyware programs kick on (I assume the one that phones home to absolute) the laptop blue screens and turns off this happens about once an hour and the computer again needs to be rebooted. Also I don't like the ideal of a hacker being able to control those services to see everything I do. But mainly its the fact I can't reinstall windows, install service packs or updates, or anything really to do with the windows files since it blue screens and reboots every god damn time so it makes this laptop damn near useless. So my question is. Computrace is most likely just an optional rom in the bios. Is there anyway to remove this? I am not familiar with hex editing or bios editing so I am looking for someone that can take the dell studio 1555 a13 bios and remove the computrace features. Or better yet does anyone know how to reset the nvram on a studio (I have searched everywhere online)? I am more than happy to pay some $$$$ to get it done so I don't have to buy a new motherboard (looking at about $140 for a used one off ebay.) to solve this problem. Please please help I know this computrace stuff is a bit controversial but I just want it off my laptop it just causes problems for what otherwise would be an awesome laptop.
Also before you ask about the blue screens its not the ram or hard drive causing it. I ran a memtest and smarttest on them and they came back clean. I even swapped them out to be sure but still had the same problem. And for those wondering how I got windows 7 on there I had to install windows onto the hard drive in another computer and then install it in the laptop.