i am having some serious problems and i need help indefinately

[MetalHeadDMG]

well, i was just recently given a laptop from a soldier who just went to iraq. the computer is a acer aspire 3680, and he told me that it had sorta messed up, i guess from a night he was drunk and he screwed some **** up on it. so, i turn it on, and then it automatically prompts me to a blue screen asking for the hdd primary master password. i tried finding, and i belive i did find, the cmos battery, and i unplugged it for a good 10 min. then i tried to see if it reset all the bios settings and passwords. didnt do it. well, i cant seem to get past this, so i decide to install windows vista again. this disk i have was given to me, it was for a emachine, but it was still sealed in the cd plastic pouch, etc with the product key. but this isnt the problem. well, the password prompt comes up and i continually hit enter until it boots from constant input of an invalid password. then it boots up the vista disk. so im relieved, but, when i get to the window where it asks me which drive i want to install windows on, problems arise, once again. first off, i have an hitachi 80 gig drive, and it says the total size is 74.5 gb. also, at the bottom of the window, it displays:

This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu.

i click next, figuring it will still install, and then it displays the following:

Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for installation.

so, this is like crash course heaven. how so? i finally notice the drive has no partitions on it. so, i go to the advanced options in the menu, and attempt to create another partition. to add to my pissy mood, it displays:

Failed to create a new partition on the selected unused space. [Error: 0x80042453].

so now, i find myself here, wondering wtf is going on with this damned computer, and what the hell can i do about this. i mean.. i guess i could buy another hard drive, but i dont have the money right now, and before i go blowing my money on it when i get the money, i just wanted to know if theres anything else i can do to possibly fixing this. my other questions include:

-on the hdd password prompt, is that built into the system, or the hard drive itself, and if i do get a new hd, will it also display this message with the new one?

-is all this happening (with the windows installation) because of the password?

-what are the possible ways of bypassing this password? i asked my bro before he was deployed if he remembered it, and he said he didnt remember, because he had woke up from getting hammered, on his laptop, and didnt remember anything, but it started to pop up. he even tried to get past it, but just gave up.

-if you dont already know.. what do i do!!!


i am trying to install windows vista home basic 32 bit

the computer is an Acer aspire 3680

and also, on the name of the hard drive on the vista setup, it is named

Disk 0 Unallocated Space

thought id mention that as a just in case.


so please, someone help. this is quite annoying


thanks for you time


Derek