Seeking Boot Password, help?

[TheMozart]

Besides using truecrypt or bitlocker to encrypt my whole hard drive, does there exist free program that can encrypt and/or password lock my boot sectors so nobody can load windows unless they know the boot sector password?

I already have a BIOS password, but I want another layer of security as someone can drain the laptop battery and bypass the BIOS password. And maybe someone can use a BIOS password recovery program to get it.

Any suggestions?

[I no more]

Originally Posted by TheMozart

Besides using truecrypt or bitlocker to encrypt my whole hard drive, does there exist free program that can encrypt and/or password lock my boot sectors so nobody can load windows unless they know the boot sector password?

I already have a BIOS password, but I want another layer of security as someone can drain the laptop battery and bypass the BIOS password. And maybe someone can use a BIOS password recovery program to get it.

Any suggestions?

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=287550

[TheMozart]

Originally Posted by I no more

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=287550

That link has nothing to do with boot password ONLY.

[I no more]

Originally Posted by TheMozart

That link has nothing to do with boot password ONLY.

A boot password without encryption is useless. Someone could just take your hard drive out of your computer and get everything by using it as a USB hard drive.

The two free WDE programs I know of are TrueCrypt and DiskCryptor, the two programs in the link I gave you. I'm fairly certain that you could do a boot password only with both of these programs, by allowing the programs to modify the boot sectors but not following through with the encryption. But it's useless.

[Sadeghi85]

Originally Posted by InternetMeltdown

None but conceptually it is an excellent idea.

That doesn't make any sense to me, one can recreate mbr/boot sector and boot to Windows easily, even if they can't they can still access the data. Without actually encrypting the whole drive or at least the Windows partition, boot password is meaningless.

[I no more]

Originally Posted by Sadeghi85

That doesn't make any sense to me, one can recreate mbr/boot sector and boot to Windows easily, even if they can't they can still access the data. Without actually encrypting the whole drive or at least the Windows partition, boot password is meaningless.

+1

I agree. I wonder if there was some sarcasm in InternetMeltdown's post.

[TheMozart]

Originally Posted by InternetMeltdown

None but conceptually it is an excellent idea.

Trolling won't get you far

[doktornotor]

Needs to be HW-supported (i.e. the HDD needs to support such feature). MBR will not cut it really, as pointed above. While this is true for most modern IDE and SATA HDDs, only laptops usually include a "GUI" to that functionality (be it BIOS or some EFI/UEFI utility that can be used under Windows.

So, some HW info would be handy here.

Note: There are still ways to remove/reset the password in many cases (data recovery companies do this as part of their business) - so really without data encryption it is not something that would be fool-proof.