Hello,

I own a laptop Asus K56CA. Shortly after I bought it, I swapped out 5400rpm drive for a Samsung SSD 840. I’ve set up passwords: BIOS Administrator and User; also Master and User HDD Password.
Now, the operating system on my laptop got corrupted few days ago and I need to migrate Windows 8 from the original Hitachi 5400rpm drive to my Samsung SSD 840 (as I did it the first time).

To do this I need to remove the SSD 840 and put back the Hitachi drive into the laptop. The SSD must be unlocked, though.
When I’m in BIOS to unlock it I can't change anything except the User passwords (BIOS and HDD). When I try removing the Master HDD password, it says, “Password can’t be cleared in User Mode”, even though, it also is written in BIOS that if I get into the setup the user will have Administrator rights.

I’ve taken few images of the BIOS and I’m attaching to this post.

Please, if anyone can help me with a way I should approach this problem, I’d really appreciate it.

PS. It’s my laptop and the Samsung SSD. I bought them on Amazon, so I’ve got that documented online, and in paper. I also have all the required passwords.

I think what this message is referring to is that you used a "User" password to enter BIOS settings and not the "Admin" password. I don't think that this issue is related to the password on SSD. Try entering BIOS settings as Admin and disabling security, it should work.

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Dmitry

Indeed, being unable to get into BIOS Administrator Level is probably the main reason why I can't unlock the SSD. I'm going to change tagging for my post.