Giant padlock on screen when i boot up!

Hi! The machine has been locked using hardware either with open firmware or with a low level disk program to keep it from starting up without the password. You must have recently bought it? Tom

Hi! I've never heard of this before. Have you tried a pmu reset? Also did you try holding the "c" key down at startup for at least 5-10 minutes before giving up? Also is the drive the master or the slave and is the drive an ide/ata drive and not a scsi drive? Using firewire target disk mode with another computer might work. Tom

Hi, Chris -

Your description of the screen sounds like what is shown in the pic in this Apple KBase article -
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106482

If so, then the firmware password function has been invoked. If you have not yet tried, try clicking the righthand button without entering anything in the password entry box.

Unfortunately, if you can not get past it, and it's real, you will not be able to boot the machine to any disk or volume unless you know the required password. It is a reasonably serious level of security, originally directed toward owners of portable machines.

There is a way that such a password can be disabled. For reasons of security, even if we do know the solution we do not post it in these forums - since these forums are accessible by anyone, even by those who have not registered, posting the solution could help nefarious types gain unauthorized access to machines. To find out how to do it, contact Apple's Tech support, or an AASP (Authorized Apple Service Provider).