This happens when the system shuts down unexpectedly during a wipe and the hard drive is equipped with Secure Erase.

If you are unable to get past the HDD password screen, even after trying gibberish multiple times or booting before you see the password screen, try typing the word "WIPE" (that's in all-caps) as the password.  This should temporarily give you access to the machine's hard drive or another bootable device, but once the computer reboots, it will ask you again.

To avoid this and disable the security, boot into WipeDrive by any means necessary.  Get to the main menu, then type "exit".  You won't be typing anywhere, but just by typing the letters at all, it will show you a dialogue box asking if you want to exit.  Click OK or Yes.

Next, we'll need to figure out the name of your drive.  Usually, the main drive is "sda".  To verify this, type:

"cat /proc/partitions" then ENTER

It will list all drives.  The last column tells you the name of each drive.

sda is usually the main system drive.
sda1, sda2, etc are partitions of sda.
sdb could either be a USB drive or a secondary internal drive.

Then, we'll need to figure out which drive is locked, frozen, or both.  To do this, type:

"hdparm -I /dev/sda" then ENTER

This will check drive "sda" for its status.  You may see a column of information with the words "not" in front of them.  If there is no "not" in front of the word, it IS what it shows.  For example:

enabled
not frozen
locked

This means that a drive is locked, but not frozen.  Another example:

enabled
frozen
not    locked

This means that a drive is frozen, but not locked.

Now, for the disabling process:

If frozen, type both in order:

"wipedrive --unfreeze=/dev/{sda}"  (If the drive is actually sdb or something else, you will need to substitute sda for that name)

"wipedrive --unlock-drives"

If locked, do only:

"wipedrive --unlock-drives"

Once that is completed, reboot the system and check to see if the password security still shows.  If so, please contact us at support@whitecanyon.com