Funny thing about Dell boards:
When they start to come appart, they have a tendency to randomly activate the default DELL passwords on BIOS and disk. I don't quite see the point in making sure that you can't access your data externally when the laptop starts failing.
I also can't quite see the point of a customer service that should be aware of that problem insisting on you sending in an 8 year old machine because they can't give you the default password, which is different for every machine and HDD depending on their serial numbers. I mean, think about it this way: I can't unlock any other computers with it, and if this one isn't mine, the guy that for years bothered to enter the utterly imemorisable default password instead of changing it really deserves no better.
It is therefore little astonishing that there are friendly hackers who made the whole security system utterly superfluous by providing you with password generators for pretty much all Dell machines. I therefore can't quite see any sense in any such thing as a "Default password", especially not if it only kicks in when your board goes haywire.
I'll never have a Dell again. ever.