Hidden partition bios security doesn't work

[eini]

Hello everyone

I've got a question. I recived T42 with empty disk and 7 cd's set of recovery tools. Everything goes fine but after recovery there is, I think, some problem with HPA security. No matter of what level of security is set in BIOS, linux always see predesktop partition ( it is possible to browse it as hda2 ) and windows System Admnistration tools ( computer management -> disks manager ) always show this partition, but don't allow to do anything with it ( also with disabled bios security ther is no addidional partition seen by windows in My Computer window). On the other hand Partition Magic etc. always ( no matter which option in bios is set ) allow me to destroy, reformat, resize HPA.
This kind of behaviour doesn't fit to any described in an kind of documents released by IBM.
Does anyone knows what is the problem or my mistake and if there is something wrong what can I do to fix it?
Thank you in advance.

[Ground Loop]

I don't have any answers for you, but I can confirm that my T43 came out of the box this way. The HPA partition didn't seem to be "hidden" from anything at all.

Windows and Linux could both see the partition, and I was able to read every byte from it in Linux. I didn't attempt to overwrite it before disabling it, but I expect (hope) it would have failed.

The partition type was something peculiar ("Compaq BIOS"?) and a FAT32 filesystem

[eini]

I don't have good news fo you. Even as "hidden" with security linux is able to read write and do anything what he wants and beeing more precise what I want . Anyway thanks for this information. Now I more confident that my T42 hardware is all right ( I hope ) and thah the problem sticks around IBM's solution.

PS. Yes it is something Compaq like with FAT32.