Is it the Laptop? Or the Data on the Drive? That is so much of an Asset to your company.. I'm going to go out on a limb and say its probably the data on the drive. Since it sounds like you've already taken the laptop apart why not just put the drive in an external drive case and plug it into another computer... bada bing bada bang... You have your mission critical data.
The Data on the computer is not important, it is the use of the lappy that is the asset.

Yes, it has an EEPROM chip that is holding the password. First question is did the deceased guy set a password............ or is it the default, which I believe is Dell

Other than that, you might try combinations of his name and initials or just try password.
Hehe, good suggestion but have tried ALL of the seemingly obvious passwords. That would have been better than opening it up at all so yes, the id10t did set a password.

you will have to speak to a suporvisor. they need this info "This computer system, #FX4FN1S-595B, is protected by a password authentication system" and they will have to verify the company name
It is not registered to the company with Dell (Maybe its not registered at all) but in the circumstance it is registered in the ex-ex-employee [badump ching] do you think Dell would accept a company letterhead saying "This guy was an employee but the property belongs to the company etc" ???

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Looks like it will have to go through Dell. Thanks for the input guys =)

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In regards to the Chip, ive already stated what model numbers were those particular chips - The brand was also ATMEL, which i only found 1 ATMEL chip on the entire board. However shorting the 3 & 6 pins did not work.

Thanks for the input once again

CTO