Weird HD lock issue

So I’m working on this old laptop and it came with a BIOS password. It has been intermittenly giving a “hard drive cannot be unlocked” error on boot and kicks over to PXE. I had the owner get the BIOS password and I cleared it but the hard drive lock feature was already disabled. Once I cleared the BIOS password it refused to unlock the hard drive and it didn’t show in mobile OSes (MiniPE, Knoppix) or WinXP setup. When I put a difference BIOS password on it still wouldn’t show up. When I added the original BIOS password back it recognized the hard drive again.

Has anyone ever heard of this?

Laptop is a Compaq Presario 2135us

To give an idea of this thing’s history, the owner had to get the password from his son in law, who had to call his grandmother, who had to call another son, who had to call a step-brother. It’s “been dropped a few times” and has an aftermarket 80G Seagate ATAPI drive.