I've never really done much with encryption, but I'm sure astor or Nightcrawler can help you out there. As for the bootup logo, that should be an option in your BIOS settings. If it isn't in the BIOS settings, then it's at the operating system level and you'll have to look up how Microsoft partners get a bitmap to display at system load. I read about it once ages ago; it's a key in the Windows registry that points to a properly formatted bitmap or something. Shouldn't be too hard if what I read (and what I remember) is accurate.As for the "lowjack," if there is one then it'll likely be a piece of software running underneath the OS (meaning Windows loads and can control that software -- if it loads *before* the OS though, you can't just kill the program through Process Explorer or something, it won't even be listed probably). I have no experience with such software, so it's conceivable I'm wrong, but I don't see how it could possibly be a software solution and not show up as a running process in Windows (again unless it actually loads before the OS, which means you have to reinstall the OS to get rid of it).If it's hardware... you're out of luck. Hardware could be setup to be impossible to disable via software or a hard drive change. But I'm not even sure anybody sells those things, or why someone would bother paying money just to make sure a laptop is useless unless they want it to be.So go to Administration controls or whatever it is, and look through the list of services. Now relax, a lot of them sound really scary and bad but unless you google one and know exactly why you don't need it, don't fuck with the settings. Just find one that sounds like it's some kind of tracking software (if there is one, there may not be), and stop it. Then set it to disabled. Click okay. Done :)Edit: to be clear, if it's not a BIOS setting and it's still there after reinstallation of the OS -- then you'd need to be able to muck with the BIOS at a non-user level. That I can't help you with, but you shouldn't go that far unless you *really* want it gone. I suppose you could try clearing the BIOS settings entirely and hope the manufacturer's default settings don't include it... I doubt they would, come to think of it. On desktops there's a couple of pins somewhere on the motherboard and if you put the jumper you'll find on them (it's a tiny little piece of plastic) in the special position bridging the right pins for a few seconds, the entire BIOS memory is cleared and restored to default. But that can means everything, not just some logo. There's probably info for it if you search for your model. It's usually used because someone forgets the BIOS password and can't boot their computer, if that helps you find it.