Blocked from BIOS and booting from USB by Harddisk Security

Question

I bought a second hand laptop and was in the process of cleaning and resetting the hard disk until it started asking for a password and doesn't let me get to the BIOS anymore and also doesn't let me boot from a USB.

Everything was working fine for last few days. The laptop came with Windows. I installed Ubuntu. Then I installed Windows again to update the BIOS. Everything was working well still.

After that I decided to use BCWipe Total WipeOut. I started the wipe and then stopped it because it didn't say which settings it was using. That's when things messed up. It seemed as if it was stuck. The interface started to let me type at the bottom like in the command line, but previously it just had a menu with things to select. But nothing I typed did anything and clicking any keys also didn't do anything. I decided to force shut down. When I started back up is when I started to get asked for the password.

I didn't set any password on the BIOS, and I assume it didn't have before either since I was able to get into it before. It may be a master password from the hard disk or something like that, but it doesn't say "master" anywhere.

At first it shows:

      Harddisk Security
SATA Port 0       Hitachi HTS545050a7ELock

When I press enter I get:

Please input password for Hitachi HTS545050a7ELock

After three attempts I get:

Error Status
Enter incorrect password too many times
Please power-off your system and reboot it again
System Halted

That's it. No error code or anything like that. No options. Only thing that can be done is turn it off and back on.

Pressing F2 or F12 during boot or any of other F's or Esc or Del doesn't do anything. The laptop even has a tiny hole with a button that can be pressed with a paperclip to boot into BIOS directly, but even that doesn't work.

The laptop is a: Lenovo IdeaPad 100-14IBY UEFI BIOS

I had to disable secure boot to run BCWipe Total WipeOut. And BCWipe is supposed to reset and wipe the HPA/DCO of the hard drive if it has them. I don't know if this one has them. Obviously I don't care about anything that is in the hard drive and ideally want to wipe it completely clean. I do want to be able to use it again, by installing Ubuntu on it from scratch.

I was going to try removing the hard disk which I assume would let me boot into BIOS at least just to check and maybe try other settings. But now one of the screws won't come off and can't get into the laptop :/

Any ideas how else I can get to the BIOS or boot from a USB?