...and here's the moral of this story:

>>My friend recently purchased a Sony Vaio laptop on the cheap<<

Don't buy things on the cheap :) .....go to the store (unless you know the person and trust them)

If it is on in the bios you can check, but without knowing the password you can't turn it off so basically you need the password unless you want to do a flash on the bios and risk totally buggering it up.

As Charlie said, your best bet is Sony support but Im not sure they'll be helpful if you tell them you got it on the cheap so you may not want to let that slip :)