Why I love The Economist Magazine
The Economist is a fantastic magazine for many reasons. Great reportage, fairly little bias, worldwide news coverage, fantastic features.
But it lets itself down by only allowing subscribers to read its comments online. I have chosen to share my subscription with you for the article below. It’s great - an example of the magazine becoming a trusted source of information in a new arena - office computing.
I have read its news and research reports for years. But until I read this, I would never have considered finding great links to useful products from its pages.
This article tells you how to bypass a password protected PC (particularly if the user has left your company in a huff and taken the password with him).
Let me know if you successfully use the products recommended!
Tales from the crypt
From Economist.com
Bringing a zombie computer back to life
MOST
of us have done it at one time or another. You try to access a website
you haven’t visited in ages and can’t remember the password that admits
you to its inner sanctum. Websites are usually pretty forgiving about
such things, and will e-mail you a temporary password, which is fine if
you still have the same e-mail address.
But what if
you’ve lost (or never had) that ultimate of passwords—the
“Administrator” password for your computer’s own operating system? That
could easily have happened if, say, your predecessor cleaned out the
office desk and deleted his personal files from computer before
disappearing without trace. Now you can’t update the software, download
bug fixes, renew the anti-virus subscription or add programs and
utilities you need for doing your job.
You’ve tried
all the obvious tricks—leaving the space for the Administrator password
blank, inserting the word “admin” or dozens of popular passwords drawn
from lists available on the web. Stumped, the choice comes down to:
throw the computer away, or try painstakingly to bring it back to life.
If the
decision is to resuscitate, the simplest but most tedious course is to
set aside a day or so to re-install the operating system from scratch.
That means collecting all the latest versions of the software drivers
used for running the computer’s hardware components. If you can get
into a “user account” on the system, this limited authority should at
least let you view the hardware’s details.
Next, you
need to dig out the original installation discs for the operating
system, or buy a full version of it (an upgrade won’t do) if that’s
disappeared as well. Then grit your teeth while you reformat the
hard-drive and re-install the operating system and all the applications
programs.
Actually,
that’s not such a bad thing to do once in a while, if you can afford
the time. Hard drives get cluttered with all sorts of rubbish, and no
amount of “defragging” will give them the verve they had when new. Can
things go wrong? Sure. Just console yourself that the alternative was
to toss the machine anyway.
For the more
adventurous, there’s always lobotomy. There are lots of software tools
and services available on the internet which, for a fee, will crack
just about any password and reveal its decrypted secrets. They may be
legal, but such practices walk a wobbly line ethically. If it’s a
company machine, better to be on the safe side and use a recovery
technique that simply over-writes an existing password and replaces it
with a blank. That is the difference between hacking and cracking. At
least, the computer’s new user can then get the system running properly
again and give it a new Administrator password.
 |
 Despite their reputation for insecurity, the worst offenders when it comes to locking legitimate users out of their own computers are the later versions of Windows, especially NT, 2000 and XP |
Despite their
reputation for insecurity, the worst offenders when it comes to locking
legitimate users out of their own computers are the later versions of
Windows, especially NT, 2000 and XP. Fortunately, their file system,
called NTFS, can be read by any Linux distribution that includes the
appropriate drivers.
So, in principle, all you have to do is get a bootable version of a Linux distribution (a “live CD” of, say, Knoppix)
that contains two particular files called “captive ntfs” and “chntpw”.
After booting the computer with the Linux CD, the first of these
packages scans the hard drive for the Windows files it needs to access
the locked-down operating system. Then the second package goes to work,
tracking down the Administrator password.
That’s the
theory. In practice, things can get messy, even for regular Linux
users. Fortunately, some gifted people have gone out of their way to
make life easier for the rest of us Windrones.
The most
famous is Petter Nordahl-Hagen, who has put together a CD with all the
Linux tools needed to do the job. The latest version of this box of
tricks can be downloaded from his website for free. Another ethical
password-changer comes from a threesome whose hacker names are
Headhunter, Rez Kiyn and Harakiri. Their Trinity Rescue Kit
is even more user friendly. The latest version, TRK 3.2, can be
downloaded from Trinity’s website also for free. Both sets of utilities
will have a crippled computer up and running, with a new Administrator
password, in minutes.
One of the
cheering things about the Linux community in particular, and the
open-source software movement in general, is the way so many talented
people give their time and know-how to help others in a fix—and do so
cheerfully for free. If either of the password tools above bring a
zombie computer back to life for you, do send a donation to the
developer. It would cost at least $50 to get a password removed
commercially. And think about the $500 you’ve saved through not having
to buy a replacement machine.