LucidDreamer Posted January 27, 2005 Posted January 27, 2005 My grandfather bought a used tablet PC at an auction but he is unable to use it because the operating system is password protected. He did not receive any software with his purchase. The operating system is windows xp, the tablet pc edition. Does anyone know how he can get around this? He has no desire to get any of the previous owner’s information off of the pc, only to use it.
Kedas Posted January 27, 2005 Posted January 27, 2005 Don't know much about tabletPC's but can't you just erase it and start again installing XP?
5614 Posted January 27, 2005 Posted January 27, 2005 a) as kedas said, surely you can format the HDD b) when does this password appear? what exactly is the prompt?
The Rebel Posted January 27, 2005 Posted January 27, 2005 My grandfather bought a used tablet PC at an auction but he is unable to use it because the operating system is password protected. He did not receive any software with his purchase. The operating system is windows xp, the tablet pc edition. Does anyone know how he can get around this? He has no desire to get any of the previous owner’s information off of the pc, only to use it. What sort of password do you mean? Do you mean a user password for the login screen. This can be done by accessing the adminstrator account from the start up, and taking off a couple of access rights. I'm not sure it would be advisable to describe how on here though, in case someone takes it to the advantage of hacking another user account on his/her PC. EDIT: What sort of HDD is it as well
Silencer Posted January 27, 2005 Posted January 27, 2005 get a programme to sort through the cookies Please don't make retarded comments like that when you have no clue what you are talking about. Cookies are completely unrelated. LucidDreamer, just reformat the thing. You don't want to go around using a system that someone has already set up anyway... who knows what you'd find.
5614 Posted January 27, 2005 Posted January 27, 2005 and more to the point who knows what kind of spyware could be installed on their already. if this is a user password it can be overcome by booting in safe mode and accessing the administrator account. if it is a boot time password, before windows loads (aka a system password), for a normal computer there's a pin/jumper configuration on the motherboard wich you can configure to bypass the system password, i dont know if a tablet PC would have this pin/jumper. agreed with silencer; cookies are TOTALY 100% unrelated in every way!
LucidDreamer Posted January 28, 2005 Author Posted January 28, 2005 First of all, thanks for all the good replies guys. It is a user password. Can you still get around the security by going into safe mode with the XP operating system?
mossoi Posted January 28, 2005 Posted January 28, 2005 If you don't know the administrator password (which it sounds like you don't) then safe mode won't help you. You are going to need to reinstall the OS. If the OS was preinstalled by the manufacturer then it may be worth trawling some support forums for default passwords in the off chance that the admin password hasn't been changed.
boka-fett Posted January 28, 2005 Posted January 28, 2005 Yes you can. When your computer is booting up, as in you just turned it on (making sure that theres no miscommunication), press F5 a couple of times and you should get to a black screen with a buncha options on it. Use the arrow keys to scroll to safe mode. That will get you to the desktop and you can edit the user acounts as you please from there. COOKIES!?!?!?! bwahhahahahhaa!!!!!! Cookies are info passed from server to client via internet. They absolutely have nothing to do with user acounts on your pc. Also, configing the mother board can be tedious and dangerous, for the computer , if you dont know what your doing, so id play it safe and do the safe mode.
The Rebel Posted January 28, 2005 Posted January 28, 2005 If you don't know the administrator password (which it sounds like you don't) then safe mode won't help you. You are going to need to reinstall the OS. If the OS was preinstalled by the manufacturer then it may be worth trawling some support forums for default passwords in the off chance that the admin password hasn't been changed. You can as I have done it. My friend had a pretty bad virus on their computer, which completely corrupted their system. They was about to pay an "engineer" £80 just to wipe it. I took it to try and retrieve some personal files of first, only problem is they had a password on their user account. Entering the admin account via safe mode can allow you to access and change permissions settings. I'm not going into more info just in case there are kiddies out there wanting to get into their parents user accounts. All that said, good point about the spyware, better just to wipe it completely instead fiddling with user accounts.
Silencer Posted January 28, 2005 Posted January 28, 2005 Any "kiddy" on these forums is capable of getting into the admin account. And if he found this by searching... wel he wouldn't be here because it would have been answered by the first result. As for BIOS system passwords, you don't even need to set CMOS clear to get rid of them. Every BIOS manufacturer has a backdoor password that you can look up on their website. The reason for this is to prevent workers and other mortals from pissing off sys admins in companies and schools and such.
boka-fett Posted January 28, 2005 Posted January 28, 2005 You can as I have done it. All that said, good point about the spyware, better just to wipe it completely instead fiddling with user accounts. That is if he has the Windows disk. If he doesnt have it, and he wipes it, he'll have to go buy it and pay an extra 90 something to get another one. Of course if he does have it, go for it.
Silencer Posted January 28, 2005 Posted January 28, 2005 Is there a different version of windows for the tablet? Also, linux support for tablet PC's has increased tremendously, but I doubt your grandfather would be interested in that.
boka-fett Posted January 30, 2005 Posted January 30, 2005 Sooo, LucidDreamer....did you do anything yet?
5614 Posted January 30, 2005 Posted January 30, 2005 hopefully he will have booted in safe mode, gone into admin account, disabled the password protected account, created his own new account and its as good as new. i'd strongly advise to format it too. As for BIOS system passwords, you don't even need to set CMOS clear to get rid of them. Every BIOS manufacturer has a backdoor password that you can look up on their website. The reason for this is to prevent workers and other mortals from pissing off sys admins in companies and schools and such. i've never heard of this, so if i have phoenix BIOS, where would i find this 'backdoor/password' ????
ed84c Posted January 30, 2005 Posted January 30, 2005 Please don't make retarded comments like that when you have no clue what you are talking about. Cookies are completely unrelated. Newsflash; There are programmes that can get internet passwords from cookies; i.e. viruses, and do you use a different windows password than say, a quicktime on you signed up for to download Quicktime player?
5614 Posted January 30, 2005 Posted January 30, 2005 ed84c, i think you need to know what you are talking about and read the original post. a system password has nothing to do with cookies and you cant 'run' a cookie let alone 'run' it on a computer or tablet PC you cant access in the first place! a virus is not a cookie and just a thing, i have many passwords, and i think there's two things which share the same, the rest are different... its just a standard logical security step, i have passwords for: email1 email2 SFN computer-start up computer-BIOS computer-username school-network username/password photobucket a few protected MS word files MSN AIM symantec firewall/AV/anti-spam Avast AV router config page and lots more too! a few of those are the same, most are different though.
ed84c Posted January 30, 2005 Posted January 30, 2005 no, no. A cookie can contain password information. You can get a virus to extract this information. If you put a virus on the tablet, you may be able to get passwords for the person's e.g. email address (allthough this will be quite sequre so, it will probably be something else). THis could be the same password as the user used in windows. Im only basing it in an article i read about in PC world a while ago.
5614 Posted January 30, 2005 Posted January 30, 2005 A cookie can contain password information. You can get a virus to extract this information yes, but it wont have a system password information. email passwords for web based email addresses will (despite having a cookie) reset themselves every 24 hours, at least yahoo does. a user based email service such as MS outlook will not have cookie based passwords THis could be the same password as the user used in windows. maybe you could got a password, maybe it would be the same... a lot of maybes, but here's a bigger problem: you cant run a program to obtain cookies unless you are the user because cookies will be user protected... and you cant run anything on this tablet PC because you can log onto any user anyway! besides, he probably wont know how to (a) obtain it (b) run it © get the info from it
mossoi Posted January 31, 2005 Posted January 31, 2005 I think a lot of people in this thread are missing a major point. If the admin account is password protected then there is no way onto the machine. For those of you advising booting into safe mode to bypass the security, we're not talking FAT32 anymore, and if the machine has been set up correctly there is no way in. You could try booting from a Windows PE or Knoppix CD and then try to do something sensible from there.
YT2095 Posted January 31, 2005 Posted January 31, 2005 there`s alot of posts in here about the BIOS passy etc... do yourselves a favor, open the pc take out the CR2032 lithium cell, or 3.5f Cap or Ni-Cad bundle. leave it overnight or gently pat on the back of the PCB with a ball of tinfoil, replace the battery and You`re IN! but if the HDD itself is protected, then Good Luck to you, you`ll NEED IT!
Sayonara Posted January 31, 2005 Posted January 31, 2005 That's a bit extreme. Windows passwords don't actually protect data on your hard drive; they only protect your windows environment - you know, while it's running.
5614 Posted January 31, 2005 Posted January 31, 2005 do yourselves a favor, open the pc take out the CR2032 lithium cell, or 3.5f Cap or Ni-Cad bundle. leave it overnight or gently pat on the back of the PCB with a ball of tinfoil, replace the battery and You`re IN! i had heard that 10 minutes without the battery will do the trick, although i've never done it or know anyone who has (unless YT has. I dunno, he was more saying its possible than he's done in, whatever, its really not important!)
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