Window on the world

Recently a friend gave me a 2nd-hand PC to replace the one I had to return to work.

This was certainly useful, as choosing a new PC is a pain. The difficulty was that the PC had been gathering dust in an office (the previous user having moved on) for a while. In the meantime, everyone had forgotten the password.

Attempts at remembering or guessing the password failed. It was becoming rather a frustrating problem. However, I was pointed to a tech forum which gave instructions on how to reset the administrator password.

I have obviously heard how windows is supposed to be rather leaky from a security perspective, but never gave it much thought.

Quite a revelation ! This was a completely legitimate password reset, but it was still rather amazing what can be done with the right knowledge.

The procedure required no more equipment than an original Windows XP disk. It then involved rebooting the PC and interrupting the boot with a particular sequence of keystrokes. This led to a "secret" menu where, indeed, one could reset the administrator password (and do other low-level tasks).

Obviously, with a new admin password, the whole PC is opened up and I was able to proceed as necessary.