techrecovery | Jul. 9th, 2003

Gentleman brings in an XP box that won't load Windows.

Try to boot from floppy. Need to change boot order in BIOS. Encounter BIOS password. Password yields to brute force after six attempts. Not a fantastic password, but it did take some thinking. Life is good.

Boot from floppy, run Troubleshooter as per standard operating procedure. Go do something else for a while.

Return when Troubleshooter is done, attempt to start Windows using last good settings. Windows starts right up. Great. Now to plop Norton on and scan...

Now we have a problem. Four users on this machine, all of them with very good passwords I can't figure out. Customer isn't home.

Just for shits and giggles, I start the machine up in safe mode.

This individual, who is so anal about security that he has put a BIOS password and really good user passwords on this machine...has no Administrator password.

And has given his two kids, who have been merrily sticking Kazaa and its associated bullshit all over this machine, full administrator rights.

I take a short break to laugh and laugh and laugh.

Create new user, install Norton, get rid of nasties, get rid of spyware, life is good, computer is happy.

I was severely tempted to put a text file containing nothing but the word "OWNED" on the desktop of every other user on the machine, though. And take all their admin rights away.