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Admin
Shouldn't that be a metric craptonne?
Admin
Good luck finding a CD burner these days. I don't think DVDs were about when NT4 was in mainstream use, and I don't think an unpatched NT4 would recognise one if you plugged one in. I ran NT4 back in the day, and I had a CD burner on the box... it was a SCSI drive, there weren't many IDE burners available back then. I think I've still got it in a box somewhere.
Admin
Admin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclide
Ok, I admit I had the same idea immediately while reading it, and I suspect for the same reason --- it's spelled with the extra E in many non-English languages. But hey, no reason to be a dick like you.
Admin
The case probably had a tampering switch, had he opened the case he really would have been in trouble, I don't think that there is a Linux app that will crack a BIOS password, is there?
Also, the subtitle for this site is "Curious Perversions in Information Technology" NOT "Completely Riveting Story Every Day so I Can Waste an Hour of My Employers Time Reading the Story and all of the Comments."
Admin
I worked on an application where I was told "the administrator password" is secret.
"Yes, I would expect it to be - but can you tell me what it is, or type it in for me?"
"Just type s-e-c-r-e-t" - yes, the password really was 'secret' !
Admin
ummmm... instead of messign around like that, couldnt he have just pulled the hard disk out and inserted into another PC to get at the files?
Admin
He never explained the real WTF... why these people apparently expected a detector to open files.
Admin
root pw on my schools main firewall was also "geheim" (which means "secret" in german)
Admin
That's a good thing. The business world has a lot of dumb practices that impact productivity, but ensuring that an alarm system like that is WORKING is pretty important.
Admin
Machines here the users have passwords ad the admin accounts are blank...
Admin
You may want to read the full article.
Admin
Umm, by the sound of the story those are computers in a company/school office. And in many places the information you enter, be it a document, a password, or an email are property of the company/school office in question.
Now settle down and stop using the same password for your bank account as you do for your work and you will be fine.
Admin
oops: Umm, by the sound of the story those are computers in a company/school office. And in many places the information you enter, be it a document, a password, or an email are property of the company/school office in question.
Now settle down and stop using the same password for your bank account as you do for your work and you will be fine.
Admin
There is no WTF here. We did not come to read random IT stories; we came to read random IT failures.
Admin
Hey guys! I'm so fucking l337 and experienced that is physically impossible for me to enjoy an amusing tech support story! Because I deal with laser dragons every day and am far far superior, I must apprise everyone of how banal this story is, rather than just leave!
Admin
Admin
Depends on which side of the Atlantic you're on (onne?). :-)
Admin
i came in to say this. this wasn't a case of needing to preserve the current admin password, so a reset should have been the goto less than 5 minute solution.
Admin
Well, I enjoyed the WTF.
Just finished something similar - an old 2000 box hooked up to a special UV imaging somethingorother. The device hooked up to a 4MB PCI video card that had a VGA and parallel (yes, like for printers) on it. The VGA port went to a CRT monitor, the parallel port went to the UV camera.
It also had a PCI card that hooked up to the PSU to deliver a bunch of voltage out a COM port that wasn't really a COM port but a "fry anything you plug into it" port. This was obviously the best way to provide power to the UV camera.
To ensure this garbage worked, the box was custom built by the manufacturer of the camera - computer and UV imager sold together. But, the motherboard and hard disk were dying, the driver floppies were lost, and the company wouldn't answer their tech support line.
I ended up transplanting all of the hardware into a "new" PC. I lifted an image from the Windows 2000 box using ImageX on a PE disc and applied it to the new computer. Since the new box was ACPI and the old box wasn't, I did a repair install of Windows 2000 and it magically worked.
Thankfully, no third-party encryption.
Long story, but, yeah. It's all sorts of entertaining when stuff like that happens.
Admin
Maybe he doesn't want the no-doubt majority of commenters which are physically repulsed by those horrifically reader-unfriendly things to leave in droves?
Admin
... However, there was a problem with the admin’s suggestion - Michael had attended the professor's funeral two weeks earlier.
Having neither a Ouija board nor a shovel..
The most hilarious thing I have read in a couple of weeks.
Admin
Admin
A parallel port external zip drive would probably do the trick, also a parallel or serial crossover cable as has already been mentioned.
BTW, floppy disks are fairly reliable if reasonably cared for, even if you like to label things as "legacy".
Admin
He brute forced a 12 character alphanumeric password over night on his personal computer?
That sounds like outright bullshit.
Admin
Apparently Michael didn't know about the widely documented (unpatched) NT4 exploit that can make any user local admin without breaking a sweat? :)
Admin
No, it really, really wasn't. Some manufacturers provided NT4 support for their USB devices, but it basically relied on them providing the entire functionality of the USB stack (or more likely, enough for what they required) in the driver. Windows 95 (kind of) got USB support later, but 95 was a very different beast to NT.
This meant that if you were really lucky and running the right NT service pack (which wasn't always the latest) you might get a single USB device working with considerable amounts of effort. And given how often NT4 service packs broke things, it'd have taken a brave or, more likely, stupid IT guy to try updating a system like that.
Personally I remember much celebration the day we finally got rid of the last NT box from our university department. I'm sure we'll have a similar reponse the day we get rid of our last Win2000 machine too....
Admin
Just for the record here and I know these replies are rather old but I seen this and just had to correct it. Windows NT was out while general consumers were able to get the new Windows 3.0 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11
NT initially was a project started in cooperation with IBM and Microsoft. It wasn't called NT though. Then there was some kind of falling out between Microsoft and IBM (I don't recall if I ever knew what happened actually) and Microsoft eventually came out with what they called NT and IBM came out with OS2, OS/2, OS 2, whatever.
Here's a funny, NT supposedly meant New Technology. Later, maybe around NT 4 or maybe it was even during the release of Windows 2000, the CD's were marked as: Built on NT Technology. I always love it when companies forget what their own abbreviations mean!
This same type of thing (abbreviations) happened with the agency I work for. They are originally called South East North Dakota Information Technology or SENDIT. Years later they started branding themselves as SENDIT Technology Services because everyone at the time had forgotten what SENDIT stood for, it had just become a common name for our organization. :-)
Admin
Not entirely out of the question, assuming you're ready to download several hundred megabytes' worth of rainbow tables. That may take a few hours. The cracking part? ~30 seconds, if that.
Admin
Really? It came on two or three disks (depending on when/where you got it).