Hi
I am in a little predicament. An old tech who worked here put policies on 24
windows xp machines and now when problems arise I cant troubleshoot anything
because everything is locked down. I dont know if he used a third party
software or policies from windows xp. Also the admin account does me no
good. Supposedly he had a cd that I guess you could boot with and restore
the system but I cant find it. Currently I am unable to go to c:, the
registry, control panal, the run command and everything else needed to get
in. Am I dead in the water or is there something I can do to reset this
nightmare.

Mike

Mberg wrote:

> Hi
> I am in a little predicament. An old tech who worked here put policies on
> 24 windows xp machines and now when problems arise I cant troubleshoot
> anything because everything is locked down. I dont know if he used a third
> party software or policies from windows xp. Also the admin account does me
> no good. Supposedly he had a cd that I guess you could boot with and
> restore the system but I cant find it. Currently I am unable to go to c:,
> the registry, control panal, the run command and everything else needed to
> get in. Am I dead in the water or is there something I can do to reset
> this nightmare.

1. Consult with your corporate counsel as to whether you should contact your
local law enforcement organization.

2. Consult with your corporate counsel as to whether you should take legal
action against your old tech.

3. Anything you get from the old tech at this point will be suspect and you
have no idea if he left any backdoors. Therefore you should flatten those
workstations and reinstall Windows. Hopefully the hardware will be the same
so you can just do one and image the rest. Even if some of the hardware is
different, check out the Enterprise products at Acronis because I believe
you can restore to different hardware with Universal Restore; perhaps
whatever imaging software you use can do this too.

Since you presumably have been following best practices and no data is saved
locally on the workstations, it should only take you a day to flatten,
rebuild, image, apply image to 23 other workstations. A pain, but not the
end of the world.

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
Don't Panic!

Mberg wrote:
> I am in a little predicament. An old tech who worked here put
> policies on 24 windows xp machines and now when problems arise I
> cant troubleshoot anything because everything is locked down. I
> dont know if he used a third party software or policies from
> windows xp. Also the admin account does me no good. Supposedly he
> had a cd that I guess you could boot with and restore the system
> but I cant find it. Currently I am unable to go to c:, the
> registry, control panal, the run command and everything else
> needed to get in. Am I dead in the water or is there something I
> can do to reset this nightmare.

Malke wrote:
> 1. Consult with your corporate counsel as to whether you should
> contact your local law enforcement organization.
>
> 2. Consult with your corporate counsel as to whether you should
> take legal action against your old tech.
>
> 3. Anything you get from the old tech at this point will be suspect
> and you have no idea if he left any backdoors. Therefore you should
> flatten those workstations and reinstall Windows. Hopefully the
> hardware will be the same so you can just do one and image the
> rest. Even if some of the hardware is different, check out the
> Enterprise products at Acronis because I believe you can restore to
> different hardware with Universal Restore; perhaps whatever imaging
> software you use can do this too.
>
> Since you presumably have been following best practices and no data
> is saved locally on the workstations, it should only take you a day
> to flatten, rebuild, image, apply image to 23 other workstations. A
> pain, but not the end of the world.

Malke,

Aren't you *assuming* the old tech did this maliciously? This may have been
the way they locked machines down, period. I have been to places like that.
Also - you are assuming the 'old tech' didn't up and die (literally) and
that is why this new tech finds themselves in this position. ;-)

Mberg,

I would say - overall, I agree with Malke - you would probably be better off
flattening the systems and making them your own in any case. Troublesome?
Yes. Time consuming - pretty much - but I think you would spend less time
building these machines up from scratch/imaging them than trying to figure
out what the undocumented parts are.

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Shenan Stanley wrote:

> Malke,
>
> Aren't you *assuming* the old tech did this maliciously? This may have
> been
> the way they locked machines down, period. I have been to places like
> that. Also - you are assuming the 'old tech' didn't up and die (literally)
> and that is why this new tech finds themselves in this position. ;-)

No, I'm making the assumption that you can't know if the old tech was
malicious or not and I believe in not taking chances with business
machines. Since the old tech, well-intentioned or not and alive or not, was
apparently incompetent enough not to document his work in a clear and
easily found way, untangling the mess will take far longer than the day I
estimate it will take to make everything nice and clean and new again.

>
> Mberg,
>
> I would say - overall, I agree with Malke - you would probably be better
> off
> flattening the systems and making them your own in any case. Troublesome?
> Yes. Time consuming - pretty much - but I think you would spend less time
> building these machines up from scratch/imaging them than trying to figure
> out what the undocumented parts are.
>

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
Don't Panic!