By-pass security settings on a standalone computer

[lagomorph]

My boss was in the office while I was slagging the IT guy for doing
poor job setting up the network & systems.
I got pulled up to explain what I thought was wrong with the setup. T
cut a long story short, my boss made a bet with me that I can't brea
into the stand alone computer by the end of my shift (9hrs). If I d
by-pass the admin security he'll pay for a meal and discuss th
possibility of working with the IT guy to make sure that everything i
good, if not I've gotta buy drinks for everyone at the next wor
function (all night).

Problem: Computer running Windows XP Pro.
Conditions: Create a new user account (admin) without removing acces
the the current admin account. Must use resources from the office o
internet.

Any suggestions

 

[Doug Knox MS-MVP]

Any computer security is only as good as physical access to the machine.

If your computers support booting from floppy and/or CD, there is a freely available utility that will allow you to change/remove the Administrator password on the computer. Once that's done, you can log in on the Administrator account and make any changes you desire. Now, changing or removing the Admin password does remove access for the person who would normally use it (since they don't know there is no password, or what it was changed to), but that's a minor point.

There are other utilities such as Bart's PE, that will give you similar capabilities, if you know what you're doing.

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/editor.html

In order to prevent this, you need to remove the ability to boot from floppy and/or CD in the BIOS, set a BIOS Setup password and ensure that the physical case cannot be opened (see the computer's manual for reseting the BIOS's CMOS settings to default).

If you're successful, you can buy me a couple of beers and a big honkin' steak next time you're in the Boston area.