Getting into Windows 10
I've broken my annual pattern of going all retro over the Dec/Jan period of time. don't know why.
Maybe I've lost my mojo?
maybe the COVID-19 stuff has been a bit draining?
maybe I've spent far too long of my spare time doing all the paperwork to apply for this ( https://www.credly.com/org/ibm/badge/architect-profession-certification-level-3-thought-leader
Which auto-grants me to be certified as an Open Group "Distinguished Architect":
Yes, even though I've been working at the top of my game for the past 30years in the IT industry and have successfully delivered FOAK (first of a kind) awesome projects around the world - I still have to justify my existence to my employers. No, I do not believe it is an "age" thing, even though I agree I am getting on a bit now, I'm still skilled up with all the relevant know-how, mainly because I'm technically curious - however, I am finding I am being pushed more into a sales/pre-sales domain; which I do not like and never have - my mental view: you go into pre-sales and then into sales when you've given up and don't want to be a "do-er" anymore. Yes, you prob. get paid more, but I would feel less fulfilled, besides I don't do it for the money.
Right, what has that got to do with "Getting into Windows 10"? not a lot really, except, as stated, I usually do a retro thing around this time of year and whilst I have been in the loft/attic and have dug out old Atari ST machines, kitted them out with some modern stuff, I've also dug out some old laptops and Palmtop devices (HP 200LX). One of the laptops was a Toshiba Satellite 4300 that I used whilst working at AvantGo back between 2001-2003. Why is that of interest? Well, it has a 3.5" floppy drive installed internally, it has all the ports! RS232, parallel, usb pcmcia, ps2 and vga output. What I did not have however is the PSU. A quick Amazon search and the next day, I have a knock-off PSU. I also found I had 2 battery packs - and both still keep charge! Apart from the keyboard needing detoxing (laptop last used about 19year ago and it wasn't clean back then!) it happily booted up and I was presented with a Windows 2000 Pro. ctrl+alt+del login screen. Now...my memory is not that good for remembering login/password credentials from 20years ago!
So, off to Google I went and found a couple of YouTube videos and some articles. A couple just said to boot from a DOS floppy or Linux Live CD and go and delete the \System32\Config SAM file and reboot and voila! you'll have Administrator with no password and you're back in.
Then this video caught my eye - whilst this method doesn't work on a Windows 2000 Pro. OS as it does not have the [ease of use] button, it still amused me at just how simple / easy it still is to backdoor your way into a Windows 10 laptop.
Did I try this on a Windows 10 laptop - sure did, I have a brand new HP Z-Book Fury that I have to use for work, it just had a fresh re-install and software updates from Microsoft, so I thought I'd give it a go.
In a nutshell - the 'On-Screen Keyboard' app runs as the System user account (GOD in Windows world), so if you can switch that to run CMD.exe instead, you get a GOD DOS prompt when you select the keyboard from [Ease of access] and then you can create a new user account/change password. you still need to do the boot from Windows 2000 CD and select "R" for repair then "C" for console:
>cd Windows\system32
>copy osk.exe osk.exe.old
>copy cmd.exe cmd.exe.old
>copy cmd.exe osk.exe
reboot, select keyboard and there's the command prompt opened to c:\Windows\system32
>whoami
nt authority\system
>net user tony letmein
and now my password is 'letmein'
Well, looksie there... Not only did it work exactly as stated, I created a new user account and have full access into the laptop. Wow! There is a reason I run a MacBook Pro and Linux laptops personally, okay not stating they are 100% secure either, but if you want to get into them, you have to put in some effort!
BTW - this is why you should ALWAYS have BitLocker installed/configured for your Windows 10 laptops - it encrypts the drive content and whilst you may get an account on the laptop, you cannot get the data.
Back to the Toshiba 4300 - well, a quick trip to the loft/attic and I fetched a Windows 2000 Pro installation CD - even in the nice big box they used to come in... popped it in, let it boot through and then pressed "R" for recovery. Removed CD, rebooted and yup I would have been back in.... except that didn't happen. I was all ready to do that. Except, as I had turned off the laptop, I decided to remove the existing battery and put the other one in - just to check if they were both still good. Then a little post-it note wafted out and fell to the ground, on it... my username and password for the laptop! I booted up and yep - worked a treat, got full access to the laptop, it had a ton of amusing things installed: Yahoo Messenger; Borland C# Builder (yes, before Microsoft days!); LEGO Mindstorm IDE; Oracle 9 DB; AvantGo MBiz Server Enterprise; CodeWarrior 7 (coding for Palm devices & Playstation 1!) and a ton of other stuff that had been "useful" back between 2001-2003. I'm going to back it up just for amusement factor, clean it up and then prob. leave Windows 2000 installed, but having that internal floppy drive and all the ports makes this laptop really useful for the RETRO goodness - I can do the formatting/copying of files for the Atari ST via this laptop now, rather than the huge tower PC that has fans that make it levitate.
Okay, maybe a little bit of the mojo is coming back..... I do have the graphics card adapter from Kevin still sitting on my desk ready to be fitted into one of the IBM PC 110 devices - again, I've just not had the enthusiasm to get stuck into it and if I don't "feel it", it's not worth doing as I'll do something wrong / break it or something, maybe I'll give that a go this weekend. Let's see what feedback I get on the "Thought Leader" application and just how many more 1000's of words/pages I have to write, if it's minimal, I just might do something "fun"....
...which might even mean getting the Microsoft C/C++ 7 IDE back out along with mTCP C code and start that C networking code / app that I was looking at writing over a year ago...
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