Log onto Windows

Discussion in 'Software' started by Mr.Cheeks, Jul 17, 2006.

  1. nugget
    Honorary Member

    nugget Junior toady

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    I think the easiest way atm is to get a usb caddy for laptop hdd's, take the hdd out of the laptop and put it in the caddy, connect it to your main pc and see if you can rescue the data first. When you do this it will simply show up as an external harddisk. Then you can have full access to it.

    After that, you can boot from cd rom (on your pc) either with winternals erd commander and use locksmith to reset the password (as mentioned earlier) or try to do a repair from an xp cd rom.

    EDIT: as the cd rom drive isn't working you might also be able to get another one for the laptop and do the same from there.

    I think these are the only 2 options open to you.
     
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  2. Mr.Cheeks

    Mr.Cheeks 1st ever Gold Member! Gold Member

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    XP supports Network Boot correct?
    Can i not do this? I am just reading up on it...

    gonna hunt around the office for a USB CDROM.. :rolleyes:
     
  3. Mr.Cheeks

    Mr.Cheeks 1st ever Gold Member! Gold Member

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    I know what i have to do - rip the bugger out! so i'll give it a good bsh tonight!, but one thing i would like to know is whats the big issues between a domain and a workgroup?
     
  4. Gaz 45

    Gaz 45 Kilobyte Poster

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    Put very simply:
    Workgroup - Peer to peer network
    Domain - Client\Server network
     
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  5. Sparky
    Highly Decorated Member Award 500 Likes Award

    Sparky Zettabyte Poster Moderator

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    Just out of interest why did you need to take it off the domain?

    The problem you had is when you took the laptop off the domain the cached credentials (domain credentials) are not useable so you would have to use a local account. As you don’t know the login details that basically means you are locked out.

    In a business environment client domains are good and workgroups are bad! :biggrin
     
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  6. hbroomhall

    hbroomhall Petabyte Poster Gold Member

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    I must admit I was wondering why you changed it from Domain to Workgroup!

    Harry.
     
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  7. Mr.Cheeks

    Mr.Cheeks 1st ever Gold Member! Gold Member

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    i had internet access, but no network access, and this laptop would not come up in network places and visa-versa... so i thought i'll jump to workgroup and do my stuff, then jump back into the gpo domain... and everything's hunky dory
     
  8. Sparky
    Highly Decorated Member Award 500 Likes Award

    Sparky Zettabyte Poster Moderator

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    Ahhh, any joy with the laptop today? 8)
     
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  9. Mr.Cheeks

    Mr.Cheeks 1st ever Gold Member! Gold Member

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    I was given an IBM ThinkPad (XP SP2 NTFS) to clean; this laptop was infected with spyware, adware and viruses. The laptop had originally belonged to a company, and had given it to the user to keep as they had classed it out of date.

    It was connected to a domain and the user had Admin right for the laptop.

    I hooked the laptop up to my network and had internet access, however, it did not pick up in my network neighbourhood, I then checked the settings and realised it was under GPO (domain) and I thought ah! that’s the reason, I’ll change it from the domain to Workgroup so I can access the shares…

    To my horror, when I rebooted and tried logging it, it just would not connect! I couldn’t figure out why??? I tried the CDROM, and remembered that it was dead, would not work, no worries, I’ll boot from Floppy…. Hmmm, no floppy either, no probs, its got USB… pulled out my nifty pen, and still would not boot, checked the BIOS and it does not support booting from the pen drives…

    I logging online, browsed Google for an hour to no joy, jumping on CF and was querying away, it seemed that my last resort was to take out the hard drive and shove it in a USB caddy and smack it into a pc… I never opened a laptop up before, was kinda shitting bricks as I was meant to do was remove the naughtiness and carry on doing my thing and not touch the hardware…

    The next day, I hunted around the office and found a few external USB floppy drives, and thought I’ll take one to see how it goes… I called my mate and he said he’s free in the evening to have a look at this.

    At 20:36 I arrived at his house, explained the situation to him, he looked at the laptop and said “I have exactly the same laptop in my room for repair and has got a working cdrom! ….I was so happy.

    This just made life so easy, we booted with Knoppix copied his data on to my memory pen, formatted the hard, reinstalled Windows and bobs your uncle…

    All left for me to do is installed spyware protection and AV.

    To summarise this episode to before changing from a Domain to Workgroup or visa-a-versa, make sure the user has full access in both areas otherwise, don’t do this.

    Also, as Pete has mentioned, these tools are invaluable especially in this instead;

    So thank you to everyone who has helped me! :biggrin
     
  10. Bluerinse
    Honorary Member

    Bluerinse Exabyte Poster

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    Mate a couple of things.. You don't need to un-join a computer from a domain to log in locally (workgroup style). At the domain login box, if you click *more* you can use a drop down arrow to chose whether you want to log into the domain or the local computer. Had you done that, you would have realised that you did not possess the correct local credentials to login locally.

    In a domain, all user accounts are held on the domain controller (DC). It is the boss and all clients in the domain contact the domain controller during login. If the username and password combination is correct, the DC hands them an access token, much like a key, which either allows them or denies them access to resources, like shares, printers etc, for all computers in the domain. Also group policy can be applied to the client computers, depending on how the DC has been configured.

    In a workgroup all computers are equal (peers) and so user accounts are stored locally on the client computers, in the security accounts manager database (SAM). Hence username and passwords have to be set up identically on all the clients, which is a pain in a large organisation. In a workgroup group policy cannot be applied from a central location.
     
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