Blown PC Update #2

I'm shocked. Shocked at how easy it was to defeat the Windows XP Pro log on screen. We had a change of plan, the owner of the blown PC managed to blag a couple of old computers from their work IT manager. One was on old 667Mhz Celeron Windows 2000 Machine that didn't look promising. The other was a 2.6 Ghz P4 Dell with a gig of RAM and an 80Gb Hard drive that didn't look too bad.

First problem, the DELL wouldn't boot! That's a blow, the other one is a bit of a dog. So I took the vacuum to the innards and pulled out the 2 RAM modules to re-seat them and tried again, success! Then I was confronted with the XP logon screen and guess what , no passwords. After a quick search in Google I found a couple of people suggesting a scarily easy way to bypass the logon screen and get in as an administrator. Not believing it would work, I tried it. 30 seconds later I was logged in. So I immediately set about removing the password from the old user account. So here's today's lesson kids. Never, ever leave anything on a PC you don't want somebody else to read. It's scarily easy. And, if you ever change your PC, take out the hard disk and hide it, smash it, whatever, under no circumstances leave it in the PC. Better still, invest in a hard drive enclosure that costs about £20 and use it as a back-up drive.

Anyway, I deleted the old account without looking at any files (honest) and set about rebuilding it for home use. Windows downloaded about 50 updates that took a couple of hours to install, I installed Google Chrome over Internet Explorer (try it you'll like it), Google Picasa and Microsoft Security Essentials. I then connected my back-up drive and copied over the pictures from the old PC. The whole setup took maybe 3 1/2 hours on and off.

Well this job is done (yeah right). The Dell has gone to be installed but there is no email program installed as I didn't have the relevant information to hand. This might (will) be the subject of the next Technical Support Call I'm sure!!!