Vista lolness

[Red Squirrel]

Someone brought me a PC to fix and it has Vista on it (ugh) and I just realized now it's password protected and he never gave me the password. After trying a few obvious ones like blank, password, god, etc I noticed something funny. When you get the password wrong, it still says "welcome".

I remember back in college my security teacher said to NEVER put welcome on any interface that you do not want people to enter. he was talking mostly about router login screens. By putting welcome you are saying that anyone who is not yet authenticated is welcome in the system.

Because of this, if someone (with a good enough lawyer) was to brute force a vista password and get into a system unauthorized, the case could be dropped because the computer said he was welcomed. Not sure if this only applies in Canada though. Just a funny observation I made.

 

[Nothinman]

Intent plays a big part in cases like that, I can't imagine a case would be thrown out on that reason alone. It's not like the person breaking into the machine is a vampire and the user invited them in...

 

[Red Squirrel]

Intent plays a big part in cases like that, I can't imagine a case would be thrown out on that reason alone. It's not like the person breaking into the machine is a vampire and the user invited them in...

Yeah, would be interesting to see how a case like that would end up. Think it would really be whoever has the best lawyer. Not sure if it's written anywhere legaly about the welcome thing though. Was just a teacher that said that. I just find it funny that they did not put the password check before the welcome display. Common sense.

Speaking of passwords anyone know if hiren's boot cd supports vista? I can't seem to find much info online. I know vista uses a whole different file system and probably changed the way passwords are stored too so not sure if there's any password utils out yet. I was thinking of formatting it as soon as I saw vista anyway, so no biggie. I just need to somehow salvage the data off the drive. I'll try the latest Ubuntu tomorrow to see if it can mount the vista file system. What is it anyway? I know they had plans for one, then scrapped it, then went to something else.

 

[Nothinman]

Yeah, would be interesting to see how a case like that would end up. Think it would really be whoever has the best lawyer. Not sure if it's written anywhere legaly about the welcome thing though. Was just a teacher that said that. I just find it funny that they did not put the password check before the welcome display. Common sense.

It is security 101 to display a warning about prosecution if the system is broken into, gowever a lack of warning isn't an invitation and neither is a welcome sign if it's locked. Just like if my store is closed but I forget to flip the open sign to closed. You see the open sign but the door's locked and the lights are out so you break in. You're still going to get arrested to breaking and entering (or whatever you call it up there) regardless of the open sign.

I know vista uses a whole different file system

You know wrong. Vista uses NTFS just like every other release of NT since 3.1. They've added some capabilities like symlinks but it's still NTFS.

and probably changed the way passwords are stored too so not sure if there's any password utils out yet.

The passwords are still stored in the same database, however I don't know if they changed anything with regards to the encryption of that file or not.

I was thinking of formatting it as soon as I saw vista anyway, so no biggie.

That's a pretty blatantly ignorant statement.

I just need to somehow salvage the data off the drive. I'll try the latest Ubuntu tomorrow to see if it can mount the vista file system. What is it anyway? I know they had plans for one, then scrapped it, then went to something else.

It's still NTFS. WinFS was what was scrapped several times now, but that had evolved into being just a layer on top of NTFS anyway.

 

[SparkyJJO]

Vista passwords are a piece of cake to change or remove. Just let me have access to the PC and the password will be gone within a minute or so

I'm guessing the guy probably doesn't want that though :biggrin:

 

[Red Squirrel]

Wait, so vista actually uses NTFS? I could have sworn it was some kind of new file system. So any linux live CD should be able to get access to that no problem then, in fact I'll try hiren's boot CD to see if I can reset the password.

If it's that easy then I'll do some basic troubleshooting before I format and put XP. If it's just a few viruses and spyware it might be faster to just remove them. I need to familiarize myself with the vista/7 architecture anyway as I will probably start seeing it more and more and have to support it.

 

[F1N3ST]

Wait, so vista actually uses NTFS? I could have sworn it was some kind of new file system. So any linux live CD should be able to get access to that no problem then, in fact I'll try hiren's boot CD to see if I can reset the password.

If it's that easy then I'll do some basic troubleshooting before I format and put XP. If it's just a few viruses and spyware it might be faster to just remove them. I need to familiarize myself with the vista/7 architecture anyway as I will probably start seeing it more and more and have to support it.

I find it odd that you are just now familiarizing yourself with them, but yeah, not too much new I would say.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah I hardly ever see vista PCs (thankfully). Mostly Win98, ME and sometimes XP. Actually TBH it's been quite a lot more XP now. Sometimes win2k, but for some reason that is actually a rare sight, even when it was more recent.

On the job, it's all XP / Windows Server 2003. I highly doubt we'll see Windows 7 in the next 5 years. They only upgraded from NT4 like 2 years ago lol.

 

[KeypoX]

wow

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah people are behind around here. Well I don't blame the workplaces as a lot is involved in an upgrade (they really like their crappy custom apps that break all the time).

 

[Nothinman]

Wait, so vista actually uses NTFS? I could have sworn it was some kind of new file system.

MS has added a few things to NTFS over the years, but it's still NTFS.

If it's that easy then I'll do some basic troubleshooting before I format and put XP.

Why are you downgrading him to XP?

 

[Red Squirrel]

MS has added a few things to NTFS over the years, but it's still NTFS.



Why are you downgrading him to XP?

Won't do it for sure, just depends on how the computer is handling it - did not look at it further yet. Some machines should not even ship with Vista. Anything under 2GB of ram and it will thrash a lot and chug along like a grandma driving on a Sunday during a storm, at night.

 

[lxskllr]

Won't do it for sure, just depends on how the computer is handling it - did not look at it further yet. Some machines should not even ship with Vista. Anything under 2GB of ram and it will thrash a lot and chug along like a grandma driving on a Sunday during a storm, at night.

Nonsense. I've run Vista on 1gb, and it works fine. More ram is better, more so than XP, but 1gb is enough.

 

[JackMDS]

By putting welcome you are saying that anyone who is not yet authenticated is welcome in the system.

Is this also applies to the Millions of house hold that have Welcome doormat at their front entrance. :sneaky:

 

[Red Squirrel]

Nonsense. I've run Vista on 1gb, and it works fine. More ram is better, more so than XP, but 1gb is enough.

Sure it runs, but try opening any intensive app in it, like a game, or even Word. It will be retardedly slow to load or do anything. It's not even worth it. Vista uses over 1GB on it's own, so just sitting at the desktop it's already swapping like a prostitute and you're not even doing anything. I remember trying it on my 8GB quad core VM server. I allocated 1GB to it and it pretty much stalled the whole server, I had to kill the VM. Said server was running 9 other VMs flawlessly, a few Linux ones, win2k3, etc. (they were turned off for the Vista test)

Unless all this improved with the service packs. I only tried it when it first came out. Sitting idle and cpu usage was going crazy.

 

[lxskllr]

Here's some benches I've run comparing Vista to Win7, both in VMs with 1gb of ram...

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=623235

I just started my Vista VM, and it's doing fine with ram...

 

[Red Squirrel]

That must be highly optimized/streamlined though. The CPU still seems about as jumpy as I remember it while sitting idle, except when I tried it it was using like 900MB of ram and it kept going up for no reason.

 

[lxskllr]

That must be highly optimized/streamlined though. The CPU still seems about as jumpy as I remember it while sitting idle, except when I tried it it was using like 900MB of ram and it kept going up for no reason.

It hasn't been touched. It's a virgin install with a few benchmarking programs. It was scanning for updates, is why the CPU was twitchy. It's running now at 0-5% usage.

 

[M0RPH]

You're obviously on board the Vista hater bandwagon, and it seems your whole experience with Vista is having tried it once when it 1st came out.

So your method of fixing this guy's computer is to reformat and downgrade him to XP, a nearly decade-old OS? I'm glad you're not my computer guy. I won't even get into the fact that he probably hasn't provided you with a license for XP.

BTW I run Vista Basic on a laptop with 1GB and it's quite smooth.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

In case you guys don't follow RedSquirrel's posts in OT and other forums, he is a rabid and insatiable anti-MS zombie and refuses to listen to reason with regards to Vista and even 7. Apparently he would go so far as to downgrade a customer's computer because he can't figure Vista out.

 

[TheKub]

In case you guys don't follow RedSquirrel's posts in OT and other forums, he is a rabid and insatiable anti-MS zombie and refuses to listen to reason with regards to Vista and even 7. Apparently he would go so far as to downgrade a customer's computer because he can't figure Vista out.

... and thinks that wood is the preferred construction material for server racks.

 

[nerp]

... and thinks that wood is the preferred construction material for server racks.

hahah omg.

 

[Nothinman]

Sure it runs, but try opening any intensive app in it, like a game, or even Word. It will be retardedly slow to load or do anything. It's not even worth it. Vista uses over 1GB on it's own, so just sitting at the desktop it's already swapping like a prostitute and you're not even doing anything. I remember trying it on my 8GB quad core VM server. I allocated 1GB to it and it pretty much stalled the whole server, I had to kill the VM. Said server was running 9 other VMs flawlessly, a few Linux ones, win2k3, etc. (they were turned off for the Vista test)

Unless all this improved with the service packs. I only tried it when it first came out. Sitting idle and cpu usage was going crazy.

Why in the hell would you even consider running an "intensive app" on a machine with 1G of memory? And Word 2K7 here uses <20M on startup, there's no way it should be "retardedly slow" just because it's running on Vista.

Vista and Win7 do a lot of their own maintenance stuff when the system is idle, you can't blindly look at idle CPU usage and claim the OS sucks.

 

[nerp]

I always found that Vista was much better at managing background operations during idle time than XP. Vista might cause a lot of HD access and you'll see CPU spikes even when you're supposedly doing nothing with the computer, but it instantly backs off and give you priority over everything as soon as you fire up apps and start working. In XP, my experience was you'd frequently have to "sit through the chug" and things like gradual redraws of windows with the HD chunking at the same rate as the redraw are all too common. Close a large memory hungry app or game in XP and it's as if you've pulled a knife out of the OS and it has to heal. In Vista and 7, the HD light might be solid and the cpu/memory meters are going wild, but you're able to switch between apps and do stuff with the OS.

 

[Chiropteran]

Someone brought me a PC to fix and it has Vista on it (ugh) and I just realized now it's password protected and he never gave me the password. After trying a few obvious ones like blank, password, god, etc I noticed something funny. When you get the password wrong, it still says "welcome".

This didn't sound right so I logged out and checked what my computer did. Wrong password: no welcome message. Correct password: welcome message. I am running vista ultimate. Sounds like the computer you are working on has something else going on, vista doesn't show a welcome message when you enter the wrong password.

Are you one of those people who think windows 7 is this amazing great OS and Vista is trash, even though they are the exact same thing except a few cutesy UI changes?

Edit: And Vista doesn't use over 1GB for the OS alone, not even close. What it does is it reports RAM used for cache as "used" instead of free, which makes it look like it uses a lot more than XP, but the actually difference is much smaller. That cache RAM will be free immediately if an application actually needs it.