Re: Locking Computer Software

From: KG6VQE (nospam)
Date: 11/18/04 

Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 17:31:34 GMT

If you are using a "NT CLASS" computer (Windows 2000 Pro, or Windows XP),
and you have your disks formatted using NTFS, that is a very secure system.
There are NTFS DOS programs that MAY let someone look into your disks, but
they would have be very sophisticated, and have physical access to the
machine. first thing I would do is remove (or disconnect) the floppy drive.
That would force someone to use a bootable CDROM to try and hack into your
system.

As for physical ways, the simplest is to puchase a Key Lock, and use it to
interrupt the power to the keyboard. All P.C. Keyboards have
microcontrollers in them, that rely on the 5 Volt power. If you disrupt
that, then the keyboad gets no juice, and is escentially dead. There are
commecial products that are plug in boards, that contain the BIOS Signature
AA55, which when booting indicated that that piece of hardware must execute
before others boot. These boards then have a ROM BASED program, that asks
for a password, before the machine will boot. The only problem is this can
be defeated by removing the board.

All these assume that the "hacker" has physical access to the machne, and
can take it apart to diagnose. If you are talking about a sibling,
co-worker, or Mon and Dad, the NTFS locking method would prevent the casual
user from using the system. Of course if someone has unfettered access,
then they can always extract the disk drive, and use another machine to read
the files.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Windows Reinstall Question
    ... Windows it tells me "no hard disks were found." ... >and delete all partition information found (as long as ... NTFS is primary). ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.setup)
  • Re: Max NTFS Disk Partition
    ... "What is the maximum NTFS disk partition allowed by Windows XP Pro SP3?" ... NTFS dates from the early 1990's and while it isn't "New Technology" that is what you get if you are running Windows XP and as far as I know that is also what you will get with Windows 7. ... The difference is that the newer Vista and Windows 7 can handle GPT disks which aren't constrained by the 32-bit partition table, the partition on these disks can be larger than 2 terabytes, this has nothing to do with NTFS per se. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics)
  • Re: Windows could not start because the following file is missing or..
    ... Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: ... certainly formatted as NTFS so win9x boot disks will be useless- they can't ... You can also find bootable Linux disks ... allow you to access NTFS drives and you can perform the tasks there. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics)
  • Trouble copying large files to NTFS formatted disk
    ... Despite the fact all disks on my Windows XP system (including a 500GB ... external drive) are formatted in NTFS, I can't seem to copy large files ... Durian's Profile: http://forums.techarena.in/members/durian.htm ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • Re: Winntsys32configsystemCED Error
    ... For all intents and purposes it's almost identical to a Genuine Microsoft cd, except that it only works on Dell computers. ... You are on the right track, check the boot order in the BIOS and then try to boot the computer with the cd and see if you can get to the setup screen where you get the option to install or repair Windows. ... I thought the first thing that I would do is to access the BIOS and see what drive is bootable first and then either use the CD or the setup disks accordingly. ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.general)