Re: hard drive password

From: *Vanguard* (no-email_at_post-reply-in-newsgroup.invalid)
Date: 04/23/04 

Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 20:13:35 -0500

"Andrew Mitchell" said in news:Xns94D3E45A5C7F8casey01@207.46.248.16:
> "*Vanguard*" <no-email@post-reply-in-newsgroup.invalid> said
>
>> "debbi" said in
>> news:0BD80A7A-E685-460C-831D-7881E6AC4E7D@microsoft.com:
>>> when i first turn on the computer it asks for hard drive password.
>>> windows xp
>>
>> No such animal.
>
> Yes there is.
> http://www.safeboot.com/safeboot.asp?page=products
>
> Lots of large corporations (including GE) are using it to secure their
> laptops.
>
> Andy.

And you could use a bootmanager, like BootMagic, to enforce a password
to boot a partition with an OS. And you could replace the boot sector
in the partition so it loads first instead of the OS loader. And you
can use products that start *after* the OS loads, even maybe running as
an installable file system, to enforce further restrictive permissions
and control. But NONE of these run immediately on startup when you
haven't even loaded the bootstrap code in the MBR. The clue was "when I
*first* turn on the computer". Unless the security program is embedded
in the BIOS chips on the mobo, it is likely that Debbie was referring to
the BIOS password presented just after the POST completes (at the point
you can either hit a key to enter BIOS screens or let the system
continue into the boot process to load an OS). At this point, none of
those security programs have even loaded to enforce anything. You
haven't loaded the bootstrap code in the MBR of a hard disk, you haven't
read the boot sector from a floppy (in the absence of a hard disk or due
to boot sequence specified in BIOS), and I haven't heard of any of these
add-on security products requiring you to desolder or remove the BIOS
chips to insert their own. 

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