Re: windows xp locked nice and tight

Mberg wrote:
I am in a little predicament. An old tech who worked here put
policies on 24 windows xp machines and now when problems arise I
cant troubleshoot anything because everything is locked down. I
dont know if he used a third party software or policies from
windows xp. Also the admin account does me no good. Supposedly he
had a cd that I guess you could boot with and restore the system
but I cant find it. Currently I am unable to go to c:, the
registry, control panal, the run command and everything else
needed to get in. Am I dead in the water or is there something I
can do to reset this nightmare.

Malke wrote:
1. Consult with your corporate counsel as to whether you should
contact your local law enforcement organization.

2. Consult with your corporate counsel as to whether you should
take legal action against your old tech.

3. Anything you get from the old tech at this point will be suspect
and you have no idea if he left any backdoors. Therefore you should
flatten those workstations and reinstall Windows. Hopefully the
hardware will be the same so you can just do one and image the
rest. Even if some of the hardware is different, check out the
Enterprise products at Acronis because I believe you can restore to
different hardware with Universal Restore; perhaps whatever imaging
software you use can do this too.

Since you presumably have been following best practices and no data
is saved locally on the workstations, it should only take you a day
to flatten, rebuild, image, apply image to 23 other workstations. A
pain, but not the end of the world.

Malke,

Aren't you *assuming* the old tech did this maliciously? This may have been
the way they locked machines down, period. I have been to places like that.
Also - you are assuming the 'old tech' didn't up and die (literally) and
that is why this new tech finds themselves in this position. ;-)

Mberg,

I would say - overall, I agree with Malke - you would probably be better off
flattening the systems and making them your own in any case. Troublesome?
Yes. Time consuming - pretty much - but I think you would spend less time
building these machines up from scratch/imaging them than trying to figure
out what the undocumented parts are.

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html


.

Relevant Pages

  • windows xp locked nice and tight
    ... An old tech who worked here put policies on 24 ... windows xp machines and now when problems arise I cant troubleshoot anything ... software or policies from windows xp. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.security_admin)
  • windows xp locked nice and tight
    ... An old tech who worked here put policies on 24 ... windows xp machines and now when problems arise I cant troubleshoot anything ... software or policies from windows xp. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.security_admin)
  • windows xp locked nice and tight
    ... An old tech who worked here put policies on 24 ... windows xp machines and now when problems arise I cant troubleshoot anything ... software or policies from windows xp. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.security_admin)
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