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A "Can you fix my machine?" question.

Home Forum Index General Discussion A "Can you fix my machine?" question.

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A "Can you fix my machine?" question.

Post Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2009 6:47 am

This is not a forensic question, this is a "You know about computers, can you fix my machine?" problem.

A laptop belonging to the local Church and ridddled with viruses was given to me to fix. I attached the drive to my sheep-dip machine, removed the viruses and put the drive back in the laptop. Everything went OK, booted the machine, no password prompt, in fact no account prompt. I then cleaned up the registry and defragged the drive. The next time I booted I was taken through the account/password screen. I know that I was not asked for a password the first time because I don't know what it is.

Cleary I can defeat the password but I am interested in why this happened. Any ideas?

Thanks
Ron
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roncufley
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Re: A "Can you fix my machine?" question.

Post Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2009 6:57 am

Perhaps related to a change in the registry when you were cleaning it up? e.g. removal of saved profile info or a change to the default logon procedure?

Jamie
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Re: A "Can you fix my machine?" question.

Post Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2009 7:10 am

what OS is the machine running?!  

fuzed
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Re: A "Can you fix my machine?" question.

Post Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2009 7:14 am

- fuzed
what OS is the machine running?!


Sorry, I should have said: Win XP SP2.
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Re: A "Can you fix my machine?" question.

Post Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2009 7:25 am

could be profile related!!?! maybe the profiles that were on there have been deleted some how...

Seen XP do some very very strange things in my time of using it (esp with profiles).... have a dig around and see if there are any corrupted profiles on the machine..  

fuzed
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Re: A "Can you fix my machine?" question.

Post Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2009 11:08 am

Ron,

I feel I need to refer you to this video for further explanation of the behaviour you're seeing Wink

Jamie
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Re: A "Can you fix my machine?" question.

Post Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2009 11:28 am

Thanks, Jamie. That explains it all. The answer is always so simple once you know what it is.
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