How easy to get pass the password on laptop?

-TangleFoot-

Does the laptop possess a Kensington Security Slot?

wazza

-TangleFoot- wrote: »

Does the laptop possess a Kensington Security Slot?

yes. it does have the slot

-TangleFoot-

Then you may consider the possibility of procuring a locking device.

jannowretired

Waste off money.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJXtwUzWfPc

And that is just one way of doing it

RobertoMoir

wazza wrote: »

Whenever i get a new laptop i create the main account and limited account. Both password protected. Also where possible i create a password in BIOS. Does this make it hard to 'break' into the laptop if stolen?

Harder. Not Hard. It's better than nothing but it is not usually that hard to remove a BIOS password, even from a laptop.

GunJack

unless the BIOS password is stored on an EPROM chip, then it's almost a guaranteed reset/removal with a bit of stripping down the lappy. If it IS on an EPROM, you need to get a blank chip, and replace it. Not impossible, but a right PITA.

Don't forget though, your average laptop thief will run away with the lappy, only to find some time later and probably a mile or so away that they can't do anything immediately with it......

...doesn't stop them nicking it in the first place.....

mattduk

As mentioned by others here, there are hundreds of password crackers for Windows out on the internet.

One mitigation to these would be to disable booting from floppy disc (assuming it has a floppy disk drive which I really doubt!), USB, CD rom and LAN, and boot only from the hard drive. This will stop someone plugging in a USB with the password cracker on it & rebooting it because when they reboot it windows will load first before the password cracker has had a chance to run.

Not fool-proof as someone could wipe the bios via opening up the drive but it would at least make it more of a challenge and probably something the casual thief wouldn't bother/know how to get around.

If you want to be really secure, I've used PGP whole disk encryption before that makes the drive useless even when removed.

-TangleFoot-

mattduk wrote: »

I've used PGP whole disk encryption before that makes the drive useless even when removed.

Self-destructing storage would achieve a similar result, though even then it is possible to retrieve data held in RAM because the system has to decrypt it in order to make use of it.

chunter

Kon-boot, ophcrack to name but a couple, if you want the actual user's password.
I have a boot disk that'll reset a user's password in about 30 seconds.

As above, you don't usually see bios passwords because some they can be a devil to reset.
If you work your way to the cmos battery and take that out for an hour or so it may reset the bios. If not, you'll need the chip writer option.

-TangleFoot-

chunter wrote: »

...you don't usually see bios passwords because some they can be a devil to reset.

I tried it once... with a ten-character password. :doh: