Bypass Windows password?

Tom99

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]You could just encrypt your own files rather then the whole operating system.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]I use VeraCrypt which is easy to set up.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]If you do that remember to move your email and browser profiles into the encrypted file.[/FONT]

Neil_Jones

Richard53 wrote: »

Is this just a setting in the BIOS, or does it need extra software etc? (I used to think I was quite competent in the days of Windows 3.1 and DOS 5.0, but now most of it goes over my head.) If it's just a matter of going into the BIOS and changing a parameter, I could do that.

Easy, just enter and there are usually three types of password - system, user and hard drive.

System Password is what one needs to enter to power the system up, you can usually set this for either BIOS or startup to Windows.
User password typically for BIOS access only (this is sometimes part of system password)
Hard drive password applies security to the hard drive (including SSD) and it travels with the drive so it will still need entering when connected to another computer.

The first two are easy to fix, just take the internal CMOS battery out for a while and its defeated. The third implementation on much older hardware is easyish to defeat but more modern implementations are more secure but given enough time and effort can be passed.

File encryption is always a better solution where its available.

DoaM

How much (if any) performance impact is there for using file encryption?

System

Encryption has negligible performance hits nowadays and hasn't for some time however ideally you need to be encrypting the hard drive so that it requires a password to be entered before it'll even start to fire up the OS.

Encrypting your own files is all well and good but overlooks things like temp folders and OS/application cache files which won't be encrypted unless doing full drive encryption.

that

The elephant in the room (not tried on Bitlocker but Truecrypt) is that if the one bit in the wrong place, on the disk and you loose everything.

I plugged a bootable Linux usb in my work PC which does run bitlocker, to do a server scan, but after rebooting bitlocker kept complaining about a disk, it must have picked up a changed bios setting in the boot order even though I changed it back. To be honest I typed in that long recovery key a good few times over many days till i set aside some time to fix it and it was a fiddle.

unforeseen

that wrote: »

The elephant in the room (not tried on Bitlocker but Truecrypt) is that if the one bit in the wrong place, on the disk and you loose everything.

I plugged a bootable Linux usb in my work PC which does run bitlocker, to do a server scan, but after rebooting bitlocker kept complaining about a disk, it must have picked up a changed bios setting in the boot order even though I changed it back. To be honest I typed in that long recovery key a good few times over many days till i set aside some time to fix it and it was a fiddle.

Suspend Bitlocker, reboot, unsuspended Bitlocker. Nothing fiddly about that unless GPs prevent you suspending Bitlocker.

that

unforeseen wrote: »

Suspend Bitlocker, reboot, unsuspended Bitlocker. Nothing fiddly about that unless GPs prevent you suspending Bitlocker.

Did not know you could suspend it, thought the encryption was on at boot, and encompassed the whole disk?

I know if it is on the domain, then an admin can reset/decrypt it.

unforeseen

It does encompass the whole disc but you have the facility to suspend it for things like BIOS changes and even BIOS upgrades. When you unsuspended it recalculate the hash values for that Bios configuration and makes that the current value to check against on future boots.

When suspended the encryption is still present but the system acts as if the pin has been entered at boot.

The other option is that after getting in using recovery key reset the Pin. That does the same thing of recalculating the various stored values.

JoanMiller

In general, if a stranger wants to bypass the Windows 7 password, he needs to spend some time or even spend some money. The methods I know, they all have some difficulty. But if that person knows your security question, he can quickly bypass your password.

unforeseen

Windows 7 is dead easy to bypass the password. Can be done in seconds once you know how.