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Administration name & password
When I set up my XP Home emachine computer I didn't add any users, just me.
No sign-on username or password needed to start up the system. Now I wish to set up my CenturyLink DSL modem wifi outbut with a name and password. This requires my administration name and password. How do I locate what the computer is using for them? TIA -- I love a good meal! That's why I don't cook. |
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Administration name & password
In message , KenK
writes: When I set up my XP Home emachine computer I didn't add any users, just me. No sign-on username or password needed to start up the system. Now I wish to set up my CenturyLink DSL modem wifi outbut with a name and password. This requires my administration name and password. How do I locate what the computer is using for them? TIA I assume you're talking about the username and password the "router" asks you for when you try to change settings in it (such as the wifi name and/or key). If the "router" is one supplied by your ISP, it is (they are) probably printed on a label on the back/bottom of the "router". (_Not_ the same as the wifi network name and password; they'll probably be further down on the same label that tells you those.) If it's one you've bought, then it should tell you in the instructions that came with it, but if you can't find those, it's almost certainly "admin" for the name, and either "admin" (yes, same for both) or "password" for the password. If my assumption is right and that _is_ what you're after, then your computer is normally not using them at all; they're only needed if you want to _change_ things. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf The first banjo solo I played was actually just a series of mistakes. In fact it was all the mistakes I knew at the time. - Tim Dowling, RT2015/6/20-26 |
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Administration name & password
On 26 Feb 2018 13:58:11 GMT, KenK wrote:
When I set up my XP Home emachine computer I didn't add any users, just me. No sign-on username or password needed to start up the system. Now I wish to set up my CenturyLink DSL modem wifi outbut with a name and password. This requires my administration name and password. How do I locate what the computer is using for them? TIA I think it wants the admin and password for the modem, not the computer. Look up your modem model and "default password" on Google. And change it to something hard to guess. []'s -- Don't be evil - Google 2004 We have a new policy - Google 2012 |
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Administration name & password
KenK wrote:
When I set up my XP Home emachine computer I didn't add any users, just me. No sign-on username or password needed to start up the system. Now I wish to set up my CenturyLink DSL modem wifi outbut with a name and password. This requires my administration name and password. How do I locate what the computer is using for them? TIA The other posters have already answered that this is an issue between you and your router, not you and your OS. The router has an authentication scheme for Wifi, and the info needed is likely sitting in the router. Including the ability in some cases, to add MAC filtering to reduce the possibility of foreign equipment from joining your LAN. An external device can still spoof a valid MAC, so this isn't really much protection. ******* This is just for future reference. The Windows OS accounts can be dumped using wmic. WMIC might well require an administrator group account for this to work. wmic useraccount get name,sid Name SID Administrator S-1-5-21-3768549767-1934788099-1503758287-500 Mere User S-1-5-21-3768549767-1934788099-1503758287-1000 Guest S-1-5-21-3768549767-1934788099-1503758287-501 If you just use this much, there will be more output, but it will be hard to read. The second example shows how to fix that. wmic useraccount wmic useraccount accounts.txt notepad accounts.txt User accounts come in different flavors. They can be enabled or disabled (they use the "disabled" feature when you "leave the company"). An account can be "full", with a home directory. Or not. Accounts like TrustedInstaller on Vista plus are a "token". You cannot even log in as that account, it doesn't have a home directory, yet it "owns" your Program Files and some set of System folders. For the TrustedInstaller account, it requires "impersonation" from a higher account, to be able to "wave the magic wand" of TrustedInstaller. Generally, it's considered poor practice to have a utility that displays all the passwords right on the screen. The method normally would be, to support allowing an elevated user, to *change* the password on a lower account. The administrator should not be able to *read* the password. That concept was invented, so that hacking would leave fingerprints. Your crooked admin would get caught. Once the admin changes the password to a known quantity, the user returns to their desk and changes the password again (in private) to the desired secret value. A value that the admin now doesn't know (since the user just changed it). OS hacks which cause the OS to come up, running as administrator, and without entering the administrator password, those give the operator an opportunity to overwrite the administrator password with a new one. That works, as long as the password program doesn't ask for the "old password", as part of the sequence. In some cases, setting the admin password to a null string, with hacker methods, then entering the system and using the password dialog - now, in that case you know the old password is CR. In other words, just hit Return. Password systems today use encryption, have a salt or a shadow file, require a complex method to prepare properly. And you can't just use a text editor on something and put "12345678" and it's done. Nullifying the complex format is a shortcut (i.e. changing it so that only CR is needed), since the system doesn't have the info it needs now, and it's going to be a bit more compliant to your hacking quest when it comes back up. Windows is designed (generally), to not remove the last administrator account. The OS is less secure on purpose, so that home users won't be pestering people with stupid questions. As far as I'm concerned, the holes left, that you can drive a truck through, they're there so that somebody can reset your password without a call to Microsoft. Windows 10 for example, has at least two hacks you can do locally, to elevate a non-domain situation such that the user can regain control of the machine (running with a local account, not an MSA). And not be locked out of things. If you're a klutz, use a local account. The same cannot be said for OS encryption systems. Whether it's NTFS EFS or it's Bitlocker, if you're locked out of your files, you're screwed. It pays dividends to read the "best practices" document for those. Accounts on Windows are quite pliant, because there really isn't that much of value there. However, encrypted data, if you don't have the presence of mind to keep the "token" for your data, it will be write-once read-never storage. If they were easy to hack, nobody would use those encryption methods. Your email account can have a separate password. A lot of people let their client "cache" the password, but since the OS level password is so easy to "deal with", you'd better de-select the "remember my password" feature for your email, if you don't want somebody accessing that email on you. If you're "keeping a honey on the side", you'd want to enter the email password each time you fetch mail. Delete the email afterwards. Compact the email database. Use SDelete (or Heidi Eraser maybe) on the disk (takes hours). And so on. That doesn't cover keyloggers though. On second thought, never mind... :-) Paul |
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