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From: mcastle@mcs213f.cs.umr.edu (Mike Castle)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Password program. Where ?
Message-ID: <1577@umriscc.isc.umr.edu>
Date: 31 Oct 90 03:43:21 GMT
References: <90299.144326JFS10@psuvm.psu.edu> <1990Oct30.180312.5734@ccu.umanitoba.ca> <1990Oct31.021421.7987@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu>
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Organization: University of Missouri - Rolla
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In article <1990Oct31.021421.7987@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu> norlin@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Norman Lin) writes:
>lucas@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Brian Lucas) writes:
>>In article <90299.144326JFS10@psuvm.psu.edu> JFS10@psuvm.psu.edu (Jonathan Swaby) writes:
>>>I am in search of a password program for my hard drive. I don't want people
>Just a thought...  if the machine in question is an AT or higher class
>machine, what about the following:  set the CMOS RAM so that it thinks the
>floppy drive isn't there.  Then it will boot from the hard drive, thus
>running whatever password or security program is needed.

Good idea as long as he NEVER messes up his config.sys, autoexec.bat, has to
ever write to a floppy, etc etc.

I *seem to remember* having problems accessing a hard-drive when booting off
of a floppy before.  I found out later that the hard-drive was configured in
such a way in that regular dos (in might have been because I was using an 
older version) couldn't read/recognize the existence of the hard-drive. I
could use the machine, but not the hard-drive.  It might have also been 
because I was using a Zenith Data Systems machine (thus again, DOS            
incompatabilities (sp?)).  

I think that there *should* be something out there that will let him configure 
his hard-drive so that it can't be accessed unless booted from the hard-drive
or a floppy that has certain special configurations on it (which there       
shouldn't be too many of).

Now after all this rambling's, I've just now realized that I've not come up	with a solution to the password problem yet.  Hmmm... I don't guess it would
be too hard to write a prog that would turn off ctrl-break and then just loop	forever until you got the password right.... (still want a floppy w/o pw prot
just incase...).

Oh well, at least it's something else to keep in mind.  :->

BTW, wouldn't this be better discussed in comp.os.msdos.apps/misc???  ;->

-- 
     Mike Castle       | Life is like a clock:  You can work constantly and be 
        Nexus          | right all the time, or not work at all and be right   
S087891@UMRVMA.UMR.EDU | at least twice a day. 
  mcastle@cs.umr.edu   |                           Love does not exist anymore.