Forgot your Windows 98 password? No problem

#1

Post by nerdhard » Sat, Jan 17, 2015, 9:46 AM UTC

Forgot your Windows 98 password? No problem
imgur.com

Re: Forgot your Windows 98 password? No problem

#2

Post by htor » Sat, Jan 17, 2015, 10:41 AM UTC

Jesus.

Just how incompetent were the people behind this OS?

Re: Forgot your Windows 98 password? No problem

#3

Post by yrro » Sat, Jan 17, 2015, 10:44 AM UTC

Was this login screen ever intended to be a security barrier? This bypass method doesn't give you access to the network resources after all, and Windows 9x never had any kind of local security in the first place...

Re: Forgot your Windows 98 password? No problem

#4

Post by AlyssaRowan » Sat, Jan 17, 2015, 11:17 AM UTC

…or, if I recall correctly, you could just press Esc.

Re: Forgot your Windows 98 password? No problem

#5

Post by nly » Sat, Jan 17, 2015, 11:22 AM UTC

This brings back memories of installing DOOM into the printer spool folder because it was the one place on the hard drive that anybody could write to. Also stole an admin password or two back in high school because keyloggers, which weren't even installed with local admin privileges, were perfectly capable of logging keystrokes heading for the login prompt.

At least we've moved beyond this level of naivety these days.

Re: Forgot your Windows 98 password? No problem

#6

Post by saalaa » Sat, Jan 17, 2015, 11:34 AM UTC

Fortunately, Windows Me fixed all those issues.

Re: Forgot your Windows 98 password? No problem

#7

Post by pikucom » Sat, Jan 17, 2015, 11:34 AM UTC

Win7 bypass is fairly similar with the change of utilman to cmd.

Re: Forgot your Windows 98 password? No problem

#8

Post by ajuc » Sat, Jan 17, 2015, 11:46 AM UTC

AlyssaRowan wrote: post #4

…or, if I recall correctly, you could just press Esc .

Worked for me :)

Re: Forgot your Windows 98 password? No problem

#9

Post by Lewton » Sat, Jan 17, 2015, 11:47 AM UTC

nly wrote: post #5

This brings back memories of installing DOOM into the printer spool folder because it was the one place on the hard drive that anybody could write to. Also stole an admin password or two back in high school because keyloggers, which weren't even installed with local admin privileges, were perfectly capable of logging keystrokes heading for the login prompt. At least we've moved beyond this level of naivety these days…

Keyloggers? hah. We just looked over the shoulder of the admin when he typed it in: qawsedrf

I don't think i'll ever forget that password (If you don't understand why, try looking at a qwerty keyboard)

Re: Forgot your Windows 98 password? No problem

#10

Post by kybernetyk » Sat, Jan 17, 2015, 12:04 PM UTC

Wow, blast from the past. Reminds me of how we "outsmarted" our admins at the school back then to get around the limitations they put up.

OLE[1] and MS Office were very valuable allies back then ;)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Linking_and_Embedding