How To Get Past my School's Admin?

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if the hp pro book is school property, then it is setup in such a way to keep it from being modified, corrupted and possibly infected.

also, since it is not illegal for you to try to circumvent the security protocols, it would be illegal if you actually did circumvent the protocols and then installed software that the school has no permission to use. this could cause the school to be sued by the software makers. (you should read those agreements that we all click and accept during software installation in order to know more about what rights are given up in return for using their software, like personal information, tracking, location, ip address, etc...)

in any case, with regards to other people having been able to circumvent the security protocols that protect the registry hive and file system from being modified, there are a lot of possible methods.

but since you are being honest about it and asking us for instructions, you should let the network people at your school know what you need and if its beneficial towards your studies, then they may relax your user privileges to install that program.

Your best choice is to use portable software on the laptop and buy / get given /get for a birthday a desktop to play games on. Most laptops game badly and this one is set up for the functions that are required by the school and you should respect that. Gaming computers do not need to be expensive atm a recent article in PC Format in the UK there was no real difference between a ??300 pc and a ??3000 in use in games, although I cannot find it on-line in a brief search. Ask the admin to install any software you need. Some software does install into non protected areas which can work depending how the machine is locked down. I would just have a data stick with portable versions of the software that you want to use. Alternatively try and boot from a data stick with Linux on. Linux would be a good learning environment, although if you use a live version rather than installing it on the data stick it may lose changes.

All in all I would just use portable software and play Popcap/other online games.

If you know that what you are asking is wrong, WHY bother asking in the first place?

Number 1: You are NOT the administrator. This is clear as your account does not have the appropriate privileges. From what you have said it looks like the admin has set it up so that only authorized people should be installing software apparently.

Number 2: If I were the admin, and I found out you were doing as you propose, you would be suspended/expelled from school. If the software is of legitimate use to the school and is properly licensed, the Admin should have no issue installing it for you. By installing software of questionable use, you could be opening up all kinds of liability to the school.

Number 3: You also may be charged with some sort of computer crime in a court of law. It is possible that you could be arrested for unauthorized access/tampering.

So, my point is: Find out who has access to install the software and have them do it. There should be someone in IT that knows. The rest of what you say is utter BS reasoning.

Rare Star Wars or other collectibles, comics and graphic novels, and conversations about how the IT staff isn't respected by the faculty and students are probably good places to start.

You are headed down the road of making the Admin your enemy. Unlearn that bad habit before you get to the real world and get a desk-job or you'll spend a lifetime always on the slowest PC in the office with the fuzziest monitor and the worst mouse and keyboard.

Nice troll, though.

If each student installed and ran uTorrent, even a ping could not get through as a bunch of P2P machines will literally crash many firewalls, as they have session limits.

So, in theory, when your parents paid for your fancy laptop, and the school paid for the computer network, the intent was that MAYBE you could get an education and, with luck, be someone who does not have their name embroidered on their shirt or wear a WalMart name tag when you're 40 years old.

But instead, go ahead and setup your own MineCraft server and uTorrent all the music and movies you want, because this will prepare you well for doing these things for the next twenty years of doing the same thing from your cozy home in your parent's basement.

Your boring friends who did boring things like studying and following the rules of the big-bad-admin will live in their big houses with the exotic sports cars, while you shall be driving your mother's rusty Chrysler Minivan with no air conditioning and get yelled at daily by the WalMart store manager for being late or wearing your name tag crooked.

You didn't want a lecture, but here it is anyway. I say this because, I was the network administrator for a K-12 public school district.

The way to install the software you want to use is to buy it and install it on the computer YOU buy. That is pretty simple, isn't it.

uTorrent and other torrent clients suck bandwidth, and if you think there is plenty, you are simply wrong.
Commercial software needs to be installed in compliance with its license agreement. I have had to teach this simple lesson to math teachers, but you get the short form. When you buy one copy, you GET ONE COPY. When you buy one copy and install in the lab, on your buddies machine, on your home and school and laptop machine, you may (every title is different) be in violation. I hate to break this to you, but Microsoft, Adobe and several other big names in the software biz, spend millions looking for schools doing this. The fines can be steep. I am betting mommy and daddy do not want me sending you a bill for $150,000. So I will prevent that.

Read your acceptable use agreement. Find the part with the penalties. I will bill you for the time and effort to remove/repair what you did. Consider this a life lesson. In the work place people get fired for violating the acceptable use agreement.

The dirty secret. I have a bigger hammer than the cceptable use agreement. Here in Missouri unauthorized use of a network is a felony. 90% of K-12 schools get their Internet through a state program. Welcome to theft of state resources. Oh, and tell your teacher to go through the channels and get the software installed if they want it. If they aren't tenured, they can be unemployed easily. If they are, schools are getting better and better at document and fire.

One last note, school network admins read TechRepublic too.

You are obviously trying to install software onto a school owned resource. The laptop deosnt belong to you so stop trying to do things to it that are not intended. As others say, installing torrent software on the laptop (agasin that doesn't belong to you) is a BAD thing. Torrents eat up bandwidth, most respectable admins do not even allow torrent traffic on their networks (I know I don't) for a VARIETY of reasons.

The thing that you need to understand is that you are in school to get an education (one that you seem to be neglecting because if you were paying attention in English you would know that it is "I don't want to HEAR..." not "I don't want to HERE..." but thats another discussion about the inadequecies of todays educational systems.

Bottom line is, you need to play games at home, on your OWN computer. If your Mommy and Daddy are ok with you screwing up your own computer or the family computer with micro torrent and a bunch of warez then that's their business, the school system folks put security measures in place to protect the viability of their (not your) information system assets and networks.

At least you have access to some of the things you like now - mostly websites.

With more and more businesses being paranoid about network security penetration many are locking down networks so tight that only authorized websites are available from within and there is absolutely nothing but licensed business applications installed on their networks.

In most healthcare and financial situations social networks are completely locked down as well.

Don't even think about me allowing you to bring your own smart phone or device in and allowing you to add it to my network. It ain't gonna happen until I know it is encrypted, protected by an approved antivirus program, has a password that is at least 8 characters, auto-locks within 5 minutes of unlocking, and I can remotely wipe your device in the event that you even elude to the fact that it is lost, has been stolen, or "I can't find it!" By the way, we provide VOIP phones on the desks and want those used in lieu of your smart phone. Yes, we also log all incoming and outgoing calls to make certain you are not sitting on the phone talking to friends for non-company business. In fact, some parts of the buildings were deliberately engineered and shielded to prevent the cell phone signals, along with any other RF, except for our private and secure WIFI network, from penetrating into those areas, so turn off the tears right now because I am not going to allow you to install a cellular booster.

Incidentally, my healthcare networks know everything every employee, including the boss, does within the network and we keep that log data, along with the meta data, for at least 72 months. We have to keep the data under federal HITECH rules and it is routinely vetted when we receive a subpoena from an attorney.

We don't allow online video, games, radio, music, Howard Stern, or any other forms of personal entertainment on your computer. Your work issued desktop or laptop is not a toy.

We also do not allow you to add any other e-mail account to your desktop or laptop. You have a company e-mail account and we expect you to use that for ALL company correspondence. No, you may NOT use it for personal correspondence. If you have children, we will allow you to have their school contact you, IN AN EMERGENCY, via the company e-mail system, but please keep in mind that we are archiving all incoming and outgoing e-mail and can read anything you send or receive. We provide partially unrestricted machines in the break and lunch areas, but even those cannot get on eBay or PayPal because we don't need surgeons, anesthesiologists, and nurses, who are supposed to be paying attention to patients, checking to see if they won an auction every few seconds.

By the way, if you have a laptop you are not authorized to let your children do their homework on it in the evenings. It is for COMPANY BUSINESS ONLY and we had better not find it sitting on the back seat of your car in a parking lot somewhere because we will charge you for it if it gets stolen - read your employment manual.

We are not paying for bandwidth for you to be entertained because you are here to work. Besides, medical imaging demands huge bandwidth and there is no way in hell I am going to put a patient who is on an operating table at risk because you want to participate in March Madness. TIVO or DVR it and watch when you get home.

Incidentally, don't use the network to create your spreads and pools either. Nothing against gambling, but not on my time or our network's time.

We know what you look at, if you changed it, if you printed it, what workstation you logged in from, what time you logged in, what time you logged out, and what you looked at on the internet. We also archive all incoming and outgoing e-mail and scan all such e-mail for personally identifiable patient or financial information. If such information is in there, it is in violation of both our, and federal rules, and we bounce the message back to the sender - with a copy in my in-box for review. We can, and do, go back and read old messages all the time. Sometimes it is in response to the request or a court summons, sometimes it is because of an internal investigation.

Yes, Johnny, big brother is watching everything you do on our business computer network and we will continue to monitor, and occasionally reprimand, sometimes with the big hammer called termination.

GROW UP - you are at school to learn about life. Your teachers may whine about not being allowed to install software; you may feel put upon and your parents may even verge on attacking the school for their "draconian network and software policy."

You may have tears in your eyes thinking about how awful a network administrator I am and the fact that you would never work in a facility I am responsible for, but: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!"

Take some time and look at the real world now. Grow up - QUICKLY, because once you don that cap and gown, you enter life, and in life, there is no such thing as "fair." If you work at a facility where I am responsible for the network and you break my network rules, you will be looking for a new job.

got software on their computers, why don't you ask them? The likely answer is "I asked the hard working and much put upon sysadmin".

You know what BrambleStar or who ever you are you are making the biggest mistake of your life. The others here who are network admin are right, it is a really bad idea to install stuff on your school computer (like a torrent or other unapproved programs). I am no network administrator but I work with my schools technology department and I have seen such cases as this. The stupid student (such as you) wants to install some unapproved item...so you some how break into the admin account (the line "nobody knows who the network admin is" thats total BS), and install what ever you want. Then a couple seconds later the network admin gets an email from the system asking if such and such downloads are allowed, then they investigate and find that your user is logged on when the install went down, guess who will eat the book, YOU. So guess who gets called down to the office to talk with the "non-existent admin", and he asks you what this torrent thing is... and when you try to lie he throws the book at you. He pulls network logs, install logs, all sorts of things that incriminate you, not just with the school but with the Local/State Government. School computers are the worst place to break the rules and install unapproved programs because they are full of spyware that report your every mouse click and key press to the admin. I know because I have pulled these things on students like yourself myself. You can be expelled/banned for the district computers for the rest of you life. You may or may-not get away with it, a lot of admin's I know let stuff slide then BAMM they hit some unlucky perpetrator with the whole book and make a huge example out of them, don't let this be you. You also said in your post that your internet access is unblocked, that my friend is very very very rare. Once you cross that line they may decide to crack down on the internet, and how would it effect your quality of life if everyone knew that you were the kid who got the internet blocked...

The best thing you can do is help the school admin and they will help you, its a fact. Get used to it and grow up. There is more happening here than you know.

Get uTorrent Portable and a VPN account (Mullvad Portable or similar), as long as you can VPN out you should be golden. Be careful though- If you get caught torrenting copyright files on the school's network, you may get kicked out. In addition to the VPN, I recommend Truecrypt portable- set uTorrent to download all your files to a truecrypt volume (different password than your windows login or any other accounts)- otherwise a quick inspection of your computer will reveal the stolen material.

From a sysadmin POV though, If I noticed heavy VPN traffic congesting my network, I'd just block VPN access out of the network.

But Ill save u some time ,since you dont have permissions. I would just download a Live Distro. Burn iso. image to disk and restart and boot up to cd. You will run a live Operating system and you will have access. Id recommend Backtrack, or Slackware.. Because Your possibilities are endless. But Those are Command based Distros and are for advanced users. But for starters Ubuntu would be the best choice.

My solution for these kinds of issues is to bring in my own laptop. My school provides Wi-Fi, but it is highly restricted therefore I bring in a Verizon Wireless 4G card and let my friends connect to it.

I would highly suggest buying a half-way decent laptop (because the laptops at your school seem to be junk) and then installing your crap on it.

I play minecraft when im done with my work and none of my teachers really care.

At least you GET to go to websites, our admin has things so tight, you can't go ANYWHERE, let alone install anything!