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Securing Win 98 pwl files & NT4 logons

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by johnj

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One or more of my students have (anonymously) pointed out how easy it is to crack Win 98 pwl files by cracking the administrator password on our LAN and e-mailing it to me. I am new to the job, so these kids caught me with my pants down. How can make our LAN more secure? Is there a quick and dirty way to delete Win 98 pwl files (other than visiting each machine)?
Our PDC and BDC run Win NT4 SP6a. Our workstations run Win 98 SE.

3 replies

by techkid

if you delete the pwl file windows will just create a new one. It needs that file as that is the only place it keeps the password.

Don't use the administrator account to logon to the Win98 machines! Create a generic student account for them to logon to the network

This would be a good reason to tell the Principal to give money to upgrade the machines to Windows 2000 or XP. If there isn't money to do so, you may try looking for third party solutions. Win98 is not meant to be "secure". It'sintent was to be 'compatible'.

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