mrcrazy04

Yeah, if I read the Computer Misuse Act right, they could get up to 15 years . up to 5 for attempting to get access up to 5 for unauthorised modification of data up to 5 for setting it up so they can get further access. For each time they got in!!

I've setup an FTP server at home before, for transferring files home (on my £10 off ebay test server!). If you have XP Pro then there's a client available through IIS to do it. FTP usually gets out through the gateways as well - never done a 3GB file though (would take ages down my 512k connection at home!)

I tried putting the other HD in the good PC (as it is faster), and even on it's own it still BSOD'd. I've managed to get back in by unlocking the locacl admin account in safe mode. I hadn't realised you could do it in XP Pro, I knew it existed in XP Home, but thought MS had locked down XP Pro! I'm now going to go and hide with shame for making such stupid and simple mistakes!! 8O - My excuse is I was tired!

@Norphy: it thinks it is connected to the domain, but as I overwrote it's domain account, it doesn't won't authenticate with the domain. @PiqueAboo: I told it to not cache login credentials, so it won't log me in without confirmation from the server. @John: I might give that a go. I'll have a look and see. @Gecko: Tried mounting it as a slave in my other machine, and the other machine just displayed the BSOD on boot! I'll try safe mode and see if that gets me anywhere - I'll just have to hunt out a PS/2 keyboard now, as XP won't recognise input from my USB one until it is fully up, even though the BIOS recognises it!

I've done a really clever thing! To cut a long story short, I over-wrote my main PC's domain account on my home network. :oops: Therefore I can't authenticate against the domain, and I disabled the local administrator account! As it's a home machine on my test network, there is stuff on the hard drive, like my video collection and some of my experimental projects which I didn't put on the server, which I would rather not lose, so reimaging isn't really an option. What I need to do is login to the machine with administrator priveleges and rejoin the domain (to sort it out!). Also, the only machine capable of running my CD burner is the machine I'm locked out of, as all the other machines are quite old (the server has a 266MHz CPU, and the machine I'm on at the moment has a 500MHz cpu, both have minimal RAM). So after my ramble - how can I break back into my PC without a boot CD, or using a floppy, as the machine doesn't have a floppy drive. I could use my memory stick if absolutely necessary to reset the password?

Pretty Sure Group Policy overrides profiles. If you deploy a package to a computer, it installs regardless of the profiles or whatever as it is done with system level access. I've got roaming profiles here, and my group policies override them (desktop background etc), so I assume it would be the same with mandatory. It might be easier to edit the profile though to have the user setting. The package still needs to be deployed through Group Policy though.

I've pushed out the Windows Media Centre Theme (Royale) using GPO. I had to make my own MSI as the only file from MS I could find was an exe. I deployed it to all computers, then used the user configuration GPO Norphy mentioned. The only problem is, if it doesn't get on one of the machines or you make a typo, they end up with the classic theme.

I did consider once going into PC World and pretending to be the average Joe, ask a load of really basic questions, then tell them why the machine they had recommended was wrong. They also sell 2.0MHz (yes, not GHz!) computers. Perhaps someone ought to ask why they sell such rubbish machines! Hadn't thought of "buying" stuff, then returning it.

I've got Vista and XP dual booting quite happily. XP is on the Primary partition, and Vista is on a logical drive in the extended partition. The only problem I found is that some of my packages don't deploy correctly (I checked they were compatible!), as they install to C:\ by default . Only problem with Vista is that they've moved stuff, so I have to think where I'm clicking, rather than doing it on autopilot. (Control Panel took a while to figure out )

There's a group policy to disable adding printers. I can't remember off-hand, but I assume it's in the control panel settings of Administrative Tools.

I once had a family friend phone me up because their broadband wasn't working, after about 10-15 mins of questions (usually with "I don't know" answers) I worked out that they hadn't actually ordered broadband, just bought a wireless router from PC World, plugged it into the phone line, put the AOL CD in their PC and expected it to work!!

As far as I know that's a Windows thing, if you unplug the network cable on a desktop machine if the desktop's redirected it should do the same thing. I think having offline files on the desktop may fix it but I'm not 100% sure.