Mr Alewine

Thank the Lord! Ophcrack worked and the Dell is back and better than ever! (Well... maybe not better than ever.) As it turns out, I was not burning the program onto a disc correctly. I will walk through the entire process, and try to show some screen shots.

- First, visit Ophcrack's site, which I have posted here.

- Install "Ophcrack Live CD". There will be two choices. Choose the Live CD. This program is quick and easy to install, so it should only take a few minutes.

- Once the program is installed, it needs to be burned to a CD. This is not standard CD burning procedure though.
First, you must incert a blank CD and go to Applications->Utilities->Disk Utilities. The image you will see is at the top of this post.
Next, drag the program from your desktop to the window and select "Burn". Dr. Pfaffman explained what this does and why simply burning a CD does not work, but I honestly had a hard time understanding what he meant and do not want to risk confusing anyone else.

- Back to Ophcrack, all that is needed is for the computer to load from Ophcrack instead of Windows. This happens when the computer first turns on. You must hold F12 and choose to "load from CD".

- Ophcrack does the rest. All that is needed is to press Enter a couple of times, and Ophcrack works its way through the computer. It clearly presents your password and all other passwords from other accounts in a simple chart.

All I did after that restart it and sign in as before. All my information was all still there, safe and sound.
I just hope there is not some German spy watching me now through Ophcrack..... uh oh.

So I tried Dr. Pfaffman's idea to register new password for the Dell. This site is Offline NT Password Registry Editor and it operated just like the other two programs. I downloaded the software, burned it to a disc, put it in the computer, and tried to boot it from the disc... Again, nothing. Windows loaded again, just like Ophcrack and Microsoft's free software.
I am beginning to wonder if something awful has happened to my computer.

Dr. Pfaffman is not going to like this post, but I am beginning to consider the legitimacy of Open Source software. As one of my projects, I chose to capitalize on my skills as a journalist and write an article describing the possibilities for education available through Open Source. My thinking was going along with Dr. Pfaffman's, believing this was a legitimate way for schools to save money or use money to fund different needs. It seems so obvious if this is available, why not use it?

I finally attempted Ophcrack, the Software used to crack into computers with lost passwords. I found this site through the video tutorial I posted earlier, and the process seemed fairly simple. All that was needed (according to another video tutorial on youtube) was to download the software, burn ophcrack to a CD, and put the CD in the computer you are trying to crack. The claim was this would work with over 90% of computers using Windows XP and some with Vista. My Dell uses (or I should say "used" since it has been on the shelf for so long) XP, so I assumed this would be no problem. The instructions were to turn on the computer, put in the CD, restart the computer, and enter F12 before Windows starts to load. This allows ophcrack to load instead of Windows.
I followed all these instructions, only to find Windows loading and returning to the same screen where my password was rejected. I tried this several more times, but to no avail. I will burn another CD and try once more, but I believe ophcrack (like the other programs I have tried) does not work. Open Source software is not proving to be beneficial at the moment.

I am in the process of writing an article for the Oak Ridge Observer on the benefits and downfalls of Open Source Software for the Oak Ridge Schools. I spoke with IT Director Doug Cofer this afternoon and will sit with him for an in depth interview tomorrow morning.

Oak Ridge Observer's website.

So after following the advice of the video from PC World, I visited the site http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/download.php and downloaded the free software to recover passwords. The site said the software can recover 99.9% or Windows passwords, I felt fairly optimistic.
The download lasted only a minute, I saved it to a junk drive, and plugged it into my Dell Inspiron... Nothing. Just like last time with the CD that was supposed to recover my password and nothing happened, this new software left me with the same results. I wonder if there is a special button I am supposed to be hitting, or maybe it needs to turned on and off, or maybe something horribly wrong has happened... or maybe it's just a pathetic computer...

Here is a pretty helpful video from PC World my Father in law found for me. I am going to see if any of their tips work to find my Dell's password.

http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Retrieve-a-Lost-Windows-Password-4512

Firefox has finally shown a flaw. For the past week, it has crashed several times without warning and (according to Firefox) without reason. I am not sure if this is caused by a program I am running that does not work well with Firefox, or if there is something wrong with the browser, but this has happened several times recently. It usually occurs while I am running more than one window or a video player (ESPN 360 for example), so this may have something do to with it. If this is the case, then Safari surpasses Firefox in this area because I never had this problem with Safari. However, this is my first and only problem with Firefox... so far.

Also, I have encountered some problems with OpenOffice. (These aren't necessarily problems, but inconveniences.) I cannot open an OpenOffice document unless I open it through OpenOffice. For example, when I created a document using Pages or Word, I can open the file by simply finding the file and selecting it. I didn't need to first open Pages, and find "Open Document" in Pages. All that was necessary was to find the file. With OpenOffice, I have to open the program and open the document through the "Open Document" link. When I tried to open the file itself, it would open in Textedit. This means I need to pay more attention to where I save files and how I open them. This happened with a mid-term I was supposed to turn in to my English Education professor. Before class, I could not understand how to open the file in order to print it, and I was left with my mid-term in Textedit with achingly small font which I was unable to adjust. Very embarrassing to say the least.
I also tried to email documents to one of my professors and they were unable to open them. I exported them to another folder as PDFs, but the images were jumbled with random text everywhere. I am not sure if there is something I am not doing, but if this is true then OpenOffice needs to make their program easire to navigate.