System 7.5 Password Woes

[LCARS]

Hello everyone. I transplanted a hard drive from my 190 with a bad mobo to a healthy 190CS. Apparently in 6th grade I put a password lock on and now I can't remember what it is. This was about 1996, so I would imagine it was System 7.5. Does anyone know of a workaround? The lock is the one that comes with Sys7.

I did leave a password hint that I know the answer to, but I probably changed the password and not the hint sometime back then (since the hint is apparently wrong). I'm a little disheartened if I am truly locked out. I was looking forward to seeing my old school files. After three tries the 190 shuts down. Is there much harm in me trying many passwords- will the HD finally give up?

 

[drbones]

sounds like you've got At Ease on there - try booting up from another disk, and manually removing it from the system folder

 

[LCARS]

Thank you for the reply. I don't remember using At Ease. Way back when, I used the Password Security application in the System Folder. The password has blocked SCSI disk mode, so I cannot access this hard drive from another computer. I'm worried that the password app wrote it to the HD's firmware since the password has followed the HD into the new PowerBook.

 

[Gil]

No, it's not in HD firmware. It is, however, the first thing executed by the OS (if you look very closely, a Happy Mac appears a split second before the password dialog box comes up). I would imagine accessing the drive from another computer (without booting from the drive) would allow you to access the drive/files. Or you could try booting from a CD or floppy.

Hope this helps.

 

[alk]

I think it writes to the driver partition, actually. You might be able to nuke it by booting attaching it in SCSI disk mode and re-writing the disk drivers with Drive Setup or something.

There were lots of rumors back in the day about an Apple backdoor for Password Security, but I can't remember what any of them were...

Peace,

Drew

 

[LCARS]

Thanks Macattack94 and alk. I recall reading once that starting up from the rescue floppy (190, no CD-ROM unfortunately) is a way to fix a forgotten password. Alk: the password window has a big warning about turning off Password Security before booting in SCSI disk mode. It suggested that it would not work with it on.

I have to make a backup floppy on another 7 machine. I hope it works. I also had heard mentions of a backdoor password from Apple. There must be some way (besides the boot disk) to fix a password problem. "The computer for the rest of us", eh?

 

[LCGuy]

From http://www.securemac.com/powerbooksecurity.php :

Security Breaches in the Password Security Control Panel:
Owners of Powerbook have the option of using the Control Panel "Password Security". With Password Security turned on the owner of the PowerBook can password-protect his/her computer. This involves a password dialog asking for a password every time the Hard Drive is mounted. In day to day use this means that every time the computer boots up or is "woken up" from sleep, the dialog asking for the password appears. If an incorrect password is entered three times the computer either shuts down or "puts itself to sleep".

The Password Security Control Panel stores it's settings in a file called "aaaaaaaaAPWD" in the root folder of the Hard Drive. This file is impossible to access under OS 8.5 due to the fact that it has the attribute of a disk. It can neither be moved, opened nor copied. It is, however, important to notice that this file contains a bit-flag indicating whether Password Security is turned on or off. It contains, furthermore, an encrypted version of the password. The first security breach in the Password Security Control Panel is that it generates an emergency password every time the password dialog is displayed. This password is a number generated using the current date, number of ticks since startup and the name of the Hard Drive.

Due to these criteria it is almost impossible to generate the emergency password using another application. It is however possible to force the Control Panel to display the emergency password. This would, however, require tedious programing. There is unfortunately a much easier way to turn off the Control Panel. Using an emergency startup disk (or CD) and Norton Disk Editor anyone can turn off the Password Security Control Panel and even change the password. If the PowerBook is booted up using an emergency startup disk the password dialog will appear when the Hard Drive is being mounted. If the user cancels this operation the PowerBook will still be usable, although the Hard Drive will not mount, leaving all information on the Hard Drive unavailable.

However, Norton Disk Editor has the ability to display and change data even on unmounted disks. Since the settings file, aaaaaaaaAPWD, can be accessed this way, anyone can toggle the "on/off" mode of the Control Panel. This can be achieved by changing the value of the byte at offset three in the data fork from 01 to 00. Since the encrypted password is stored at offset 4 in the data fork of the file even that can be changed. Unfortunately there is no way to protect oneself from these security breaches currently. As always, the best way to protect information on a computer is by using "secure" encryption applications.

Judging by this, it would appear that the "bypass" that Apple technicians used to use (which I remember hearing about as well) would involve the use of a program like Norton Disk Editor. NDE is a very difficult program to use, and if used incorrectly it can cause you to lose data. All i can really say is best of luck.

 

[LCARS]

Thank you very much LCGuy. I guess now my problems are finding NDE and learning how to use it reliably, but it is great to know that all is not lost (assuming no mistakes are made in NDE). As an alternative to me messing with the disk, would a data recovery company be able to access the HD, either with NDE or other tools of their trade?

 

[LCGuy]

I'd imagine a data recovery company would, but you'd have to be prepared to pay big bucks...up to and over US$1000.

 

[phreakout]

This is an excerpt from MacWorld Mac Secrets, 5th Edition by David Pogue and Joseph Schorr:

At Ease and the death of your hard drive

The manual tells you that before removing At Ease, you must open the At Ease

control panel and click the Off button. It specifically warns you not to drag the At

Ease files to the Trash. The manual doesn’t, however, specify exactly what will

happen if you don’t remove At Ease in the officially sanctioned manner:

Basically, you trash your hard drive.

At Ease does something rather un-kosher when it installs itself—it modifies the

boot blocks of your hard drive (the very first instructions that get processed

when the Mac is turned on) to ignore the Finder and launch At Ease instead. Of

course, if you’ve thrown away At Ease, the Mac goes on a wild-goose chase, and

throws up its electronic hands in frustration. It gives you a flickering system bomb

icon in an empty dialog box—and, after a while, the blinking question-mark Icon of Doom.

Sometimes, running the Disk Tools program can repair the damage. Other times,

doing a clean system reinstall (see Chapter 36) does the trick.

Much better, though, to avoid the problem in the first place: Turn off At Ease

before removing any of its components, or remove it using its original Installer

program’s Remove option.

The forgotten-At-Ease-password trick

It could happen to you: You forget your own At Ease password. Holding down the

Shift key at startup, of course, doesn’t bypass At Ease. How can you get back to

your Finder?

Restart the Mac from your Disk Tools disk or your system software CD-ROM. Now

just open your hard drive’s System Folder, open the Preferences folder, and throw

away At Ease Preferences. Now At Ease can’t remember your password, either!

Restart the Mac and you’re back in business.

But, on the other hand, you can't get into the Finder or its Control Panel in order to turn off At Ease. So I hope you have a copy of the System 7.x Disk Tools disk and a full copy of At Ease on you.

 

I hope this helps.

 

73s de Phreakout.

 

[Scott Baret]

If it's been as long as you say it's been since you've used the Mac why not reformat the drive altogether? Doing so will optimize performance.

 

[JRL]

If it's been as long as you say it's been since you've used the Mac why not reformat the drive altogether? Doing so will optimize performance.

He said that he wanted to see his old school files.

 

[Scott Baret]

If it's been as long as you say it's been since you've used the Mac why not reformat the drive altogether? Doing so will optimize performance.

He said that he wanted to see his old school files.

This would only be done after he recovered said files. I've done this before when I've had a Mac in storage that I did work on years ago--back up the files to some sort of external volume or floppy disk and then wipe the drive, reinstalling fresh copies of the OS and any application I may be using on the machine.

 

[JRL]

Whoops; sorry for the misunderstanding. I thought you meant to wipe the drive in it's current state.