my brother hacked into my computer...how?

[musicmaker18]

I have a password protected computer and some how my brother got in it and created himself an account. I am pretty ticked off and I am curious as to how he got in. How is this possible? Thanks!

MM18

 

[willsko87]

Can't you get in through Safe Mode into the Admin account? Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[DOTA2000]

Well when you create an account and you put a password, there is a way to reset the password by pressing the reset button on the bios chip.
Dont know how to get it but i do know how to get rid of it xD

 

[welsh]

so safemode really isnt that safe.

 

[Jam3s-Zer0]

You can get to the admin account from normal log in, not just safe mode.

Just put a password on the admin account and disable the guest account.

 

[imation]

Handy shortcut:

start menu > run > type in 'control userpasswords2'

 

[Skuzzle]

to be honest the chances are he guessed the password

 

[Win2kpatcher]

XP is the easiest OS to hack. You can only get to the administrator account via safemode if I recall. It is not available at the welcome screen and if you override the welcome screen with a CTRL-ALT-DLT trigger and enter the administrator account and password it will prompt you that the current policy prohibits the use of this account in normal mode or some crap like that. This is true for XP PRO not sure about home.

Simply put though yes you can just boot up in safe mode and if the administrator account never had a password set he could logon with that and simply create a new account and have endless power ;-) You can easily change the administrator password with a boot cd as well.

 

[Alvin.C]

Well when you create an account and you put a password, there is a way to reset the password by pressing the reset button on the bios chip.
Dont know how to get it but i do know how to get rid of it xD

...This is for the BIOS password not OS passwords.

As said, if your main system administrator is not passworded, then that would probably be his entry point. Though, in Windows XP Home, you can only access the system admin account in Safe Mode...In XP Pro you can access the system admin account in normal mode if you use classic login or ctrl+alt+del.

If he hasn't gained access by simply guessing the password and getting lucky, or simply accessing the system administrator account because it wasn't passworded, then there are a lot of free tools on the Internet he could have used to reset or change the administrator password, like the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor:

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

Comes in both bootable CD and floppy disk versions, and the webpage has a easy to follow, step by step guide on how to do it. All he'd need is a few minutes in front of your PC.

 

[patonb]

OR he got a cracker and 5 minutes later he was in. You can get password crackers anywhere.