I had a colleague who had a laptop stolen with lots of stored passwords in various programs. He thought he was safe but decided to change them about 3 days later. Guess what!! That was in the days of XP which had a hidden Admin account that had no password by default. Not too sure if 7 and 8 have the same setup.

In reply to a post by GeoffB:

Guess what!! That was in the days of XP which had a hidden Admin account that had no password by default. Not too sure if 7 and 8 have the same setup.

Which raises the question, how secure are OS? Hackers today find ways to get to passwords and more, they are programmers after all!

You can have a password on any account, just Inset windows recovery CD and you can remove the password...

Administrator accounts by default don't require a password, though you have the option to set one when installing the OS.

It's best to use password manager software that encrypts your password.

Edited by ryant704 (Fri 19-Apr-13 19:35:23)

Do Win7/8 have a hidden unprotected Admin account?

I agree with you mainly except, that I think people should get a real address from a provider such as 1&1 that people can recognise as you, they don't cost that much, a few pounds every 2 years for a .co.uk or .me.uk address, then have anything else forwarded to that address, by all means set up a free gmail, as well

Also by setting up your own address means that you can use different names in front of the @MyName.me.uk so other members of your family can have their own address and you can use a special ones for all the web sites you visit, I tend to use things like [email protected], it's a good way to find out if they are selling your details/have bad security.

I still use Thunderbird/IMAP for my every day use and only use webmail for when I am away from home, I think TB has a better filtering system.

I haven't used ISP mail addresses for outgoing mail since ISDN (HH) first became available

PS Over 60

Edited by The_Voyager (Sat 20-Apr-13 09:49:16)

In reply to a post by GeoffB:

Do Win7/8 have a hidden unprotected Admin account?

Win7 has an administrator account but its disabled and unusable, unless you manually go in and enable it. Don't know Win8 but expect the same.

In corporate we enable this account, set a strong password, and join to the domain, then have no other local accounts.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Win7 has an administrator account but its disabled and unusable,

Have you checked in Safe Mode whether it is available? On XP & Vista it does not appear on normal Welcome screen but does in Safe Mode.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Win7 has an administrator account but its disabled and unusable,

Have you checked in Safe Mode whether it is available? On XP & Vista it does not appear on normal Welcome screen but does in Safe Mode.

Welcome screen? we disable and have full username and password entry.

What shows on welcome screen isn't reliable. On XP you used to be able to on just after boot press CTRL+ALT+DEL twice and skip to an old style login dialog and enter any valid credentials. Haven't tried on 7/8.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Welcome screen?

That wasn't the point! Whatever you use to login. The point was about Safe Mode and the availability of the "hidden" Administrator a/c.

Edited by XRaySpeX (Sat 20-Apr-13 22:47:46)

In reply to a post by jchamier:

On XP you used to be able to on just after boot press CTRL+ALT+DEL twice and skip to an old style login dialog and enter any valid credentials.

Yes, you get a login dialogue box upon hitting CTRL+ALT+DEL twice but it only accepts valid credentials. What did you mean by "any valid credentials"? If they are valid, what's the problem?