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Mongoose_Slayer
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Location: Wisconsin
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 Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2003 9:09 pm Post subject: Windows98 |
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Anyone know anything about Windows98 to answer me this:
A friend of mine is setting up a computer, and for whatever reason wants it to be that nobody can log on to it without supplying a password. I thought that having a user name with a password would do this be he says that people can just leave the user-name blank and log on anyways. Anyone have any experience with Windows98 (that's what he's running)and would know how to do this? |
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Gurrg
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| Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2003 9:16 pm Post subject: |
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he wants it so you can't even get to any desktop or his own, cuz what you said, if he created his own username he could do that, but if he wants it so no one can go anywhere without a password...i'm clueless sorry.
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My Personal Insanity
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Location: Salt Lake City GUILD: US-V
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| Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2003 9:31 pm Post subject: Re: Windows98 |
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| Mongoose_Slayer wrote: | Anyone know anything about Windows98 to answer me this:
A friend of mine is setting up a computer, and for whatever reason wants it to be that nobody can log on to it without supplying a password. I thought that having a user name with a password would do this be he says that people can just leave the user-name blank and log on anyways. Anyone have any experience with Windows98 (that's what he's running)and would know how to do this? |
The user accounts in Win98 just serve to keep your settings and
desktops separate, as well as to provide network logons if needed.
They don't provide any kind of local security. You can't stop people
from logging in as the default user (by clicking cancel at the login
prompt), and you can't prevent users from accessing and/or trampling
each other's files.
Your friend needs Windows 2000, or some variation of Unix,
something else. Win98 just won't do the job.
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aaa, oshiete sensei-san... |
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Mongoose_Slayer
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Location: Wisconsin
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| Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2003 9:42 pm Post subject: Re: Windows98 |
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| My Personal Insanity wrote: | | Mongoose_Slayer wrote: | Anyone know anything about Windows98 to answer me this:
A friend of mine is setting up a computer, and for whatever reason wants it to be that nobody can log on to it without supplying a password. I thought that having a user name with a password would do this be he says that people can just leave the user-name blank and log on anyways. Anyone have any experience with Windows98 (that's what he's running)and would know how to do this? |
The user accounts in Win98 just serve to keep your settings and
desktops separate, as well as to provide network logons if needed.
They don't provide any kind of local security. You can't stop people
from logging in as the default user (by clicking cancel at the login
prompt), and you can't prevent users from accessing and/or trampling
each other's files.
Your friend needs Windows 2000, or some variation of Unix,
something else. Win98 just won't do the job. |
Heh, I didnt think it was possible. Thanks for the help people, Ill tell him the info next time i see him |
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My Personal Insanity
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Location: Salt Lake City GUILD: US-V
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| Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2003 9:43 pm Post subject: |
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Okay, looks like I was somewhat wrong. It is possible to disable the
cancel button, by setting this registry key:
HKLM\Network\Logon\MustBeValidated
However, to quote:
| Xteq X-Setup wrote: |
WARNING: The "Cancel" button cannot be safely disabled if the computer is not actually logging in to an NT or Netware domain, or to the Family Logon client (Win 98/ME). Otherwise it will make your system UNUSABLE."
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So, if this person is not running the machine in a WinNT/Win2k/Netware
domain, they need to go to Start->Settings->Control Panel->Network
and change the primary network logon to 'Windows Family Logon'
(or however it's worded).
Otherwise he's likely to end up with a useless system. Fair warning,
I haven't tried this myself, and don't intend to, as installing Win2k or linux
or something with actual security is a MUCH better idea.
But it is possible! Tell him to back up the registry files first, if he's
going to try this. (c:\windows\system.dat and c:\windows\user.dat).
I must also highly recommend Xteq's X-Setup program (click here!)
for tweaking settings on all windows platforms. It has a plugin to
do the registry change for you, if you don't like to/know how to get
regedit to do it for you.
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aaa, oshiete sensei-san... |
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Mongoose_Slayer
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Location: Wisconsin
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| Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2003 9:48 pm Post subject: |
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| So if he does that he can setup a default accoutn you have to log in on? I'll tell him that (and the hazards). I have Windows98 now too, but I'm going to upgrade soon (thank gawd) |
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My Personal Insanity
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| Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2003 10:00 pm Post subject: |
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| Mongoose_Slayer wrote: | | So if he does that he can setup a default accoutn you have to log in on? I'll tell him that (and the hazards). I have Windows98 now too, but I'm going to upgrade soon (thank gawd) |
Yeah, he'd have to make some sort of account in 'users and profiles'
under the control panel, so that he'd have a user to log in AS.
If he screws up, booting into 'command prompt only' mode and
copying the backup user.dat and system.dat over the current ones
would bring the system back to life.
I run win2kpro on my main machine. I like it, over all. Real filesystem
permissions, real users, chews up less CPU cycles than Win98 does
(but more memory  ), and overall is fairly stable.
_________________
[url=http://www.surfacezero.net/BottleFairy-Sensei-san(J).mp3][/url]
aaa, oshiete sensei-san... |
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Whatever
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Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 297
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| Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2003 5:51 am Post subject: |
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Windows XP Pro and Home will also let you set usernames and passwords. I know several friends who have it that way, as do I (I have the Pro version, and I love it).
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PuTriD kOAlA
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Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Posts: 73
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| Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2003 7:22 am Post subject: |
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Yes, he needs something based on the NT line of windows. 98 doesn't support security in any form really, files or logging in. He needs something loading on NTFS.
I run win2kPro at home, and at work. It's a great OS, WAY more stable than 98. As someone mentioned earlier 2k and xp utlize a little bit more ram, but it's cheap as crap these days and everyone should have a ton if your planning on playing games.
The only bad thing about the OS for gaming needs is if you purchase 1024 of RAM, you inherently can only use 512 for Applications in win2k, the system by default takes one half of your RAM for itself. Big oversight on MS's part.. i'm sure when 256 mb was a normal amount that made more sense, but now that ppl are stuffing RAM like crazy in their boxes it sucks.. u will never use anything near 512 for the system, lol
If he can try to find a copy of Windows AS from some unscrupulous source (like kazaa).. you can better manage your memory w/ this. |
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My Personal Insanity
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| Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2003 2:29 pm Post subject: |
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| PuTriD kOAlA wrote: |
The only bad thing about the OS for gaming needs is if you purchase 1024 of RAM, you inherently can only use 512 for Applications in win2k, the system by default takes one half of your RAM for itself. |
That's not actually right. Your confusing address space with physical
memory.
You see, modern CPUs have the ability to give numerical addresses to
more memory than the system actually has. I think it's up to 64
Terabytes now, not sure. Anyway, operating systems create special
data structures that the CPU uses to keep track of which parts
of the address space are actually IN the physical memory at any
moment. This is usually not done byte-by-byte but in chunks
called "pages." On Intel/AMD type machines, pages are usually 4 kilobytes
in size. The OS (Windows, Unix, Etc) then does the work of moving
the pages that aren't being used to the hard drive, to make room
in the physical memory, and moving pages that are on the hard
drive, but need to be used, back into memory, all transparently
to programs. The process is called, appropriately, paging
To a program, it appears as if your 1024mb system really has
much more memory. This is virtual memory.
Now, for virtual memory to work, you have to set up data
structures (page tables and page table directories) for MUCH MORE
memory than is actually in your computer.
So what Windows, in fact what all modern operating systems do,
is define the tables to allow a certain range of address space for
user programs, and a certain range for the system. In Windows
2000, it's 2 Gigabytes of address-space for the system,
and 2 Gigabytes of address space for user programs.
This is completely independent of how much memory you actually
HAVE, it's just how much memory is set up to be addressable
and have page-table entries.
So the operating system is NOT using 512 megabytes of your 1024
megabyte machine. It's only using what it needs, and it fact much
of it is 'paged out' on the disk, waiting for when you actually need
to use it. Only some very vital portions of the OS are kept ALWAYS
in physical memory (their pages are called "locked pages" or "nonpagable" since they can't be swapped out). The page directories
and tables THEMSELVES of course cannot be swapped out, but
they're quite small, so it's not a big deal.
This is why one of the first upgrades done to an old system should
be to add more phsyical memory: Hard drives are slower than
RAM, and if your computer is having to constantly swap pages on
and off the HD, it will slow down quite a bit.
If you want a little glimpse of this, and your on Windows 2000, or
Windows XP, open the task manager (ctrl-alt-del, then click
Task Manager). Then click on the Performance tab.
You can see a number of interesting statistics
about how your memory is being used:
Commit Charge: 'committed' memory is address space that
has actually been used for something.
Total: This will be the current amount of address space
that is being used, both in memory and on disk.
Limit: The maximum amout of address space the system
can handle with the page tables made at boot-time
Peak: The highest amount of address space actually used,
again, both on disk and in physical memory, since
you booted.
Physical memory: This should be obvious
Total: Obvious 
Availible: Rather obvious, this is physical memory that is
currently doing nothing. But it's a little misleading,
see below.
System Cache: This is the amount of physical memory being used
to cache copies of files on disk. Since RAM is faster
than any HD, this makes access to those files faster.
But if the system needs more physical memory, it
automatically shrinks the size of this cache down to
free up space. So really, your availible phsyical
memory is this number plus the availible number.
Kernel Memory: Shows what the system is using, both for it's own
code and data, and for communicating with user-mode
code.
Total: Obvious
Paged: This is the amount that can be paged out if memory
gets tight
Nonpaged: This amount is ALWAYS in physical memory, for
important reasons.
Linux users can see alot of the same information by typing 'free'
at a shell prompt.
Well this has been a long ramble, but I hope I've explained virtualization
well enough. It's a very old memory management method, going back
several decades...
_________________
[url=http://www.surfacezero.net/BottleFairy-Sensei-san(J).mp3][/url]
aaa, oshiete sensei-san...
Last edited by My Personal Insanity on Tue Feb 18, 2003 2:48 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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My Personal Insanity
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Location: Salt Lake City GUILD: US-V
Posts: 2627
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| Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2003 2:32 pm Post subject: |
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An addendum: Windows 2000 will allow you to order the system
in the boot INI file to change the allocation of address space,
3 Gigabytes user, 1 Gigabyte system, to reduce paging on
machines doing very memory-intensive tasks, such as
managing large databases. But unless your running such a task,
it's totally useless. After all, do you actually even HAVE 4 gigabytes
of physical memory?
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aaa, oshiete sensei-san... |
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<TVB>IdiotSavant
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Joined: 29 Nov 2001
Location: Arkansas
Posts: 108
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| Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2003 2:53 pm Post subject: |
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I saw this a little too late to help probably, but here is my answer. =)
Have your friend go into the BIOS setting and change it so that security is enabled on bootup. Use password protection there. It will allow only those who know the password to boot the pc. This only works if he shuts the PC off everytime he leaves it.
If he needs to leave the PC on 24/7 and be away from it often, then I would suggest a better OS. Running win98 24/7 is not a good idea. It has too many bugs to run stable for a long period of time. I have had win98 run for 6 weeks without a reboot. But it was real sluggish and I finally was forced to reboot because of a blue screen of death. =(
If a different OS is not possible. Then search the web for 3rd party software to do this for you. The software may end up being more money than it is worth. I suggest the BIOS method. It is secure and will keep all but the computer geek out. If he loses his password to BIOS, you can reset the BIOS directly from the motherboard. Worst case is having to remove the CMOS battery for a few minutes.
Hope this was of use,
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My Personal Insanity
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Joined: 03 Mar 2002
Location: Salt Lake City GUILD: US-V
Posts: 2627
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| Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2003 3:36 pm Post subject: |
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| IdiotSavant wrote: |
Have your friend go into the BIOS setting and change it so that security is enabled on bootup. Use password protection there. It will allow only those who know the password to boot the pc. This only works if he shuts the PC off everytime he leaves it. |
Hey, I didn't think of that, there's another good possibility.
_________________
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aaa, oshiete sensei-san... |
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