Eonic

I just redid my Windows laptop yesterday, while testing my unattended XP Pro DVD. Works like a charm. @sonu27: I highly recommend Gentoo Linux. It is my personal favourite operating system, period. Gentoo has a bit of a learning curve for starters, but if you print out the install guide from here: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/hand...-x86.xml?full=1 So that you can use it while installing, is simply a must for new users. You can download for free or buy CD's online from here: http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/where.xml This is my suggestion if you really want to learn Linux and like technical bits. If you decide to try it out and run into some trouble I'll be happy to help you out. Oh, I can't forget the crucial and excellent Gentoo forum: http://forums.gentoo.org Hope you like it.

You should not use passwords, period. Use passphrases. L0phtcrack is kind of obsolete in tools used for enumerating passwords. As mentioned earlier rainbow tables is the latest and will munch through passwords in seconds, regardless of which alphanumeric characters you may have used. There are rainbow table forums where they have collectively collaborated on creating large sets of tables for LM (LanMan) passwords. LM hashing is used by Windows for passwords <15 characters. Passwords/phrases >15 characters are automatically stored with NTLM hashing which requires considerably larger rainbow tables (many, many GB) to be enumerated accurately. NTLM hash is of course not foolproof, but increases the security and your sense of safety. If you still wish to use passwords <15 characters, at least turn off the use of the LM hash. This can be done in many ways, one of which is this: (and all these changes require administrator privelieges) WinKey+R >> secpol.msc >> Local Policies >> Security Options Then find: "Network Security: Do not store LAN Manager hash value on next password change" It is set to "Disabled" by default, change it to "Enabled" and reboot. Change your password and voila, you're done. You could also take a look at thraslm from toolcrypt.org which removes the LM hash from the registry without a reboot. Link found here: http://www.toolcrypt.org/index.html?thrashlm As for the plain registry hack for the registry addicts and unattended cd creators like myself out there, you can change this key/value: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa] "LMCompatibilityLevel"=dword:00000000 "NoLmHash"=dword:00000000 Change To: "LMCompatibilityLevel"=dword:00000003 "NoLmHash"=dword:00000001 Which changes the settings from both LM/NTLM to NTLM only. Just to clarify, disabling LM hash in this way will make the encrypted hash version of your password/phrase a lot more safer from rainbow tables. It does _not_ make it safe to use short passwords from other cracking methods like brute forcing, so I still recomend you to not be lax with what type of password you have. At least this way you do not need a >15 character password to get NTLM security. I hope this was helpful to someone at least, and in light of the Star Wars mood around now.. may the security be with you.

Thanks for your reply. The only problem with using keyboard-shortcuts with application shortcuts is that they will not accept the WinKey. I wanted to use the WinKey as it will not collide with other applications possible "alt" or "ctrl" shortcuts, and is physically a very convenient key to use for key-combinations. I will definately take a look at AutoHotKey though. As a side note, I'm a huge fan of open source.

Thank you for the reply and welcome. I should have tried this earlier, after reading your post I killed the explorer.exe process and tried to use the WinKey shortcuts.. they didn't work anylonger. I might try and hack around a bit in explorer.exe then. *sigh*. I had hoped it was in the registry. EDIT: Well, isn't there a chance that it still could be settings in the registry? but that explorer.exe has to be running to execute them? hmm..

Hello, First off just let me say that this is an amazing forum which has up until now helped me tremenduously with my unattended dvd. Appreciate that a lot. I'm sorry if this has been brought up before, but I have been reading for a while here now and I have not seen it. I would like to know what registry key/value I can edit to change the actions of the WinKey keyboard shortcuts. I.e. make "WinKey + E" start something besides Windows Explorer. I know there are applications out there that will solve this for me, but I like to do things like these manually. I'll still try and find it myself in the registry, but if someone already has and could tell me that would be excellent and you have my thanks.