So I have an old Fujitsu lifebook B2130 running Windows 2000. It has an external floppy drive and an external CD drive BUT the floppy drive is broken and I can't get it to boot from the CD drive (tried screwing with the BIOS settings but nothing seemed to work). I also tried booting from a USB flash drive but I couldn't get that working either. The CD and USB work fine once windows has booted up but, as I said, I can't boot from them.

To make matters worse I don't have admin access to the computer so I can't repartition the harddrive (its my dads old computer and I have his account info for it but since he got it from work, he doesn't know the admin info and he left that company many years ago so we can't ask them).

I would like to install linux on it but I have no idea how I can do that. The only thing I can think of is to somehow get the SAM file then get the admin password from that but I can't get the SAM file while windows is running. In other words, I need to somehow boot into a different OS without using a floppy, CD or USB. I was thinking I might be able to do it online somehow but I have no idea how.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

hmmm.. check this out:
http://marc.herbert.free.fr/linux/win2linstall.html

you can take the hard drive out and put it in another computer with a floppy and/or CD drive, then change passwords and/or install Linux as you wish

well, my idea involves recovering the root password and going to ur dads old work.... but, you can always get a floppy drive cleaner to clean the floppy and boot off that. 9/10 times they quit cause of dust.

This is the way to go if you have access to another computer. I use an IDE(ATA) to USB cable I got off ebay for $12 so I don't even have to open the case on the 'other computer.'

ugh, have fun with that. lol

I had this same problem with a thinkpad x22 a week or so ago. For those of you who don't know, the X-series comes with no optical or floppy drives. (IBM did this to save weight). I ended up going to CompUSA and getting a $7 2.5 to 3.5 inch IDE adapter so I could plug the laptop HD into my desktop.

Then I proceeded to try to install xubuntu on it through the desktop’s CD drive. Problem is, the installation CD installs hardware support based on the system it’s booted off of, i.e. the desktop. I ended up giving up on this and bootstrapping Gentoo and doing all the hardware configuration manually. Maybe not the best way, but it worked.

If you don’t mind the boot time, you could also boot knoppix off the CD and install it onto the hard drive. It will boot with the appropriate hardware detection, but it takes a while.

a few questions-

do you want to keep win on your computer?
if not then you dont need the password.

can you access the drive from another computer?
If you can then you should be able to install knoppix on it, using one of the install options. (usb install if you have it connected with usb, or just a normal hd install otherwise) knoppix searches for hw on every boot


it's really easy to find the password on a windows box.

Download LCP

Then run it under the account you do have access to. It might take a long time, but unless it is a very complex password it will get there eventually.

If you cannot install the software, use another computer to install it on a usb disk, then run it right off the usb disk.

does this program not require pwdump2v3 anymore?

btw you can't do any of these things if you're not admin. so for aegillis i guess if you really can't boot from your other devices then you have no choice but to ha_k your own system. go find some privilege excalation exploits for windoze 2k. sorry but i can't tell you how. that's all. i can say no more.

regards