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Increasing Vista Security

Asterion

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My account was hacked by my brother, and then the password was reset, and a little message saying: "you ass!!!" was tacked on just to rub it in. WTF can I do to prevent this from happening again? My previous password was already tough, I've changed it to an even tougher password, and I've put a password reset on my phones micro SD card, and I can't think of much more I can do. I have locked the guest account, but since my file has administrator acess, if I ever leave my computer open, he'll easily get it back on... wait... I should just turn off my admin privleges... Any ideas???
 

Donna Cecilia

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Coercing your brother, formatting your PC, or checking for keyloggers that he might have installed on your pc.

For the future, lock your PC before leaving.

You will always have an Administrator account with privileges.
 

Black Phoenix

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Change to windows 7. Vista is worthless.

Check for keylogger. or install a keylogger yourself.- Never, ever leave the PC open if you leave the seat, always use an abstract password.

Also, you can lock the administrator account with a Password directly from the BIOS.
See if that helps..if not, tell us, and Ill ask my IT Security guy what else you can do.
 

ExAstrisSpes

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At first I thought this was a joke.

You will always have at least one admin account.

1) Switch to Win7.

2) If you can't do 1, then I say reformat and install a clean copy of Vista, then do the security upgrades, etc. Hopefully you have a way to back up your files.

3) Set up: 1 admin-only account, which has a very strong password and is for admin stuff only. Your account w/out admin privileges (use a different password). Guest account for people you want to temporarily let use your computer.

4) Maybe this is a long shot, but perhaps learn to get along better with your brother?
 

highlander

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Get an IPad and use that instead. That will throw him off.
 

Xander

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You're logged in as the Admin and leave it as such and you wonder how he changes your password?

Simple, move mouse to appropriate icons, click, then type in new password.

Unless you lock it or log out he's logged in as the administrator as soon as he gets there!!!

Fairly sure the shortcut is still windows key + L. Give it a go.
 

freeeekyyy

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My account was hacked by my brother, and then the password was reset, and a little message saying: "you ass!!!" was tacked on just to rub it in. WTF can I do to prevent this from happening again? My previous password was already tough, I've changed it to an even tougher password, and I've put a password reset on my phones micro SD card, and I can't think of much more I can do. I have locked the guest account, but since my file has administrator acess, if I ever leave my computer open, he'll easily get it back on... wait... I should just turn off my admin privleges... Any ideas???

Open up a run box, type in "Syskey" no quotes. Syskey is a built in utility that will encrypt the portion of the registry which contains user passwords. The key is then stored on a USB thumb drive which is inserted whenever you start the computer. After encrypting all passwords, it is literally impossible to reset them. He can't get around it if you do that.


And for the windows 7 recommendations, that's really a waste of money if your computer already has windows vista and doesn't have any performance issues. Vista can be made plenty secure. Just set up an admin password, force others and yourself to use standard accounts for regular use, and encrypt your SAM with syskey.
 

ExAstrisSpes

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And for the windows 7 recommendations, that's really a waste of money if your computer already has windows vista and doesn't have any performance issues.

You don't understand. We're trying to get him to upgrade because that's what all the cool kids are doing. And it would be pretty funny for him to come back and say, "Hey I upgraded to Win7 and guess what my brother did. . . . ."
 

freeeekyyy

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You don't understand. We're trying to get him to upgrade because that's what all the cool kids are doing. And it would be pretty funny for him to come back and say, "Hey I upgraded to Win7 and guess what my brother did. . . . ."

Hehe. Gotcha.
 
A

A window to the soul

Guest
My account was hacked by my brother, and then the password was reset, and a little message saying: "you ass!!!" was tacked on just to rub it in. WTF can I do to prevent this from happening again? My previous password was already tough, I've changed it to an even tougher password, and I've put a password reset on my phones micro SD card, and I can't think of much more I can do. I have locked the guest account, but since my file has administrator acess, if I ever leave my computer open, he'll easily get it back on... wait... I should just turn off my admin privleges... Any ideas???

lol, omgosh, forgive me, your brother is awesome! Any chance he's Admin on the box too? Type in 'Administrator' and leave the password blank, hit enter....
 

Blank

.
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Why don't you go to a random password generator, memorize what it displays, and use that?

Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.
 
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