Batboard

I just bought a Motorola MW520 and the OS system is locked on it.

How do I unlock it to be able to load other programs? Or do I need to wipe it and start fresh...

ANy help would be great.

Define "locked"

The guy said you cant load anything onto the system, It boots up and since there is police software on it without the passowrd you cant make any changes.

thanks

reinstall 98 and the drivers if you dont need the installed software

You can re-install the win 98 by using the CAB files that are on the HD, you don't even need a fresh copy.

SG

Hi, I just purchased an MW-520 and the seller has no idea what the password for the unit is. The unit is running windows 2000 and comes up with a username of patrol when it starts. Does any one have any idea as to what might be used for a password on these units for this user name or maybe anothe valid username and password combo.

Thanks

William
VE3WDW

There's a program out there that will change the administrator password if you'd like. I tried it once with Windows 2000 and it worked. This was a few years ago, and I only used it once.

You can also just run a live CD of Knoppix and have complete access to the NTFS hard drive, if you wanted to see what was on it. "Secured" folders and all.

There is no default password. The password was set by the agency who used to own the machine (who I'm quite suprised didn't sanitise it before getting rid of it.)

Seeing as the OS is in an unknown state anyway, just wipe it and restart. Before you do, back up the C:\WINDOWS\Inf folder. Reinstall Windows 2000, and copy that folder back to some other location on the computer (but don't overwrite the new INF folder.) If Windows finds devices it has no driver for, point it at the old Inf folder, and it'll reload the specialised drivers that were installed in the original OS image.

Windows 98 has no real security for it. Sounds like it is set to run in KIOSK mode. This is done by changing registry settings.
If you boot to a boot floppy you could acess the HDD and change the information on in and even set it to boot to different options.
You could boot it into winpe or some other os and use various tools to open and edit the registry to allow it back to normal use.
this would negate the need to reformat or reinstall which could lead to losss of data or funcationality.

Loss of data?

There's a number of off the shelf products that will make you an ISO to unlock the administrator account on 2000/xp/2003 sever systems. Windows 98? Just hit escape when you get the login.

Thoughts I have: Figure out what program is running, and rename it. See what happens when the system can't execute the program. You could also rename one of the other windows applications (explorer comes to mind) to the program's name, and see if that executes instead of the program. Once that happens, you can get to run and other useful commands to browse the computer.

I wouldn't rename explorer -- I'd simply copy it to the location, and rename.

You could do this in DOS mode by hitting F8 just after the computer post's.

-Alex