The most recent time I had to get into someone else’s laptop, it was an adorable little relic I bought at a flea market.
Windows 95 does its charming start-up routine and I’m presented with a login prompt. I start working through how I’m going to boot something else to modify the registry or whatever, when the machine predates USB drives and my desktop has no floppy drive. Then I bet I can invoke “safe mode” and use the underlying DOS install to edit anything I want. Then I remember there’s some labyrinthine info > accessibility > help > control-panel > run-dialog chain that lets you start explorer.exe directly. Finally, within maybe thirty seconds of being surprised this thing even has accounts to log into, I slap my forehead and just hit Escape.
The most recent time I had to get into someone else’s laptop, it was an adorable little relic I bought at a flea market.
Windows 95 does its charming start-up routine and I’m presented with a login prompt. I start working through how I’m going to boot something else to modify the registry or whatever, when the machine predates USB drives and my desktop has no floppy drive. Then I bet I can invoke “safe mode” and use the underlying DOS install to edit anything I want. Then I remember there’s some labyrinthine info > accessibility > help > control-panel > run-dialog chain that lets you start explorer.exe directly. Finally, within maybe thirty seconds of being surprised this thing even has accounts to log into, I slap my forehead and just hit Escape.
I’m in.