Tag: Windows

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Review: Multi-protocol Messengers (PC Based)

Hey pals,
In this post I’m posting reviews about different multi-protocol messengers. Multi-protocol messenger is different from normal messenger in a way that you can connect to all your IM buddies using one single messenger. This means you can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AOL Instant Messenger, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.
As usual, there are many in the market and posting here review about three – Pidgin, Mirinda IM, Trillian. I don’t think I need to tell you explicitly that all three are freeware as its part of my policy to write only about free things.

1. Pidgin – Homepage | Download | Screenshot
This is my favorite and I also use this personally. This is open-source and available for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM (Oscar and TOC protocols), ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, and Zephyr networks.
Pidgin supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer, away messages, typing notification, and MSN window closing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many unique features. A few popular features are Buddy Pounces, which give the ability to notify you, send a message, play a sound, or run a program when a specific buddy goes away, signs online, or returns from idle; and plug-ins, consisting of text replacement, a buddy ticker, extended message notification, iconify on away, and more.
2. Mirinda IM – Homepage | Download | Screenshots
Miranda IM is designed to be resource efficient and easy to use. It uses very little memory and requires no installation. Just unzip and run! This also makes it ideal for users that want to run their messenger client from a removable storage such as an USB memory stick. It can even be stored on a floppy disc if not too many plugins are used.
The powerful plugin system makes Miranda IM extremely flexible. Only the most basic features are built in, but there are currently more than 200 plugins available for download that allows users to extend the functionality in Miranda IM. Plugins can be installed to add support for ICQ, AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, Gadu-Gadu, Tlen, Netsend and other protocols.

3. Trillian – Homepage | Download | Screenshots
Trillian is a chat client for Windows only, that allows you to simultaneously connect to AIM, ICQ, IRC, MSN and Yahoo! Messenger.
It supports docking, multiline edit boxes, buddy alerts, multiple connections to the same medium, a powerful skinning language, easy importing of your existing contacts, skinnable emoticons, logging, global away/invisible features, and a unified contact list. It has a direct connection for AIM, support for user profiles, complete type formatting, buddy icons, proxy support, emotisounds, encrypted instant messaging to ICQ and AIM, AIM group chats, and shell extensions for file transfers.

Summary:- Pidgin is best as its available for many platforms.
Mirinda IM is good for people using pen-drive.
Trillian is quite popular.

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Tips

Networking : Windows 95/98/ME n Window 2000/XP LAN IPC$ problem

This is for all the pals who got IPC$ Password Prompt while connecting a windows 95/98/ME machine to another windows 2000/XP/2003 machine in LAN, i.e. networking between NT & non-NT machine.

I tried making LAN between Windows 98 n Windows XP. Connection was successful and I accessed 98-files from XP machine without any problem but when it came to doin other way, got this IPC$ password prompt.

Posting here is the SIMPLEST way to solve this

Just do this on XP-machine

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  1. Go to the control panel > user account and enable (turn-on) the guest account.
  2. Then go again to control panel. Open Administrative Tools, then Local Security Settings.
OR
  1. You can just click Start >> Run >> secpol.msc

In Left pane, go to security settings>> Local Polices >> User Rights Assignments.

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You will get list of policies on right side. Just modify following two policies.

1. Access this computer from network

  • This is first policy. Double-click on it to open its properties.
  • You will get a list of user and groups and two buttons viz add user or group and remove.
  • Click on add user or group button.
  • A window with title Select user or group will appear.
  • In lower-left corner of this window there is advance button. Click on it.
  • Another window with same title Select user or group will appear.
  • Click on find now button on right-side of this window. A list will appear.
  • Just double-click on Guest.

(If Guest does not appear then check Find in Location of this window. It must be server or your computer name itself.)

In short you have to add Guest to the list of user n groups who can access XP-computer from network.
2. Deny access to this computer from networkThis is quite simple. Just open properties and check if Guest name is in the list. If this is present, select it and press remove.

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In short you have to remove Guest from the list of user n groups who denied XP-computer from network.

Thats It!!!

Refresh your 98 machine and see if IPC$ password comes again. At the most you need to restart your both machine. But it will work for sure as I tested this on LAN of 25 PCs successfully 🙂

Post through comments if you still have problem or want me 2 add screenshot to this post!

Categories
Tips

Breaking Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista Administrator Password

Going by my word posting here about a simple tool which will break Windows 2000/XP/2003’s Administrator account’s password.

Before starting, for newbies…

Windows NT 5.0 = Windows 2000 (all edition)
Windows NT 5.1 = Windows XP (all edition)
Windows NT 5.2 = Windows 2003 (all edition)

So throughout this post I will refer our target as Windows NT 5.x (as following content are equally applicable to all Windows NT 5.x OS family).

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So lets start the fun…
You will be surprised to know that you can break into any Windows NT 5.x system without any software tool 80% of the time! For rest you need a software like below!

First lets get to 80% of the vulnerable system….

In Windows NT 5.x, you can create any no. of user with different names, privileges and optionally password.
One such account with highest privilege level, with user name “Administrator” is setup by default.

At the time of installation Windows NT 5.x prompts for password but many systems are setup by vendors and other person. The end-user of this system is different than one who installed it. These lazy people are always in hurry and often left this password as blank.

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The irony comes next. In final step of installation you create an account with mostly your first name. Lock it with password(optionally) and start using the system. Now on welcome screen you see account(s) with different name. But have you never see this default “administrator” account unless you boot in “safe mode”.

Now if you can’t see “administrator” account on screen (as with Windows XP login default screen), just press  “CTRL+ALT+DEL” and it will change login “screen” to login “box” where you can type “administrator” as user name! This is what works 80% of the time.

Now for rest of the 20% system….
There are literally more than 100’s of tool available on Internet and the tool I use is a small Live-CD named ntpasswd created by pnordahl. I got it from my hacker friend Surun.
Burn this ISO on a CD. Its bootable image of approx 2.7 MB.

It has Linux OS with text-mode only. No Linux Knowledge Require here to use this disk. 😉

After booting from CD. A menu driven program will start with options and their description at each level.
READ EVERYTHING BEFORE GOING AHEAD as one mistake may make the target machine unusable.

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One mistake may crash the system to the reinstallation phase! So test it first on systems from college, office, etc! 😉

It worked 100% of the time….
As its 3.03 MB (after extracting) you can burn it on a mini-CD and keep it in your wallet all the time, so can roam around having master key to all systems having Windows NT 5.x family OS!

Link: ntpasswd by pnordahl

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