Accessing C:\

[dane.45]

My school has blocked access to C: via windows explorer, until recently I could access it through DOS, until they blocked that as well. I know that other peograms are able to access it and I would like to know if there is some form of free, portable file manager availibale (i've never been able to spell that! lol)

this is of course all for *cough* informational purposes of course

[SomeoneE1se]

First off if you're young and can't spell Firefox has a spell checker and is better then IE. Next your school admin doesn't want you to browse C: so you shouldn't try to break into the system instead focus on your school work. And last google will give better answers and less flaming the you can get on forums (and it will even spell check for you)

*cough*adding a cough at the end in this case is less likely to get you help in this case*cough*;)

yep like I said firefox has a spell check... yep firefox good spell check... I think it's portable too... good ol' firefox

[deleted]

They must have a valid reason for blocking C:.

[Shaun]

Possibly, although to assume all educational institutions have sensible security policies would be a mistake.

[CompTech]

Why do want to have access to c:?

If they are trying to block it with group policies what could possible be on there that you need to get to?

[Arsenic]

...

*cough*adding a cough at the end in this case is less likely to get you help in this case*cough*;)

...

Damn dude, I've heard people cough a word before, but never an entire sentence, must have been a pretty mighty "cough."

[tanda333]

odd that they would restrict C: , at any school i have ever been to, deepfreeze is the standard, not blocking access to C: , that makes the PC's use incredibly limited.

for those of you who dont know what deepfreeze is, its a program that (probably run from the main file server, like all programs on the network) makes changing anything impossible, as when computer is turned off (or on, i dont know when it does this, or exactly how, i've never cared) it returns C: to its pre-deepfreeze installion state.

this still allows users to save items on the PC, so long as they dont turn it off. which is usefull for transferring files. (ie: one person saves to desktop, logs off, second person logs on, saves file on thier folder)

anyways.... your educational institute is messed up.

cant really help you with your problem.

[911alertme]

for those of you who dont know what deepfreeze is, its a program that (probably run from the main file server, like all programs on the network) makes changing anything impossible, as when computer is turned off (or on, i dont know when it does this, or exactly how, i've never cared) it returns C: to its pre-deepfreeze installion state.

I'm pretty sure that deep freeze partitions the drive and when you reboot (I'm not sure if it's before you turn them off or when you turn them on either) it makes the two partitions identical. Or something like that.

[Sparda]

I would just like to clarify that C:/ cannot be 'restricted', this would make every thing brake. Instead it's merely a limitation with in explorer and built in windows file browsing libraries.

Any file browser that isn't built in to windows will 'get around' this restriction (not that there is much to get around since it's a pure GUI limitation.)

[tanda333]

thx 911alertme, i allways thought that the file server just stored an image of the drive and the computer just checked upon bootup(since shutdown would be a problem, particularily if u just cut the power) to see if the drive matched with image in file server, if not, it writes it to match the image on the server.

what you said sounds alot like what i thought, just simply isolated within the individual PC, rather than the server.

[GonZor]

I'm pretty sure that deep freeze partitions the drive and when you reboot (I'm not sure if it's before you turn them off or when you turn them on either) it makes the two partitions identical.  Or something like that.

At my school we've got a program called HD Guard, if these programs work the same then whatever it looks like your doing to the C: drive is actually happening to a temp file on the server, then when the computer is reset the temp file is deleted and a new one is started. So your never actually putting anything on the HDD.

[googleplex01]

Heres one method I found a while back (not tested on IE7):

*cough*Open up IE>Tools>In. Options*cough*

*cough*General tab- temp int files - settings> view objects*cough*

*cough*once explorer has loaded, click the Folders icon in the toolbar at the top and C: should show up in the sidebar*cough*

*chokes from excessive coughing*

[deleted]

Heres one method I found a while back (not tested on IE7):

*cough*Open up IE>Tools>In. Options*cough*

*cough*General tab- temp int files - settings> view objects*cough*

*cough*once explorer has loaded, click the Folders icon in the toolbar at the top and C: should show up in the sidebar*cough*

*chokes from excessive coughing*

What if they have disabled the Tools Menu Options (which they likley have)

P.S. I think you should see a doctor about that cough.

[googleplex01]

What if they have disabled the Tools Menu Options (which they likley have)

P.S. I think you should see a docotr about that cough.

XD

Usually they don't disable that menu, as you might need to clear your temp int files/cache for troubleshooting...but if it is blocked...

(Assuming you can run programs:)

Well in that case, to just browse C, i would open up Portable Firefox and just type C: into the adress bar

For command-line-style- access I would use a program like WinOne which, i believe, Emulates cmd and can run off a usb stick

another method, use process explorer's run option from the menu (sysinternals software)

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysintern...ssExplorer.mspx

use it to either kill the restriction software or just the Run/RunAs to browse to C:

or if you have access to a compiler, find some source code for a file browser and compile it (most schools have VB or so and theres plenty of tutorials at freevbcode.com and so on)

It all depends on the level of access you want/need

[deleted]

XD

Usually they don't disable that menu, as you might need to clear your temp int files/cache for troubleshooting...but if it is blocked...

(Assuming you can run programs:)

Well in that case, to just browse C, i would open up Portable Firefox and just type C: into the adress bar

For command-line-style- access I would use a program like WinOne which, i believe, Emulates cmd and can run off a usb stick

another method, use process explorer's run option from the menu (sysinternals software)

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysintern...ssExplorer.mspx

use it to either kill the restriction software or just the Run/RunAs to browse to C:

or if you have access to a compiler, find some source code for a file browser and compile it (most schools have VB or so and theres plenty of tutorials at freevbcode.com and so on)

It all depends on the level of access you want/need

At my school, everything is blocked, Tools Menu, C:, everything. If you run a program thats md5hash isn't in the database, it will close itself. The only drive i have is a Special Drive called "mon05CunninghamJ on DocuServ(S:)" which is my school documents.

[GonZor]

At my school, everything is blocked, Tools Menu, C:, everything.  If you run a program thats md5hash isn't in the database, it will close itself. 

My school recently tried this approach but due to a programming class they had to change the policy  so that only programs in certain folders will run.  If your school has a programming class then they must be able to run the programs made somehow and i highly doubt there gonna add the md5hash for every program made.  At my school basically anything in "C:Program Files" will run, unless they've added the md5hash to the disallowed list.  Dunno if that is any help but its something to think about

By the way are they doing this through policy or a third party program?? If its a third party program it should be easy to bypass, if its through user level policy crack the local admin pass, if its through machine level policy your basically screwed unless u want to boot to another media

[cooper]

Probably won't work, but try running "subst i: C:" and then see if you can access I (Or whatever driveletter you chose).

[moonlit]

Alternatively, try Wordpad or any MS Office app's Browse dialogs...

[dane.45]

OK, thanks for all your help (and not so much for your flames) :-)

[thisiam]

Maybe i have drank to much and missed this but wouldn't repair console from windows CD not give you access to C:

[Shaun]

If the admins have any sense booting from CD will be disabled and the BIOS will be password protected, which would mean either flashing or hoping the BIOS has a backdoor password (do those still exist?).

[Sparda]

If the admins have any sense booting from CD will be disabled and the BIOS will be password protected, which would mean either flashing or hoping the BIOS has a backdoor password (do those still exist?).

Often, even if non-HD booting is disabled, you can still access the multi-boot menu, even if there is a BIOS setup password.

[foobro42]

you try ophcrack live cd? is the booting from a CD disabled or not?

[Leapo]

The admins at my high school were the same way; they locked those computers down so tight that usability started becoming an issue.  The only drive they didn't block access to was a network hard disk and the CD-ROM drive, they removed the file, edit, and tools menus from Explorer and IE, disabled downloading in IE, severely limited what programs were available from the start menu, and even went as far as to disable right clicking. . . oh, and for some reason they were using Deep Freeze ON TOP of all this garbage. . .

At first glance, yeah, it looked like air-tight security. . . but upon further inspection there were a few rather large holes that could be used to open the systems up completely.  Depending on how much you wanted to do, there were lots of things that could be done to get around the "security measures" that they have instated.  I found out how to get around a few small annoyances (Firefox on a flash drive, for instance, did not share the restrictions on downloading that IE did), but I wanted total control on some of these machines, which meant finding a way around deep freeze and the restrictions imposed by group policies.

There was one hole in particular that made the following possible with relative ease: Although the BIOS was locked out, the Bootable Media Selection screen wasn’t, allowing me to boot from a CD or Flash drive.

Enter a handy tool called GParted (a Linux based hard disk management tool that runs off of a live CD), I simply booted into GParted, shrunk the existing (frozen) windows partition, and made a new partition in the free space created by shrinking the frozen partition.  Upon booting into windows I had 30GB of unrestricted local storage, which was nice, although I was still restricted to what I could install on it because of the restrictions of the machine (tried to install iTunes on the new 30GB partition and got slapped with a box asking for administrator access).

At this point I had a radical idea: "hmm, I can create a completely unrestricted 30GB partition on any of the computers here within a matter of minutes, why don't I just install my own OS and get around all this crap?"

Well, there were a few problems with this.  First, the current boot loader was on the frozen partition.  Second, I didn't want an OS selection screen to pop up, because the local administrators would know that the machine had been tampered with.  Keeping these things in mind, I dug out a spare Windows 2000 disk and installed it on the new 30GB partition (At this time, all the computers in the lab were running Windows 2000).  Now obviously, I couldn't boot to my new install of Windows because the boot loader didn't know it was there (it was reverted by deep freeze), but I was going to use this to my advantage.

At this point I had my Windows install on one partition, and the stock Windows install in deep freeze on the other with a boot loader that didn't know my Windows install existed (it didn’t create a duel-boot configuration because the boot loader on C: had been reverted, so the other windows install was just sort of sitting there).  To boot my install of Windows, I set up a bootable CD with a boot loader that pointed to my Windows install on the 30GB partition; when I wanted to boot into my unrestricted install of Windows, all I had to do was pop in my "special" CD, hit F12 to get the bootable media selection screen, select the CD-ROM drive, and let the machine start up! The best part was, unless you popped the in CD there was no way to boot into my Windows install, and you couldn’t tell that the system had been altered in any way!

I think I set up 4 of the PC's in our computer lab like that.  It was a lot of hassle to get set up (although a ghost image of each partition would speed up the process greatly), and after that point, I almost never ran into a situation where all 4 of my altered PC's had been taken at once, as the lab was never all that busy. . .

Anyhow, just food for thought.  The computer lab at my high school was completely un-supervised because the computers were considered to be so locked down that they figured nothing could really happen (especially with the over-active web filter, that took a little more work to deal with).  At most other schools you probably won’t have 3+ hours all to yourself in a computer lab without someone tapping you on the shoulder and asking you what you’re doing. 

[Paralys]

I'm not quite sure how they've blocked it. If its like my school they simply removed everything imaginable and left IE, MS office, and a recycle bin. But what I did to get around that part is put a USB thumb drive in, tell it to open the folder to view files when windows asks you what you wanna do and just go up a directory so that youre in my computer.

Otherwise, just try what googleplex mentioned. Open portable firefox and just put C: in the adress bar.