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Easy Win 95 Breakin #2:

Step one: Boot up.

Step two: when you get to the "system configuration" screen, press the F8 key. This gives you the Microsoft Windows 95 Startup Menu.

Step three: choose number 7. This puts you into MS-DOS. At the prompt, give the command "rename c:\windows\*pwl c:\windows\*zzz."

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Newbie note: MS-DOS stands for Microsoft Disk Operating System, an ancient operating system dating from 1981. It is a command-line operating system, meaning that you get a prompt (probably c:\>) after which you type in a command and press the enter key. MS-DOS is often abbreviated DOS. It is a little bit similar to Unix, and in fact in its first version it incorporated thousands of lines of Unix code.
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Step four: reboot. You will get the password dialog screen. You can then fake out your friends by entering any darn password you want. It will ask you to reenter it to confirm your new password.

Step five. Your friends are smart enough to suspect you just created a new password, huh? Well, you can put the old one your friends picked. Use any tool you like -- File Manager, Explorer or MS-DOS -- to rename *.zzz back to *.pwl.

Step six: reboot and let your friends use their secret password. It still works!

Think about it. If someone where to be sneaking around another person's Win 95 computer, using this technique, the only way the victim could determine there had been an intruder is to check for recently changed files and discover that the *.pwl files have been messed with

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Evil genius tip: Unless the msdos.sys file bootkeys=0 option is active, the keys that can do something during the bootup process are F4, F5, F6, F8, Shift+F5, Control+F5 and Shift+F8. Play with them!
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Now let's suppose you discovered that your Win 95 box doesn't respond to the bootup keys. You can still break in.

If your computer does allow use of the boot keys, you may wish to disable them in order to be a teeny bit more secure. Besides, it's phun to show your friends how to use the boot keys and then disable these so when they try to mess with your computer they will discover you've locked them out.

The easiest -- but slowest -- way to disable the boot keys is to pick the proper settings while installing Win 95. But we're hackers, so we can pull a fast trick to do the same thing. We are going to learn how to edit the Win 95 msdos.sys file, which controls the boot sequence.