Windows XP Tablet Edition Question

[thewhitehart]

My friend's wife found an HP Compaq tc4200 tablet pc. It was left at her job at CVS, and nobody claimed it after three months.

I know this is strictly a windows question, but I can't be bothered to join another forum. Is there anyway to hack through the Windows password splash screen? Obviously, the laptop doesn't have its restore CD with it. My friend would like to find out who the laptop belongs to, but it's asking for a password at startup. If he can get in, maybe we can find an address or some other info to match the laptop to an owner.

If we can't do that, and he ends up keeping it, where can we buy an off the shelf edition of Tablet XP? It seems that Microsoft only sells it OEM along with a tablet laptop. Can a regular edition of XP Home be installed on it? If he ends up keeping it, I'd like to see him be able to take advantage of the tablet abilities.

 

[robbh66]

Yes, especially if you're willing to crack the case open and remove the HDD. Plug it into a windows machine and do a little research on things like "LC5" and the such. However, if you dont want to crack the case and want to learn a little about knoppix you could look into "whax," "whoppix" and "audtior." Something in there could probably help you achieve your goal.

 

[balamw]

My friend's wife found an HP Compaq tc4200 tablet pc. It was left at her job at CVS, and nobody claimed it after three months.

I know this is strictly a windows question, but I can't be bothered to join another forum. Is there anyway to hack through the Windows password splash screen? Obviously, the laptop doesn't have its restore CD with it. My friend would like to find out who the laptop belongs to, but it's asking for a password at startup. If he can get in, maybe we can find an address or some other info to match the laptop to an owner.

If we can't do that, and he ends up keeping it, where can we buy an off the shelf edition of Tablet XP? It seems that Microsoft only sells it OEM along with a tablet laptop. Can a regular edition of XP Home be installed on it? If he ends up keeping it, I'd like to see him be able to take advantage of the tablet abilities.

I'd suggest pulling the HDD drive out if you want to do a little spelunking. It's by far the easiest way to see what's on it and who it might belong to. Use a USB to IDE cable and hook it up to any machine you'd like. You might even find the Windows install files on the HDD, either in a directory or a partition of their own.

If not, you can buy XP Tablet OEM from a number of places (check Froogle http://froogle.google.com) ~$150.

EDIT: Great minds think alike.

B

 

[Osarkon]

You can always try pressing ctrl alt + del twice at the splash screen, brings up the old win 2k logon, then type in Administrator as a username, blank password. Although that doesn't seem to work with OEM installations of XP, they restrict it.