screensaver password reverting to old password intermittently

[Guest Nick]

Any idea why my Win98SE screen saver password every few weeks reverts

to the old password? The new one fails after it worked fine for days.

The screen saver is native to the OS. The network password remains

what it should be. I change the screensaver password and everything's

okay until some weeks later. No one else uses the machine and it's not

on the Internet. I use profiles as if for multiple users (I forgot

what apparently worked better that way), but mine's been the only

login all this time. I'm not going to a previous state with registry

and startup files, and if Win is doing that without telling me it's

not telling me, but whether the reversion only happened after a cold

reset I don't recall. Nothing useful in <SYSTEM.INI>.

 

Wasn't a problem before the last time I changed the screensaver

password, which is also after the *.pwl file was last modified (I

changed my login password then, too). I don't know where the

screensaver password is stored, but "Underwater (high color).theme",

Underwater.scr, & Underwater.dll were last modified in 1999, as are

all of "C:\Program Files\Plus!\Themes\Underwater*.*", which should

eliminate them; and it's not in the registry (unless encrypted).

According to Find for the whole computer, the only files modified the

same recent day I last changed my password were C:\WINDOWS\TEMP

\~DFE6E9.TMP, ...\~DF5F4C.TMP, ...\~DF52A4.TMP, & ...\~DF60EA.TMP

(each 3,584 bytes); they respectively contain the following plain

English per Notepad: ~DFE6E9.TMP has "R o o t E n t r y",

~DF5F4C.TMP has "R o o t E n t r y", DF52A4.TMP has "R o o t E n t

r y", & ~DF60EA.TMP has "R o o t E n t r y", "SCANDSKW", "SETUP",

"W8Ç" (unknown if relevant to platform being Win98SE), "SETUP",

"SETUP", "SETUP", "SETUP1", "SOFFICE", "SOUNDMAN" (I don't know what I

have in the bought-as-barebones machine that's about Soundman or in

the homebuilt that used to house the HDD w/ same OS), "SPOOL32",

"ST6UNST", "START", "STPSUP", "SUCATREG", "SYSINFO ?", "SYSMON", &

"SYSTRAY".

 

As an experiment, I changed the password recently to the normal

password twice via each of two methods (via Display and Passwords

applets), i.e., 4 times total. Every time it said it had successfully

been changed, which means it can't tell the difference if there's no

real change. I tested the password correction; it works now.

 

One hunch: The old password was 8 characters long, all different. The

new password is the same minus the rightmost character. (I know that

kind of change is weak security, but that's a different subject. I

should tighten that after I solve this problem.) Could the similarity

mean Win is sometimes remembering the old one?

 

I'm glad I know this old password, but I shouldn't have to. I usually

discard them. Ideas?

 

Thanks.

 

--

Nick

[Guest philo]

Re: screensaver password reverting to old password intermittently

 

 

"Nick" <Nick_Levinson@yahoo.com> wrote in message

news:00fd14c5-b988-4183-bf1c-6fee74ceb207@59g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...

Any idea why my Win98SE screen saver password every few weeks reverts

to the old password? The new one fails after it worked fine for days.

The screen saver is native to the OS. The network password remains

what it should be. I change the screensaver password and everything's

okay until some weeks later. No one else uses the machine and it's not

on the Internet. I use profiles as if for multiple users (I forgot

what apparently worked better that way), but mine's been the only

login all this time. I'm not going to a previous state with registry

and startup files, and if Win is doing that without telling me it's

not telling me, but whether the reversion only happened after a cold

reset I don't recall. Nothing useful in <SYSTEM.INI>.

 

Wasn't a problem before the last time I changed the screensaver

password, which is also after the *.pwl file was last modified (I

changed my login password then, too). I don't know where the

screensaver password is stored, but "Underwater (high color).theme",

Underwater.scr, & Underwater.dll were last modified in 1999, as are

all of "C:\Program Files\Plus!\Themes\Underwater*.*", which should

eliminate them; and it's not in the registry (unless encrypted).

According to Find for the whole computer, the only files modified the

same recent day I last changed my password were C:\WINDOWS\TEMP

\~DFE6E9.TMP, ...\~DF5F4C.TMP, ...\~DF52A4.TMP, & ...\~DF60EA.TMP

(each 3,584 bytes); they respectively contain the following plain

English per Notepad: ~DFE6E9.TMP has "R o o t E n t r y",

~DF5F4C.TMP has "R o o t E n t r y", DF52A4.TMP has "R o o t E n t

r y", & ~DF60EA.TMP has "R o o t E n t r y", "SCANDSKW", "SETUP",

"W8Ç" (unknown if relevant to platform being Win98SE), "SETUP",

"SETUP", "SETUP", "SETUP1", "SOFFICE", "SOUNDMAN" (I don't know what I

have in the bought-as-barebones machine that's about Soundman or in

the homebuilt that used to house the HDD w/ same OS), "SPOOL32",

"ST6UNST", "START", "STPSUP", "SUCATREG", "SYSINFO ?", "SYSMON", &

"SYSTRAY".

 

As an experiment, I changed the password recently to the normal

password twice via each of two methods (via Display and Passwords

applets), i.e., 4 times total. Every time it said it had successfully

been changed, which means it can't tell the difference if there's no

real change. I tested the password correction; it works now.

 

One hunch: The old password was 8 characters long, all different. The

new password is the same minus the rightmost character. (I know that

kind of change is weak security, but that's a different subject. I

should tighten that after I solve this problem.) Could the similarity

mean Win is sometimes remembering the old one?

 

I'm glad I know this old password, but I shouldn't have to. I usually

discard them. Ideas?

 

Thanks.

 

 

 

Are there any other problems with the machine? It looks like a former

registry might have been loaded.

That would be easy enough to test by manually backing up the registry, then

restoring it if the password

settings were again lost.

 

If it does turn out to be a registry 'roll back'

then there is of course the possiblity the corruption is due to a hardware

problem

 

as a precaution I'd run a RAM test

 

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

 

and also the harddrive manufacturer's diagnostic.

 

Even if nothing turns up...It's not an entirely bad idea to run such

utilites on occasion.

 

Finally: I am not sure why you are using a screen saver password. Though

that's up to you of course...

someone could easily access your system by simply rebooting the computer...

(unless you also have a bios password)

[Guest Franc Zabkar]

Re: screensaver password reverting to old password intermittently

 

On Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:31:32 -0700 (PDT), Nick

<Nick_Levinson@yahoo.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:

>As an experiment, I changed the password recently to the normal

>password twice via each of two methods (via Display and Passwords

>applets), i.e., 4 times total. Every time it said it had successfully

>been changed, which means it can't tell the difference if there's no

>real change. I tested the password correction; it works now.

>

>One hunch: The old password was 8 characters long, all different. The

>new password is the same minus the rightmost character. (I know that

>kind of change is weak security, but that's a different subject. I

>should tighten that after I solve this problem.) Could the similarity

>mean Win is sometimes remembering the old one?

>

>I'm glad I know this old password, but I shouldn't have to. I usually

>discard them. Ideas?

>

>Thanks.

 

I enabled the Flying Windows screensaver and gave it a password of

"ABC". I then changed the password to "ABD".

 

I compared the registry before and after making the changes. Only one

key was affected:

 

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

 

Before (password = ABC):

 

"ScreenSave_Data"=hex:30,39,41,43,33,35,00

 

After (password = ABD):

 

"ScreenSave_Data"=hex:30,39,41,43,33,32,00

 

- Franc Zabkar

--

Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

[Guest Nick]

Re: screensaver password reverting to old password intermittently

 

Solved the problem. My Win is in multi-user mode, so the registry has

at least 2 sets of screensaver settings, one for .DEFAULT and one for

each user. Since changing screen saver settings via the Control Panel

applet essentially requires opening the Start menu, and that can't be

opened until someone's logged in, changes via the applet will affect

only the currently logged-in user, not the default. Since I had a

screensaver password before changing Win from single-user to multi-

user mode, on the rare occasions that the screen saver kicked in

before the Win login it used the default settings in the registry that

the applet couldn't edit, and thus reverted to my old password.

Solution: In Registry Editor, I copied the password from the user

value to the .DEFAULT value.

 

More details: http://www.forum.scottmueller.com/viewtopic.php?p=1830#1830

 

Responding to philo -- good ideas:

--- On hardware issues: I agree on running hardware utilities now and

then and have a bunch, even if I keep not doing it because it's a pain

to have to. However, a general principle based on statistics is that

far more errors are software-based than hardware-based and far more

errors are user-generated than not. Since the machine's been working

pretty well and there wasn't other evidence of hardware failure, I

looked at software.

--- I do have a BIOS password and screensavers lock out well-meaning

folks, which makes them helpful if not used as the only security

method.

 

Franc:

--- You probably shouldn't edit that key if you want your edit to

survive a reboot (except you should if it's only for the current

session and not surviving is what you want). Even if your Win98SE is

in single-user mode, for a permanent edit you probably should edit in

HKEY_USERS and then reboot, although I haven't checked that mode.

--- The password should have turned up in your registry in 2 places,

not 1.

--- I mistakenly thought Google would notify me of a reply, so I

missed it earlier, but we wound up looking at the same general place.

 

Thanx.

 

--

Nick

[Guest Franc Zabkar]

Re: screensaver password reverting to old password intermittently

 

On Sat, 5 Apr 2008 11:55:15 -0700 (PDT), Nick

<Nick_Levinson@yahoo.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:

>Solved the problem. My Win is in multi-user mode, so the registry has

>at least 2 sets of screensaver settings, one for .DEFAULT and one for

>each user.

 

<snip>

>Franc:

>--- You probably shouldn't edit that key if you want your edit to

>survive a reboot (except you should if it's only for the current

>session and not surviving is what you want). Even if your Win98SE is

>in single-user mode, for a permanent edit you probably should edit in

>HKEY_USERS and then reboot, although I haven't checked that mode.

>--- The password should have turned up in your registry in 2 places,

>not 1.

 

Sorry, you're right. The reason I detected the change in only one key

is because I used Regedit to make backups of the registry before and

after each change, and then compared the two .reg files as follows:

 

fc before.reg after.reg > diffs.txt

 

Unfortunately regedit only backed up the registry from

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and onwards. It didn't save HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT or

HKEY_CURRENT_USER.

 

So the diffs.txt file showed only one difference in Screensave_Data

(see below), and I assumed this was at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control

Panel\Desktop.

 

Comparing files before.reg and after.reg

 

****** before.reg

 

"PaintDesktopVersion"="0"

"ScreenSave_Data"=hex:37,39,44,43,34,35,00

"ScreenSaveLowPowerTimeout"="900"

 

****** after.reg

 

"PaintDesktopVersion"="0"

"ScreenSave_Data"=hex:37,43,44,42,34,30,00

"ScreenSaveLowPowerTimeout"="900"

 

******

 

- Franc Zabkar

--

Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.