How to Hack

How to hack

So recently, I was looking for a desktop computer cause my laptop kicked the bucket. A friend of mine offered an older desktop that came with the very common yet not at all helpful phrase 'I don't know what's wrong with it, it got a virus or something.'

Did you know it's hard to not roll your eyes?

But it was free and not completely ancient, so I said I'd take it.

Once I fire it up I'm met with a bunch of white block text on a black background. It's telling me that the floppy disk drive is not there and if I'd like to continue. I hit f2 and carry on. At this point, it loads the operating system, stays on the start-up screen for a few moments, and then blue-screens.

Now it's time to hack.

With hacking, in the sense that I am using it, there are two directions to start from. First, if you have just encountered a small problem, start from the problem and work backward, checking on each supporting piece to make sure it's up to snuff. This is helpful if you are trying to change something and that new thing is the only malfunctioning element. Or, you can start from the beginning of start-up and check everything going forward. This is my plan for the desktop.

So this is a good time to lay out the basic structure of hacking.

Step one: identify where the problem likely is. For us, this is pretty easy, since we failed on loading the operating system

Step two: identify what you can do upstream of the problem. Most people would get stuck here, especially with the blue screen of death popping up first before they get into the part of the computer they are familiar with. But normally, there is at least one part that works and you can build from there.

Step three: follow a solution all the way down the rabbit hole and back up again. Similar to how we need to solve the numbers inside the () before solving the whole equation in math, you've got to solve each roadblock completely before moving on to the broader context of the problem.

Step four: become a Google wizard. I don't know everything. You don't either. But Google has our backs.

Step 5: repeat. It might take a while to get through it all, but each step brings you that much closer.

I could let you learn to fly with just those 5 steps, but if you are still curious as to how that plays out when it encounters a real-life problem, or if you just can't leave a good story hanging, stick around and I'll walk you through the process of fixing the desktop.

I restart the computer and hit F5, which for this computer brings me into the BIOS (Basic Input Output System if you're curious). This runs on the motherboard and is independent of the normal operating system. This is our 'upstream' from not being able to boot properly.

The goal is to see if there is something going on in the order that the computer loads. I scroll down with the arrow keys and find the setup. But now there's something in my way. A BIOS password. This needs to be entered before I can change anything. A quick call to my friend tells me that he has no idea and the default password 'admin' and a few variants don't work either. So this is where Step 4 comes in. I jump on Google with my phone and enter in the terms 'BIOS password reset'. The first search result or 2 aren't any help, but the third was. It talks about a jumper on the motherboard that can be pulled to reset the password in BIOS.

I shut down the power, crack open the case, pull out the hard drive so I can see the whole motherboard. There, on the bottom right-hand corner, is a little blue pull-tab marked PWRD. I pulled it off, put the drive back in, and started her up again. I hit F5 and low and behold, it worked! Then I reorder the boot sequence so that the computer loads from the disk drive, then the hard drive. (Because I've been here before, I knew that if the hard drive didn't work, I'd have to use the disk drive anyways. It just saved me a step).

I saved the changes and backed out to the start-up. After a few seconds of trying the disk drive, it started loading from the hard drive and crashed again. That narrowed it down again, the hard drive was corrupted. I had some random boot CDs for windows 7 on hand so I popped those in there and started again.

Note, this is where I would have had to go back to BIOS if I hadn't ordered them that way the first time.

From here it was as if I had just turned on the computer right out of the box. I set up the account for myself and set about customizing it to my hearts content.

So there you have it, how to hack into a computer to fix it in 5 easy steps. But remember, like Uncle Ben said, "With great power, comes great responsibility." Don't hack into places you aren't supposed to be, got it?

Good.