Thinkpads Forum

1) Welcome screen login

2) Login screen / ctrl alt del method

I dump (fast, completely, and unceremiously) all the Fisher Price stuff Microsoft builds into their system. You know that *they* know it is a toy when *they* dump it as soon as a machine goes on a domain. I just use Ctrl Alt Del and get the proper screen. It forces a password (which is good) and is dead simple to use. ... JDH

Fingerprint!

No good reason - it's just fun to do.

Make sure you write down your password(s) somewhere handy, you never know when fingerprint reader is going to say no to you.

I'm with JD in dumping the Fisher-Price, My First OS junk as soon as I get started.

ryengineer wrote:Make sure you write down your password(s) somewhere handy, you never know when fingerprint reader is going to say no to you.

Or when you need to sand off your fingerprints because... (oh never mind)


I know my password. The fingerprint reader is still just more fun.

I use fingerprint because I have bios supervisor, power on, hdd1 and hdd2 passwords, then comes the domain. I like to be able to turn on my TP in the morning, swipe my finger and while it boots through into my windows account, without having to enter another pw, I organise my coffee and breakfast; then it's just a case of sit down and the work day has begun.

ryengineer wrote:Make sure you write down your password(s) somewhere handy, you never know when fingerprint reader is going to say no to you.

That's true, especially when you stick your fingers in a lathe or something. I find it good that the admin user/s can override the fingerprint and use passwords should your fingerprints not be "presently available".

Using PGP whole disk encryption, so have to type the password into the bootloader. After that, no Windows logon screen to worry about...

Am I the only one using CSS for login?

Ed Gibbs

I own PGP desktop and am considering using WDE with a new X61 running Win XP Pro. Can you tell me exactly how you set yours up?

I'm trying to figure out the relationships among my various encryption options.

Right now I have the Seagate 160GB hardware-encrypted drive, which, I believe, uses the BIOS hard drive access passphrase as the key for its hardware-based 128-bit AES encryption. If I understand correctly - and it's hard to find documentation on this - someone who removed the HD and put it in another machine would need the passphrase to decrypt the data. (Does anyone know the answer to this for sure?)

I'm using fingerprint Windows logon with a strong master password.

And I'm using PGP encrypted volumes.

But I'd rather do WDE if it's reliable. Could I combine methods? Could I have the HD BIOS access password, then WDE, then fingerprint?

BTW, I just saw today that PGP has an update to v. 9.7, which says it adds full support for Lenovo's Thinkvantage rescue/recovery button, enabling recovery of even a WDE boot partition with the standard Thinkpad tools. If that really works it would be much more attractive.

All advice welcome.

mfbernstein wrote:Using PGP whole disk encryption, so have to type the password into the bootloader. After that, no Windows logon screen to worry about...

Welcome screen, I fingerprint it....its fun and easy!

I fingerprint it. I know my password but it's pretty fun to do. Makes the roommates think it's a waste of their time trying to get into my thinkpad.

Fingerprint after POST - after which it automatically swipes at welcome screen and login as well.