How I "Fixed" the GHFC Computers

If you’ve ever been to the Gainesville Health and Fitness Center, you probably know that they have three public computers in their lobby. You probably also know that they put every restriction imaginable on them. You can’t view any folders, right click, open notepad or command prompt, or even download any files. Well, obviously, I spent about twenty minutes trying to “fix” them. If you ever wanted to figure out how I do what I do, read on.

So, yeah, no opening folders at all. My Documents, My Computer, et cetera were all blocked and removed from the desktop and start menu. But, hey, Control Panel was still available in the start menu. Obviously you can’t actually change anything with it, but if you click the “Previous Folder” button, you’ll find yourself in the My Computer menu. From there, I went through the (Z:) drive and looked through the system files until I could find a text file. No (C:) drive, which is kind of odd, just a file server drive with a couple of system files. But, anyways, I found a text file and opened it. I changed its contents to

START %SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe

And saved it as a Batch file with a new name. So, whenever I click it, it opens up command prompt. This is the last thing people who put restrictions on computers want you to do. From there, it was pretty easy to create a new admin account that is restriction free.  I just typed the following into command prompt.

net user /add ADMINLOL

And then I made my new account an admin by using the following.

New localgroup administrators ADMINLOL /add

So if you’re ever at the GHFC, use the middle computer. Sign in as ADMINLOL and wreak some havoc. Use some of the programs I have on Project Carthage. Or, hell, just do some homework. This frees up some other, non-mischievous possibilities too, you know. In fact, screw it, don't do anything bad with their computers. They're nice people. Instead, use this tutorial to help you "liberate" other computers.