Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!cica!gatech!hubcap!rwberry
From: rwberry@hubcap.clemson.edu (Robert W Berry)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Preventing Floppy Boots
Message-ID: <6266@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Date: 15 Aug 89 23:06:35 GMT
References: <2610@astroatc.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: Clemson University, Clemson, SC
Lines: 29

From article <2610@astroatc.UUCP>, by brown@astroatc.UUCP (Vidiot):
> In article <1989Aug15.183532.27998@ee.rochester.edu> jal@ee.rochester.edu writes:
> <  ... Looking for a way to prevent booting from a floppy ...
 
>   ...  Vidiot replies only by modifying the BIOS ...

If I remember correctly, there was a special PC-Magazine on PC
security a while back and they had descriptions of different ways of
protecting a PC.  These ranged from physical locks to hardware cards 
which locked up the PC until a password was given to a software-based 
method which altered the fixed-disk's partition table so that DOS wouldn't 
recognize the fixed-disk unless the machine had been booted through a 
protective driver.  In the case of a disk crash you had to boot off a
floppy containing the security driver.  One of the benefits of this
method was that the PC was still functional if it was booted off floppy
(as a floppy only machine) you just couldn't get to the fixed-disk.
I don't know if the partition table was so screwed up that you couldn't
FDISK over it (but then you would lose the information anyway, so it
wouldn't be of use to _DATA_THIEVES_).

     This is all from memory, but it may be worth checking out.

Hope this helps, (tm)
Bob
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