How to hack At-Ease

**How to hack At-Ease**
By
[email protected]


Introduction:
	From what I understand At-Ease was originally designed to allow people to use the computer without giving them access to files that they could use to screw up a computer.  To the System Administrator this is great.  but to us, it is a crappy file that gives us hell.  It eats up memory, makes the computer look ugly, and sometimes is used as a big power trip.  In this file I will teach you all the ways I have learned to hack At-Ease.

Section One: The Boot Disk
	I got this idea from the At-Ease instruction booklet (which came with my computer).  It said, "if you forget your password then you must boot up off a disk and change your password."  If you don't have a boot disk for the type of computer you want to hack you either have to:
A)find one(good luck) or
B)make one.
I recommend using Norton Utilities or S.A.M. To do this you MUST have the original disks from the installer!  After you make the disk(if you don't know how read the instuction manual), insert the disk into the computer before it is turned on and hold command-option-shift-delete.  After the computer has started up you should be able to go into the At-Ease Setup.  It's a control panel, then go to change password.  If your computer came with a system CD it can also be used as a boot disk, if the computer you want to change the password on has a CD-rom drive.

Section Two:  The Stupid System Administrator
	If the computer you are going to hack allows you to save on the hard drive, but not allows you to acsess all the files then you have it extremely easy.  All you have to do is open any application that can save,  then save a document (it can have nothing in it).  Save the document in the preferences folder, which is in the system folder, and name it At Ease Preferences.  This will eliminate the old password.  Now all you have to do is quit the Application you are in and use the Go to Finder command under the File menu.  Because you eliminated the old password you can go right into the finder without being prompted for a password.

Section Three: Word Perfect
	Word Perfect is such a usefull program for hacking At-Ease.  If the computer has Word Perfect then your way into the finder is just a few clicks away (this is the first way I discovered how to hack At-Ease).  Use Command-O or go to file open and you will have an open box appear.  There are kind of a list of subcommands (I don't know what else to call them), and under the file box you can use a delete command.  All you have to do is delete the At-Ease Preferences.  If all goes right you then can go into the finder.

Section Four: Norton Utilities
	You can also use Norton Utilities to get rid the password.  With Norton's Fast Find (it only works on Power PC), just search for at ease (or something similar).  When the results of the find are finished just scroll down to the At Ease Preferences.  With the Prefs selected there is a move to trash button.  Click on that.  This will eliminate the password, and you can once again go directly to the finder.

Section Five: At-Ease hacking programs
	There are various programs that can be used to hack At-Ease.  Most of these files can found be at Http://www.yatho.com/weasel/.  All you have to do is download these files, Decompress them and then copy the files onto disk (they should fit on a 1.4 meg disk), then pop the disk into the computer you want to hack.  If the computer has low disk protection you should be able to open them very easily.  If not then the computer must have hyper studio (I haven't found any other way to get these programs open).  Open hyperstudio, create a new stack.  Add a new buttion.  Make that buttons function to open an application.  Pick which ever At-Ease hacking program you want.  If you have more than one program I would recommend making a button to open each one (I would try every one to see which one you like).  Most of these programs just open the finder underneath At-Ease and most of them work very well.

Section Six: The Invisible Preferences.
	If your system Administrator becomes smart and makes the At-Ease Preferences invisible, (which mine did after they found out about my first hack).  Then you must use either Norton Utilities or ResEdit to make them visible once more.  To do this using Norton, Select Disk Editor under the utilities menu.  With this all you have to do is basically use the Get info button on the At-Ease Preferences.  Thier will be a while bunch of little check boxes (I think they are called Radio Boxes), there is one check box that says Is Invisible,  that will be checked if the prefs are invisible, then uncheck it and close the window.  It'll ask you to save changes, which you should.  It is now uninvisible.  You have to do about the same thing in ResEdit.  Except Get Info is under the file menu, and once again you will se a series of Check boxs.  Uncheck the one that says Is Invisible.  Once it is visible use one of the methods in the previous chapters to get rid of it.

Section Seven: Misc. Methods.
	I have heard that with early enough versions of At-Ease if you open enough programs, At-Ease will actually ask you if you would like to quit At-Ease to clear up more memory.  Click yes of course, (I have never had it happen but I'm sure it has some truth behind the rumor).  Another method is to hold down the shift keys during start up to disable extensions.  Some times this works sometimes it doesn't.

Section Eight: Now What?
	Okay, you've succesfully hacked the computer, now what?  Well first of all I usually create a new password.  Make it random, random passwords are harder to trace back to someone.  Don't use names, (only an idiot would do that).  If the prefs were invisible make them invisible again.  If this is a school computer that you hacked is a school computer I would highly recommend that not to mess it up until you won't have that class again.  If not then go ahead and screw the computer up, they probably won't be able to trace it back to you.  So have fun and use your imagination (virii are always fun).

Section Nine: I canÕt hack it!
	If you canÕt hack the computer, then I highly suggest that you mess it up a ton.  If the At-Ease Preferences are invisible and you canÕt make it visible, then use Word Perfect, and change the names of the files to something funny.  I perfer insults or change the names of files, like change Kids Pix to Kids Pix XXX studio or Microsoft Word to Microsloth Nerd.  Do stuff like that, itÕs just enough to piss your System Admin off.

Please distribute this EVERYWHERE.  I want everyone to know how to hack At-Ease.