Getting free Net access in London

(How to pretend you're smart when you're just a dumb tourist)

I went to Paris & London this March. I didn't see any computers in Paris, just lots of ads for www.somevaguelypornographicsite.fr in Métro stations. London had pay Internet terminals all over the place, on street corners and at my hotel, for nine pence a minute, which is a lot. Because of the work I do, free net access is my divine right, wherever I go.

I'm not going to come out and say I messed with the computer at the hotel, just like I'm not going to admit to fucking shit up with an elevator and a French baguette, but I know some people that are going to London soon, and tips like this might be useful.

Assume the pay terminal is running something like Win95. Find out where the hotel staff are. Let's begin. You want to:

  1. Gain access to a file manager
  2. Disable the kiosk software that runs at startup
  3. Remove execution restrictions from the registry
  4. ...
  5. Cover your tracks
  6. Leave a gift

Gain access to a file manager

Your goal here is to get to the DOS prompt, Windows Explorer or even an open file dialog, so you can rename/copy files.

  1. Try to exit the kiosk software with CTRL+ALT+DEL. Probably won't work.
  2. Flick the power bar off and on. Hold down F8 just before "Starting Windows 95" would normally appear. If it hasn't been disabled, use the boot menu to get a command prompt. Probably won't work.
  3. If you can see the floppy drive, insert the Win95 boot floppy you brought with you, reboot and get a DOS prompt. Probably won't work - either they'll have the BIOS set to boot only from the hard drive, or the CPU will be in a locked cabinet.
  4. Let the machine boot normally. As soon as Windows switches to graphics mode, start CTRL+ALT+DELing things as they run. This is extremely tricky. You want to make sure Explorer and Systray start up, but nothing else. If it says , it might be a bad time to kill it - hit ESCAPE, then CTRL+ALT+DEL immediately. If you kill off Explorer by accident, you might be able to run the old-skool Task Manager with CTRL+ESC, and run stuff from there. If you let Explorer run and kill off the right kiosk processes as they're starting up, you should be looking at a taskbar. If you see Run on the Start menu, browse to and try to run C:\Program Files\Plus!\IEXPLORE.EXE. Chances are Run is disabled, but its Browse dialog might not be - and that's a file manager.

Disable the kiosk software that runs at startup

First you have to find it. Using your DOS Skillz ™ (or Windows browse dialog skillz ®), look for promising directories under C:\ and C:\Progra~1. `dir /ad/o/p' will help. Mark down anything that looks promising, rename it (`ren promisingdir xpromisingdir') and see if the kiosk starts. If it doesn't, good for you - but you probably still can't run a browser.

If you really have no idea what's running at startup, there are a few ways to find out.

  1. Look in c:\windows\startm~1\programs\startup, and type the .lnk files.
  2. Run `regedit /e out.reg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows', open up out.reg with EDIT and look under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and RunOnce for promising filenames.
  3. Run `regedit /e out2.reg HKEY_USERS' and look under HKEY_USERS\.Default\Software\Microsoft\CurrentVersion\Run for promising filenames.

Remove execution restrictions from the registry

You've renamed the kiosk software's directory so it won't start up, but system policies probably prevent you from running anything. Make a new directory with the same name as the one you renamed, and copy REGEDIT.EXE into it, duplicating it under all the EXE files that were in the renamed directory. That way it's sure to start up next time you reboot Windows.

Open up the Registry editor. Highlight each of the branches below if they exist, use Registry | Export to export them to a .reg file so you can put them back later, then delete them.

  1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies
  2. HKEY_USERS\.Default\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies

...

Reboot. Free Internet. Yay. NEEEERRRRDDD!

Cover your tracks

Rename your directory full of REGEDIT.EXE copies to something nondescript, and rename the kiosk software directory back where it belongs. Don't bother resetting the policies in Registry Editor.

While you're at it you might make life easier for the next person by enabling the boot menu. Open up Control Panel -> Tweak UI if it's available, and unselect "Disable boot menu" - I think it's under the Paranoia tab. Otherwise, open up C:\MSDOS.SYS in a text editor, and comment out (with a semicolon) anything suspicious (BootDelay=0, BootKeys=0, BootMenu=0 - I forget which option it is).

Now make sure everything works.

Leave a gift

Look around the Registry for the kiosk software's entries. Maybe the multilingual button bar titles are in there, and you can change them around so the next person to press the Scandinavian flag sees "Internet for Beginners" change to "Internet for Dumb American Tourists". Ahem.

Michael Smith