I really don't know why I am wasting my time responding to your attempts at
trolling, in a thread that was done and dusted from the first reply, and I
don't mean by your supercilious reply with a link to a search engine.
To sum up for anyone who can be bothered wading through your last diatribe.
You assert that passwords can easily be cracked if only you have the right
software. This is simply nonsense. However they can be cracked if you have
sufficient time - which was covered in my web page.
You also try and assert that it is somehow better to subsitute a means of
transferring data that *might* be safe with one that *is* safe - for no good
reason. 'Hardly ever' is fine until you lose the data, and if you spent as
much time in these newsgroups as the MVPs who service them, you would know
that hardly a week goes by when someone loses data by writing to or reading
from flash media. So what is the point of your post other than to raise
argument where none is required?
--
Graham Mayor - Word MVP
My web site
www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site
http://word.mvps.org
Scott M. wrote:
"Graham Mayor" wrote in message
...
There are lots of password crackers available - including the
example I referred to from my web site which does all that the one
you referred to can manage. Password crackers have one thing in
common. The demos can easily crack a password that comprises four
characters. They do not work so remarkably when you try to crack a
password of 8 or more random characters - and you only discover that
after you have paid your money. A decent password can be cracked
eventually, but it will take a seriously long time of continuous
processing to do so. We have no idea what sort of password strength
the OP may have used.
I don't really get what your point here is. There IS software
available to crack passwords or use brute force and they do work. Your
post sounded like you were telling the OP that a password
protected file cannot ever be opened without the password. Despite
your assertions to the contrary, software does exist (like the one I
pointed out) that can unlock a file regardless of the password length
in a relatively short time. The bottom line is that if you need to
access a password protected file, you CAN do it.
As others have reminded you - the OP does not have a floppy drive. He
needs a means of getting the data from floppy to his PC. The PC will
almost certainly have a USB port, which makes flash a simple means
of data transfer, provided he can get access to a floppy drive or
can get someone copy the floppy discs for him.
It's hard to "remind" someone of something that was never brought up.
The OP said nothing about flash drives. He did however, mention that
the original data was on a 1.44 MB floppy drive. I am not aware of
ANY flash drive ever made commercially that wasn't at least 5 times
bigger than that and those aren't even sold anymore. Such a small
amount of data could simply be emailed from the friend's machine to
the OP's machine. No one brought up flash drives but you and that's
why I questioned it.
Despite your protestations elsewhere in this thread, opening
documents from removable media is a frequent source of data
corruption, and there is more than enough evidence to show that this
is the case - we see it in this forum every week. We have no idea
how large the flash media the OP may have available (I have one
piece with 8mb capacity), nor any idea how many files are involved.
Accessing data directly from flash media *may* not result in a
problem, but equally it might, so as I don't know what we are
dealing with any more than you do, suggesting the safest course is
the best approach. The safest course is to copy the files to the
hard drive and open them from there.
As I've mentioned in another response in this thread, there is no
technilogical reason whatsoever for any more corruption with flash
memory than HDD memory. I agree that you may hear many more people
talking about corruption with flash memory than HDD memory, but in a
NG, you will always hear about the problems people have. People
don't post to tell you that everything worked as it should.
Flash memory can get corrupted in exactly the same manner than HDD
memory would get corrupted. But, with flash memory the most likely
reason would be that the drive was pulled while still being written
to or read from. Your brief "Don't do it!" message does not *inform*
the newsgroup as to why you are saying what you are saying. It
leaves someone who doesn't know better to believe that there is an
inherent flaw with flash memory, which there is not. It would have
been more appropriate for you to say something like "Be sure that the
drive is no longer being accessed (by either checking the access
light on the drive or using the Hardware removal wizard in the system
tray) before you pull it out.
I have been a looooong time contributor to the MS NG's and I been
seeing an increasing amount of replies from MVP's that innacurately
blame a technology when the technology is fine, but the use of that
technology is flawed or incompletely recommend a solution, without
indicating why that solution should be used.
My goal in "nitpicking" your posts is to help newbies understand
that, in reality, flash memory is just as stable as HDD memory, but
because it's portable, the danger *potentially* lies in pulling the
drive while it's being accessed. If you don't do that, you'll hardly
ever encounter any corruption of files on flash media.
-Scott
--
Graham Mayor - Word MVP
My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org
Scott M. wrote:
I hardly think that Word documents saved in 1994 had XML metadata
stored along with them. And so, the information on your page would
not be useful.
Secondly, why do the disk files need to be copied to flash memory
before being put on to a hard drive? And for that matter, why can't
the files be opened from a flash drive?
Thirdly, there are MANY tools out there that use different
techniques to open a Word document that is password protected, here
is just one example of a very good tool:
http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/d...sword_14353_p/
I'm sorry Graham, but your information is just either wrong or not
applicable in this circumstance.
-Scott
"Graham Mayor" wrote in message
...
There are two issues here - accessing the files and accessing the
protected documents. The first can be overcome by copying the discs
to flash memory and then you can copy them to the hard drive to
access them (DON'T access then from the flash memory).
If you don't know the passwords to open the documents, the chances
of opening them are slim to non-existent. The documents are
encrypted and you need the password to break the encryption. - see
http://www.gmayor.com/Remove_Password.htm
--
Graham Mayor - Word MVP
My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org
Water and Trees wrote:
In 1994 I prepared documents saving them to 3 1/2" discs. Recently
found the discs (there's a whole box) and would like to
access them. No slot on my current computer for them, but have a
friend whose computer does still allow discs. My problem is
wanting to by-pass the passwords I set for myself back in 1994.
These are basic Word documents and there may be a few WordPerfect
documents on these discs as well. I just want to get by the
passwords and get to the documents.
Any suggestions are appreciated!
Thanks,