our school is really touchy when it comes to blocking things, to the point of uptight. i was able to keep my school laptop over the summer, figuring i could just play games on my USB drive and such. however, discovering the fact they were blocking websites on my own network out of school was when i got a little bit pissed off. so, i made a plan to get my own access without any horrible restrictions.
first step: getting admin/using opened gates (PXE boot)
admin was absolutely locked. you were able to open things like task manager and CMD but you had zero chance of opening anything with escalated permissions. so, i attempted to boot into USB. however, they had locked that out as well. what i did notice however, was that network PXE boot was available to use in the boot menu.
for those of you who don't know what network PXE boot is, it allows a server to host a bootable image for a client to use. realizing the possibilities, i downloaded AOMEI's free PXE boot tool, loaded up my copy of kon-boot onto it and hooked up my laptop to my computer (which already had an active network bridge to my other computer). i booted the laptop into network PXE boot, and some minutes later, i saw the kon-boot logo (very slowly) scroll across the screen. couple seconds later and i booted into windows 10.
at this point, i checked to see if stickykeys opened up command prompt like it should after i was able to get to the windows logon screen. thankfully, it did, and i made a new user account and added it to the administrators group.
so now i had admin. but i couldn't just simply remove the blocker (contentkeeper), they'd notice that and some network conflicts would probably occur. so i had to go a different route.
second and final step: dual-booting windows 7
since the default OS was basically useless for anything involving the internet, i had to make an area where there never was blockage, that being an OS of my choosing. i didn't feel like using linux since i wanted to use it for games and other windows applications, so i got my copy of windows 7 ultimate off the shelf, and ripped it to my PC. then, on the laptop, i shrunk down the windows 10 partition and made a new 60something GB one for windows 7. i tried to install windows 7 by just using a iso version of my install disc, but quick research and tests proved that AOMEI's PXE tool wasn't gonna work, so i had to do a bit more manual labor.
downloaded something called serva, which is basically another PXE tool, albeit a bit more complicated with settings and directories. followed a pretty basic guide online and i was able to get stuff working...almost. the router we have here was somehow forgeted and it wasn't letting the laptop respond to any DHCP offers. i was about to give up, but then i realized that my phone had a hotspot. it was my only hope.
connecting my main PC to the hotspot, i resetup serva and attempted to do another PXE boot. lo and behold, moments later, the serva boot menu appeared on the laptop. pressed ENTER, and like 5 minutes later i was installing windows 7 on a new partition. about an hour later, i downloaded some drivers, installed some basic necessities (waterfox, foobar2k, freecommander, notepad2, steam) and i was ready to go. the internet wasn't blocked, i was happy, and that's why i'm making this post on this laptop at 4:07AM EDT
so anyways how's your day/night/whatever been, AMA about stuff related to this i guess
