Repair a Laptop Battery

DISCLAIMER:
crackinhack.blogspot.com nor I will be responsible in any way if this article leads you to do something that causes harm in any way, either to a person or property. Thus they nor I will be liable if such an event happens, and by proceeding with the instructions listed in this article you verify that you understand these risks and accept these terms.
Ok so I'm writing another article, because as I have said before, I have no life. So anyway, because I've been procrastinating studying for finals I have been doing a lot more with my computers lately
The last thing I did was to rebuild my laptop battery, and while you might not call it "hacking" I saved myself about $100 on a new laptop battery, and considering we all use computers here, I thought this might be helpfull to a lot of people out there.
What this article will teach you is if your laptop battery is not holding a charge, how to repair it and make it like new again, for either free or a lot cheaper than buying a new one
Note: If you're not experienced with soldering, and electricity you might not want to attempt this because if you do it wrong bad things can happen. I feel that I should list some of the things that can go wrong to try and deter the unexperienced
1. The battery can explode
2. The battery can catch on fire
3. Battery acid can leak on you
4. You can short out your laptop
And thats just to name a few
If you are experienced with things like this (it doesnt even have to be to this level, but I mean expereinced with soldering, and working with batteries and understand a little on how electricity works) as well as you take the proper precautions, this process is very simple. As I am nowhere near an electrical engineer and I was able to do it relativly without a problem. However if you are not experienced, or do not feel confident on this at all I can not stress enough that this project can go bad very quickly and why I felt it necissary to write the above disclamer.
Note: This process involves cutting open your laptop battery, now while some batteries can be re-closed, others can not, and would either have to be glued or taped, so if you dont like this possibility, dont try this
Note2: ok this is the last note in the intro, i have been told that on some newer laptop betteries there are anti-tamper devices, if a battery is disconnected from the unit it will no longer work. This method is still valid in this case, but its much harder, because you must always have all the sets of cells together
************************ *********************What you will need:
1. Old laptop battery you wish to fix
2. Knife/Razor blade
3. Soldering Iron (I prefer a soldering gun)& Solder (if not using an
expensive soldering iron go for low heat solder)
4. New battery cells/another working laptop battery with the same cells that you dont need any more
5. Glue/Tape (I recommend gorilla glue, because it is really strong)
6. Tin strips (or any other metal both conductive and solder can stick to)
7. Multi-Meter (The cells are not always clearly labeled which side is
positive and negative, this will help tell, while there are tricks to do this without a multimeter for the $10 I found it for in the store I thought it well worth it)
************************ *********************Getting Started:
1. Go ahead and open up your laptop battery, to do this cut around the battery on the seam. After you have cut around the full battery try and pry it open. If you're confident you broke the seal, the two pieces are fused together, rather than overlaped, and to close it you will need to either glue it or tape it shut, if this is the case, keep cutting carefully, makeing sure you do not puncture one of the cells inside, until you get it open
2. Look for any markings on the batteries you see inside, if you get lucky you will see a marking indicating how many volts each cell is. Usually its
3.6 V, also you may see it say something like 1200mAh
What that number means is 1200 milliamps, this number and the number on your replacement cells dont need to match, to put it generally, the larger this number is, the longer the battery will retain a charge
If your cell does not state the voltage, remember that google is your friend go ahead and throw the information that is on the cell into google and you should hopefully find the information that you are looking for.
3 . Finding replacement cells- Well one of the easiest things you can do is go ahead and search google for the type of cells that you have and then find them on a website and buy them (I will tell you that I searched stores like CircuitCity, 2 Radio Shacks, Sears, Staples, and a store called Batteries Plus in several different cities, and no one had the ones I needed, so unless you KNOW a store by you has them dont waste your time with anything but online)
Depending on your laptopbattery you might have anyware from 6 to over 12 cells, just for a comparason I found the cells that my laptop used for $5.00 a pop online (so for mine it would have cost me $30 plus shipping, a hell of a lot cheaper than say a new battery that most likely sells for over $100) Another thing you can do is use an old laptop battery if you KNOW that the battery still holds a charge, take it appart and compare the cells
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How do I secure my wireless network connection with WEP or WPA?

These articles are intended for IT Professionals and administrators with experience servicing computer hardware. Please do not attempt any of these procedures if you are unfamiliar with computer hardware, and please use this information responsibly. the authoris not responsible for the use or misuse of this material,including loss of data, damage to hardware, or personal injury.the user is solely responsible
I have just set up a wireless connection at home - whenever I log on it says that the connection is unsecure - how do I secure it? I have a new Toshiba Laptop and a Phillips Router. I saw something about a WEP key....where do I enter this?
You are right to worry about this problem, actually, because any open wireless network is an invitation for neighbors and various unsavory characters to connect to your network as if they were on your local area network. This means that they'd be able to use your network-friendly printer, your networked hard drive backup system, and try to break into your computers too. In addition, they'd be able to use your network connection itself and if they were to download tons of illegal music, for example, the RIAA could get your ISP to shut you down, or if they downloaded porn or terrorism research data, well, the FBI could get involved. Not good!
Fortunately, it's pretty easy to secure a wireless network system: you need to log in to your router / base station (your Phillips unit), which is probably done by simply entering a special IP address in your Web browser (try 192.168.1.1 if the documentation that was included with the router doesn't explain). If that fails, you might need to hook the router directly to the computer via a USB cable, though those are definitely rare systems.
Once you've hooked up, you should find a multi-tab configuration tool that has one tab labeled "Security" or similar. Click on that and you should be able to find "Password" as an option or button. Click on that and it should give the options of WEP or WPA. I recommend that you choose WPA and use a long password - it's far more secure than WEP.
Here's an example from the configuration screen of my Linksys router:


As you can see, it's a bit complicated, but once you enter a password it automatically generates all the scary looking (hexidecimal) security codes: any of those will be what you would enter on your Toshiba laptop -- once -- to be securely connected forever.
I hope that helps you get your hatches battened down!

Hacking Password Protected Laptops

Password protecting a laptop does not ensure data protection, the password protection of laptops provides a false sense of security. Passwords on laptops are good to implement to prevent unauthorized access, however when a thief steals a laptop and has time, getting around the password is quite simple. There are also issues if there was no way to get around passwords, as even admins forget them and need access to the system. Passwords are good to have, but will not stop a thief from accessing the device, only slow them down a bit. Here is a quick run through of some common techniques for getting around the passwords for different platforms:
Windows XP & Vista
Windows can be cracked using several available tools one popular one is OphCrack, which is free. The software can works with Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It comes with a LiveCD version which automates the retrieval, decryption, and cracking of passwords from a Windows system. The latest version uses a new faster technique using rainbow tables and can crack 99.99 % of alphanumeric passwords of up to 14 characters in usually a few seconds, and at most a few minutes. The software works with older versions of Windows as well. Another commerical product is Proactive Password Auditor from Elcomsoft. The software utilizes similar techniques to OphCrack but with a bit more automation and a friendlier user interface. The product basically makes password a mainstream technique that anyone can use to gain access to a system.
OS X
For OS X 10.4 The root password can be easily reset in OS X by booting the system from the Mac OS X installation CD and selecing the Reset password option under "Utilities" from the installer screen and follow the directions. OS X 10.5 can be reset using single user mode. (hold down 'Command' and 'S' during reboot or startup.) At the prompt, type fsck -fy Type mount -uw /Type launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemo ns/com.apple.DirectoryServices. plist Type dscl. -passwd /Users/username newpassword replace with the real "username" and follow with the new password, as shown.
Linux
Boot Linux into single-user mode
Reboot the machine.
Press the ESC key while GRUB is loading to enter the menu.
If there is a 'recovery mode' option, select it and press 'b' to boot into single user mode.
Otherwise, the default boot configuration should be selected. Press 'e' to edit it.
Highlight the line that begins with 'kernel'. Press 'e' again to edit this line.
At the end of the line, add an additional parameter: 'single'. Hit return to make the change and press 'b' to boot.
Change the admin password
The system should load into single user mode and you'll be left at the command line automatically logged in as root. Type 'passwd' to change the root password or 'passwd someuser' to change the password for your "someuser" admin account.
Reboot
Enter 'reboot' to restart into your machine's normal configuration.
These are just a few techniques used to get around password protection on laptops. The first thing that should be implemented is making passwords longer, a 14 character password can be cracked in a matter of minutes. Most IT administrators require a password of 8 characters, this is not sufficient. It is better to devise a phrase instead of just a word.
Encryption, Encryption, Encryption
If you have sensitive information on your system, it is important to ensure that the data is encrypted, many operating systems have this built-in and there is also free encryption tools such as TrueCrypt that provide excellent encryption, so even if your password protected laptop is cracked, your data is still secure, just make sure you use a different password for your encrypted drive.