Philip C Mendelsohn wrote: > > Additional condition: The computer has to operate afterward. Sorry, the > catapult and rail guns are a different contest. But there are so many definitions of `operate' ;-) An appropriately talented hacker would be able to just use `debug' to write some bytes to the boot sector and get the system to erase itself and then come up with a rudimentary prompt (which probably wouldn't do anything..) If by `operate' you mean that the system has to be capable of real user interaction, you'd probably have to go the route of `format c: /s/q', though I don't know how well that works on today's multi-gigabyte drives.. If you want Linux, it'd take quite a few tricks that would depend heavily upon the tools that you have available to you. IMHO, the real challenge would be to see how long it takes you to install a working piece of linux (just a bash prompt is fine by me) from a stock Win2k system. No floppies and no CDs, though I'll let you have an Internet connection. But, that might be a little too hard... Might have to be nice and give you a blank floppy or two.. -- _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ ___ _ _ __ If you think nobody cares / \/ \(_)| ' // ._\ / - \(_)/ ./| ' /(__ about you, try missing a \_||_/|_||_|_\\___/ \_-_/|_|\__\|_|_\ __) couple of payments. [ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088 at tc.umn.edu ]