I can't remember the version of deepfreeze because this took place earlier in the school year but I could find out if you're really interested. It really did take only one day for us to do it manually. This seemed really short to me too which is why I brought it up. Deepfreeze was using a different encrytption method for each letter so even though the password is CMSCMS all 6 hex values were different. When you think about it though, the method we used wouldn't take very long because we didn't have to get all 6 characters in one guess. The most trys it would have taken would have been around 270 if the number of characters usable in the password is 45. We got the Cs almost right away cause we were going alphabetically. I didn't really understand what you were saying in your post valhallen. I wasn't talking hypothetically about the process because we actually did it.

I'll try to clarify what we did to avoid confusion: using the program winhex, we removed the password hash from deepfreeze. For example lets say it was F-5, I-2, U-6, R-1, E-5, Y-9. We then took another copy of deepfreeze and set the password to "a". We compared the password hash to the one from the school and let's say it came out to T-7. Since that doesn't match up, we knew it wasn't an a. We continued through the alphabet to "c". When we try the password "c" the resulting hex was F-5 so we know the first character is c. Just repeat for each hex value in the hash to get the entire password. It's not a long process at all.
I think that's a little bit clearer...

On a related note, I'd like to get people's thoughts on what to do about what I believe is a terrible network system faulted by incompetent admin. It's pretty bad when their default password for almost everything is the name of the school. I personally haven't done anything wrong with admin account or anything but my friend found copies of exams on the system that are going to be written in the next few days. There's potential to wreak all sorts of havoc and pretty much anyone with a moderate knowledge of computers could do what we've done. I don't think it would be a good idea to just tell the admin that we know all the important passwords and have comprimised the entire network but on the other hand, I think something should be done to make it more secure. Any thoughts are appreciated.