KODAK Secrets and Walmart Fun

by Thorn  (thorn2600@yahoo.com)

This is really two articles in one: a true story of a crazy adventure getting software and showing some flaws in Walmart's security, as well as an article on the software and manual I obtained from that adventure, the KODAK Picture Maker G3.

If you are unfamiliar with what that is, it's the big KODAK machine in stores like Walmart that you use to scan pictures.  You can also use pictures on whatever type of disk you might have and edit them, change the size, make more prints, or whatever.

Now obviously I'm not going to put the entire manual in this article...

I plan on eventually ebooking the whole thing and putting it online, but I'll just give you the juicier parts for now such as how to change settings, retrieve "lost" passwords and/or change passwords; as well as the stuff they don't want you to know about this software.

But first I will tell you all a story of how I obtained this material because it is one crazy story which also points out Walmart's insecurities.

A friend and I were at Walmart and we went to the usual department we liked to look around in: electronics.

Next to it was the photo department and I started messing around on those self photo machines with the scanner, the monitors, and the disk drives.  I always like to play with any public computers (and sometimes computers normal people aren't supposed to use when nobody is looking).

Unfortunately it was turned off and pushing the power button did nothing.  It must have been unplugged.

But then I noticed a little binder on top of the machine that had a cover saying "KODAK Picture Maker G3" so naturally I was wondering what this was.  I picked it up and looked through it.  It actually had the manual for this machine!

And on top of that, it had three CDs in little pouches.  They were labeled (KODAK Picture Maker shortened to KPM) "KPM - Training Tutorial V3.0," "KPM - Walmart Special 1 - G3 Software," and "KPM - Application Software V3.7 SP1 (Full Install)."

This is when I flipped.  I had access to the software on these things.  I really wanted this software but I didn't want to steal these things.  So I came up with this plan: I would come back at 2 am.

I chose that time because I would be up anyway.  I'm a night owl, plus there would be fewer customers and employees to worry about.  I brought my standalone CD burner which is about the size of a shoe box and I had some blank CDs in my pocket along with a felt tip marker.

I put the power cord in my pocket and walked into Walmart with two friends.  I walked up to the door-greeter person and said I needed to find the right power cord and asked if I could bring it back there with me.  She didn't even ask what it was and said O.K.

I grabbed the binder on my way to the auto department waiting room which was closed at this time of night but wasn't locked or anything.  I chose this spot because there were no cameras in there.  I'd be out of sight from customers and employees and there was a power outlet for my burner.

I sat down, plugged it in, popped in one of my blank CDs along with one of the originals, and started burning.  During this time my two friends were keeping a lookout.  If an employee came near, they'd distract him by asking where the flashlights were.  We decided on flashlights because they were far away enough away that the employee would have to show them where they were.  But no employees or customers disturbed me anyway.

When I finished, I put the CDs back in the binder, put my burned CDs in my pocket with the power cord, put the binder back on the photo machine, and walked out of the store.  As I passed the door greeter I said that they didn't have the right power cord and I left with her apologizing.

On to the Good Stuff

The following is a little bit from the manual:

If you forget your passwords, turn off the main power to the Picture Maker; and then turn it back on.  Touch the Setup button immediately after the Picture Maker main screen appears and then follow steps 1-2 on page 2-2.  You can then access and view the current passwords.

Follow these steps from the Setup screen to enable and specify each of the system passwords:

  1. From the setup screen, touch "System Configuration".

  2. Touch "Select Passwords".

  3. Set up the passwords.  Touch next to each password that you want to turn on.  A green check mark appears.  Touch the keypad button to enter the new password.  Note: Your password can be a maximum of six numbers.

  4. Enter the password using the on-screen keypad.

  5. Touch "Save" to store the new passwords and exit this screen.

  6. Touch "Start Over'.

  7. Touch "Exit".

So all you have to do is turn the computer off then back on.

On the back of the computer is a manual power switch.  Just flip that off then on.  In case you can't see the back of the machine and are feeling for the switch, reach around the right-side of the base part and feel for the big power cord.  Once you find that, the switch is right beside it.

As the computer boots, you'll see that it's running Windows 2000 Pro.  When it gets to the user login you'll see kodakuser1 as the user and eight asterisks for the password (it may be different at your store but at the three Walmarts I tried this at it, there was the same user name and same amount of asterisks for the unknown password).

This is all grayed out and it automatically logs on.  Windows loads like normal and for a split second you can see the desktop and everything.  You can even touch the Start button or whatever but then the KODAK software automatically loads in fullscreen.  It will run a system check in which I found out that these machines have these stats:

  • Total Physical Memory: 382 MB
  • Total Virtual Memory: 2047 MB
  • C: Drive: 4 GB (2.7 GB available)
  • D: Drive: 1.9 GB (1 GB available)
  • E: Drive: 31.2 GB (24.2 available)

Once the software is done loading, this is the time when you can enter the Setup mode without a password.

From there, hit "System Configuration", then "Select Passwords" to go into the passwords.

The manual blatantly says not to use the store number for the password, but everywhere I've checked, for the Setup password they do just that.

It appears that for the Print password, the default is: 888

The software needs to be installed on a computer with a C:, D:, and E: hard drive; the bulk of the program is installed on the E: drive.  Of course you can use a virtual drive program to make a fake D: and E: drive if needed.  At absolute minimum, about 9 GB of memory is required... but that's if you're just using the computer for this software.

Before I installed this on my own computer, I went to Walmart to play with the real thing some more.

I had brought my own blank CD-Rs to make myself a picture CD using the pictures I had on an SD card.  But when I went to write the CD, it told me that I wasn't using an official KODAK Picture CD!

How could it know this?  I can't find any explanation about this in the manual.

If anybody knows how it could tell the difference between my blank CD-R and theirs, please email me and tell me your theory and possible ways to make it think a regular blank CD-R is one of theirs.

Also, apparently I'm missing some CDs that are not required for it to work but add features, such as the borders CD and so on.

I'd be interested in knowing if anybody has KPM CDs other than the ones I mentioned here or versions of KODAK Picture Maker other than V3.7 SP1.
Return to $2600 Index