If the security threat posed from this article on the cleverest site around is true, then it is some serious breaching for the ITers:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7819

There must be some other way to circumvent such a potential threat

Well, I've been saying for years now that W2K is superior to XP

Incidentally, the Knoppix Linux CD will do the same thing

another MS bug that couldve been prevented. I think this is just a scheme to get people to upgrade to different OSes as they come out. I mean hell a lot of these serious bugs that pop up are just retarded. Bugs are expected to pop-up but some of these serious ones are just plain assinine

This is one of those things that can only partially be covered in software. A lock's not such a bad idea, but, It really comes down to the fact that a system which is physically accessible is no longer yours ;(

One part of securing a system is to change the BIOS boot order to HDD first, and add a strong BIOS setup password... That would prevent against this.

^^^^^

yeah, but for many that would be to easy to take such a simple step to secure their system, which should have be done already.