Owner's Manual (Complete)

Chapter 3—Your Home
6 The Home Control Assistant
Once set, when anyone attempts to make changes to that element of your home design, a message
box appears, and the password must be provided before the properties dialog box displays.
As an example, let’s say you entered a password for the design. The next time you want to make
changes to the properties for this design, a password message box appears, and you need to type
your password before you can change the properties.
Observations about the security system
This section discusses a few points about the security system that may help you.
 The security system is only moderately secure. The file is not encrypted but the passwords are
stored in the .HCA file in a hashed form. This means that once you enter a password you
can’t recover it if lost.
 Regardless of the password settings you create, anyone can still turn off the HCA computer
with the power switch, or stop the HCA task by using the Windows task manager.
 If you don’t provide a password for modify design, anyone will be able to see the other
passwords by using the Properties choice from the Home menu. Once you have set up a
design password, no one can access the home design properties without first entering that
password.
 If you have lost the password there is a way to load the file and remove all password
protection. Follow this procedure:
1. Select from the HCA menu HCA – Properties. On the startup tab make sure that all
the options in the
When HCA Started group are clear. That is, they are not checked.
2. Shutdown HCA
3. Restart HCA
4. Select from the menu HCA – Properties. Select the Extra tab. Enter the code PSWD
and close the dialog with OK
5. Load the file that you lost the password for. During the load the password protection
is removed. Also the extra feature PSWD code is removed.
6. Save the file.