Keep Files Private
If you want to encrypt the contents of an individual file or directory, Windows XP Pro will do the trick, provided you enable NTFS on your hard drive. To encrypt a file, right-click on it to bring up the Properties window. Click on the Advanced button, then in the Advanced Attributes dialog box click on Encrypt contents to secure data. This will encrypt the file (using either DES, which employs a 56-bit key on each 64-bit block of data, or 3DES, which uses a 56-bit key three times on each 64-bit block of data), and it will provide a certificate just for you. This certificate is key; if you reinstall Windows or otherwise lose your user account, your access to the encrypted files will be gone, too. You need to export your certificates to back them up: For detailed instructions, search on export certificate in Windows Help.
Windows XP does not require you to enter your password when you open the encrypted file. Once you log on to a session, encrypted files are available for you—and anyone who walks up to your system—to view.
Windows XP Home doesn't support this method. Both XP Home and XP Pro, however, let you create password-protected compressed files. To do this, right-click on the desired file and choose Send To | Compressed (zipped) Folder. Open the resulting folder and select Add a Password from the File menu; delete the original file. Note that this encryption is relatively weak. It should dissuade casual users but won't put up much of a fight against someone determined to hack it apart.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
How to keep files private
Keep Files Private
If you want to encrypt the contents of an individual file or directory, Windows XP Pro will do the trick, provided you enable NTFS on your hard drive. To encrypt a file, right-click on it to bring up the Properties window. Click on the Advanced button, then in the Advanced Attributes dialog box click on Encrypt contents to secure data. This will encrypt the file (using either DES, which employs a 56-bit key on each 64-bit block of data, or 3DES, which uses a 56-bit key three times on each 64-bit block of data), and it will provide a certificate just for you. This certificate is key; if you reinstall Windows or otherwise lose your user account, your access to the encrypted files will be gone, too. You need to export your certificates to back them up: For detailed instructions, search on export certificate in Windows Help.
Windows XP does not require you to enter your password when you open the encrypted file. Once you log on to a session, encrypted files are available for you—and anyone who walks up to your system—to view.
Windows XP Home doesn't support this method. Both XP Home and XP Pro, however, let you create password-protected compressed files. To do this, right-click on the desired file and choose Send To | Compressed (zipped) Folder. Open the resulting folder and select Add a Password from the File menu; delete the original file. Note that this encryption is relatively weak. It should dissuade casual users but won't put up much of a fight against someone determined to hack it apart.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Change location of My Documents
I guess many of you don't know about this fact that the storage location of "My Documents" can be changed. Its bit safer , when PC crashes.
Normally windows saves the "My Documents" folder on your C-drive. But when you right-click on it and go to properties, you can change the location where you want windows to save your Documents folder.
Normally windows saves the "My Documents" folder on your C-drive. But when you right-click on it and go to properties, you can change the location where you want windows to save your Documents folder.
I have a partition set up with just windows on it, and all my things i want to keep are on different partitions/disks. So now I put My Documents on another partition than where I have windows installed.
If windows screws up and you have to format your C-drive again, your documents will be spared at least...
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Save hrad disk space
Do you have a computer that doesn’t have a huge hard drive, but you store a lot of pictures, videos, or other large files that’s getting your free space low? Once your computer gets low on hard disk space, normal processes begin to slow down and your computer will run painfully slow. There are of course lots of other reasons why your computer might be running slowly, but this post is specifically for those who know they are running short on disk space.
So instead of having to delete files or move things off to USB sticks or external hard drives, you can first try to free up some space on your computer that may be taken up by useless temporary files or system processes. There are usually three big space “killers” in Windows that are set by default to hog disk space and should be reined in as soon as you can!
1. Recycle Bin – Why pick on the Recycle Bin eh?? The never-irritating and sometimes life-saving trash can just sits there waiting for us to tell it what to do right? Well, it also takes up a LOT of space that it doesn’t need. The recycle bin uses a percentage of your hard drive in order to store deleted files. However, this percentage is set by default at a very high number and ends up wasting a lot of space.
Here’s how to fix space killer #1. First right click on the Recycle Bin on your desktop and click Properties.
On the Global tab, you can choose Use one setting for all drives or Configure drives independently. It’s usually better to configure the recycle bin for each drive independently since it’s based on the size of the drive, so 5% of a 50GB hard drive is much bigger than 5% of a 20GB hard drive. At the top you’ll see tabs for each partition you have on your computer.
By default, the slider bar is usually set at something like 12%, which is very high! Unless you are deleting huge files, there will never be a need for a recycle bin that size. A good size is from anywhere between 3 to 5% of your hard drive. Drag the slider bar and you just saved yourself a good amount of space, especially if you have large hard drives. My computer is set to 1% and I’ve never had a problem recovering a file from the bin!
2. Turn Off System Restore – Another handy little service that can get your computer back up and running sometimes, but again takes up a lot of extra space that is not needed. Also, System Restore only recovers Windows files, not any of your data. So having System Restore enabled on any other drive other than your C drive (where Windows is installed) is completely useless.
To fix this one, right click on My Computer and choose Properties.
Click on the System Restore tab.
As you can see from my computer, I have a C and a D drive of which system restore has been turned off on D. Again, this is because System Restore does not protect your data, it only protects Windows system files, so you don’t need it for any other drive other than the main system drive. If you click on the C drive and choose settings, you’ll get the dialog box to set the amount of space.
For system restore, a value between 2% to 4% will be fine. The default 12% wastes loads and loads of space! I have mine set to 2% and even with that, I still have over 10 restore points to recover from if I needed to.
3. Delete temporary Internet Explorer files – Ahhh…if you like to browse the Internet hardcore like I do, then you MUST clean out your temporary files every once in a while or else it will take up lots of space. And again, as with the Recycle Bin and System Restore, we can set the max size for the amount of storage for temporary Internet files. And again, it’s set really high by default!
Open IE and go to Tools, Internet Options.
On the options dialog, under Browsing History, click on Settings.
Now here you can type in a value for the amount of space to be used!! When I first did mine, it was set to 1GB!!! So I had 1 whole GB of storage being used by temporary files that were never going to be used again anyway! Change that value to something very small like 25MB or even less if you like. After doing this, you should click Delete under the Browsing History section and delete all of the current data there.
4. Actually, there is a 4th thing you can do to get some disk space back! If you’re like most people, you probably use StandBy mode on your computer by simply closing the cover or pressing the power button. No one really uses Hibernate mode because why use that when you can use StandBy, which is easier and a lot faster! I personally have never used it and don’t think I ever will, but it takes up a good amount of space on your computer.
Go to Start, Control Panel and choose Power Options. If you are in Category view, click Switch to Classic View at the top left. Then click on the Hibernate tab in the Power Options dialog:
Make sure it’s unchecked. The hibernate feature takes up the amount of space equal to your RAM, so in my case I was wasting another 1GB of space!!!
Now you hopefully just saved yourself a couple of GB’s worth of space! Now you can last a little bit longer before having to move stuff off. If your computer is still running slow, check out my other articles on how to increase your computer’s performance in the Table of Contents at the top of the post!
So instead of having to delete files or move things off to USB sticks or external hard drives, you can first try to free up some space on your computer that may be taken up by useless temporary files or system processes. There are usually three big space “killers” in Windows that are set by default to hog disk space and should be reined in as soon as you can!
1. Recycle Bin – Why pick on the Recycle Bin eh?? The never-irritating and sometimes life-saving trash can just sits there waiting for us to tell it what to do right? Well, it also takes up a LOT of space that it doesn’t need. The recycle bin uses a percentage of your hard drive in order to store deleted files. However, this percentage is set by default at a very high number and ends up wasting a lot of space.
Here’s how to fix space killer #1. First right click on the Recycle Bin on your desktop and click Properties.
On the Global tab, you can choose Use one setting for all drives or Configure drives independently. It’s usually better to configure the recycle bin for each drive independently since it’s based on the size of the drive, so 5% of a 50GB hard drive is much bigger than 5% of a 20GB hard drive. At the top you’ll see tabs for each partition you have on your computer.
By default, the slider bar is usually set at something like 12%, which is very high! Unless you are deleting huge files, there will never be a need for a recycle bin that size. A good size is from anywhere between 3 to 5% of your hard drive. Drag the slider bar and you just saved yourself a good amount of space, especially if you have large hard drives. My computer is set to 1% and I’ve never had a problem recovering a file from the bin!
2. Turn Off System Restore – Another handy little service that can get your computer back up and running sometimes, but again takes up a lot of extra space that is not needed. Also, System Restore only recovers Windows files, not any of your data. So having System Restore enabled on any other drive other than your C drive (where Windows is installed) is completely useless.
To fix this one, right click on My Computer and choose Properties.
Click on the System Restore tab.
As you can see from my computer, I have a C and a D drive of which system restore has been turned off on D. Again, this is because System Restore does not protect your data, it only protects Windows system files, so you don’t need it for any other drive other than the main system drive. If you click on the C drive and choose settings, you’ll get the dialog box to set the amount of space.
For system restore, a value between 2% to 4% will be fine. The default 12% wastes loads and loads of space! I have mine set to 2% and even with that, I still have over 10 restore points to recover from if I needed to.
3. Delete temporary Internet Explorer files – Ahhh…if you like to browse the Internet hardcore like I do, then you MUST clean out your temporary files every once in a while or else it will take up lots of space. And again, as with the Recycle Bin and System Restore, we can set the max size for the amount of storage for temporary Internet files. And again, it’s set really high by default!
Open IE and go to Tools, Internet Options.
On the options dialog, under Browsing History, click on Settings.
Now here you can type in a value for the amount of space to be used!! When I first did mine, it was set to 1GB!!! So I had 1 whole GB of storage being used by temporary files that were never going to be used again anyway! Change that value to something very small like 25MB or even less if you like. After doing this, you should click Delete under the Browsing History section and delete all of the current data there.
4. Actually, there is a 4th thing you can do to get some disk space back! If you’re like most people, you probably use StandBy mode on your computer by simply closing the cover or pressing the power button. No one really uses Hibernate mode because why use that when you can use StandBy, which is easier and a lot faster! I personally have never used it and don’t think I ever will, but it takes up a good amount of space on your computer.
Go to Start, Control Panel and choose Power Options. If you are in Category view, click Switch to Classic View at the top left. Then click on the Hibernate tab in the Power Options dialog:
Make sure it’s unchecked. The hibernate feature takes up the amount of space equal to your RAM, so in my case I was wasting another 1GB of space!!!
Now you hopefully just saved yourself a couple of GB’s worth of space! Now you can last a little bit longer before having to move stuff off. If your computer is still running slow, check out my other articles on how to increase your computer’s performance in the Table of Contents at the top of the post!
Defragment computer files
Continuing on with the simple ways to speed up your computer, the next item has been around for a long time, but it’s value is still very clear. Defragging your hard drive every once in a while is very important because over time as your computer reads and writes small and large files, the files may end up being written onto non-consecutive parts of the disk.
You may have noticed that when you first buy your computer, it runs very smoothly and quickly. But over time, after you install and uninstall applications, download music, delete videos, etc, the computer begins to lag behind and becomes slow. This is because when the disk is initially empty, any new data put on it is written in a single contiguous block. So when the operating system has to read the data, it can find it all in one place. Eventually though, you uninstall an application or delete some music files and those empty areas are now in between other pieces of data. When something new is written to the disk, it fills up these various empty spots and gets broken up into separate parts on the hard disk. Now when the computer goes to read the data, it has to jump to different positions on the disk and it obviously takes longer to load the data.
Running the Defrag utility will take all the files that are separated and join them back into one piece. It will also take all the free empty spots on the hard drive and make on block of free space. This will make it much easier for the operating system to find and load the data.
Ways to get to the Defrag Utility
1. The easiest way to get to the Defrag utility is to go to right click on the My Computer icon on the desktop, click Manage and then to click Disk Defragmenter.
2. You can also get to the Defrag utility by click on Start – All Programs – Accessories – System Tools and Disk Defragmenter.
Click on the Analyze button to get a report of how much of your hard drive is currently fragmented. The summary report will tell you whether or not you need to defragment.
You should also note that before you defrag the computer, all programs should be closed, especially firewalls and anti-virus programs. Defragmenter will continuously restart if anti-virus software is running because the software continually accesses files on the hard drive which the defragmenting program may be trying to move.
As a good practice, you should try to defrag your computer once a month. If you use your computer heavily with lots of data transfers of large files, then more than once a month would be advisable.
Here are some of the limitations of the defragment utility on Windows XP:
• It can defragment only local volumes.
• It can defragment only one volume at a time.
• It cannot defragment one volume while it is scanning another.
• It cannot be scheduled. If you need to schedule disk defragmentation, use the Defrag.exe command line tool.
Defragging will keep your computer running smooth and fast.
You may have noticed that when you first buy your computer, it runs very smoothly and quickly. But over time, after you install and uninstall applications, download music, delete videos, etc, the computer begins to lag behind and becomes slow. This is because when the disk is initially empty, any new data put on it is written in a single contiguous block. So when the operating system has to read the data, it can find it all in one place. Eventually though, you uninstall an application or delete some music files and those empty areas are now in between other pieces of data. When something new is written to the disk, it fills up these various empty spots and gets broken up into separate parts on the hard disk. Now when the computer goes to read the data, it has to jump to different positions on the disk and it obviously takes longer to load the data.
Running the Defrag utility will take all the files that are separated and join them back into one piece. It will also take all the free empty spots on the hard drive and make on block of free space. This will make it much easier for the operating system to find and load the data.
Ways to get to the Defrag Utility
1. The easiest way to get to the Defrag utility is to go to right click on the My Computer icon on the desktop, click Manage and then to click Disk Defragmenter.
2. You can also get to the Defrag utility by click on Start – All Programs – Accessories – System Tools and Disk Defragmenter.
Click on the Analyze button to get a report of how much of your hard drive is currently fragmented. The summary report will tell you whether or not you need to defragment.
You should also note that before you defrag the computer, all programs should be closed, especially firewalls and anti-virus programs. Defragmenter will continuously restart if anti-virus software is running because the software continually accesses files on the hard drive which the defragmenting program may be trying to move.
As a good practice, you should try to defrag your computer once a month. If you use your computer heavily with lots of data transfers of large files, then more than once a month would be advisable.
Here are some of the limitations of the defragment utility on Windows XP:
• It can defragment only local volumes.
• It can defragment only one volume at a time.
• It cannot defragment one volume while it is scanning another.
• It cannot be scheduled. If you need to schedule disk defragmentation, use the Defrag.exe command line tool.
Defragging will keep your computer running smooth and fast.
Virtual Memory Settings
If your computer has begun to slow down after several months of usage, there a a couple of minor changes you can make to your settings that will help increase the performance of your computer. Tweaking Windows is essential to get the maximum performance for your computer. Even on a fast computer, if the settings are incorrect, the computer will perform poorly.
Virtual Memory Settings:
Virtual memory for your computer is hard drive space used by Windows when it fills up the physical RAM. Let’s say you have a computer that has 256MB of RAM and you’re running several applications at once that might need a total of 400MB of memory. Windows will fill up the 256MB and then use the free space on the hard drive to store the rest. This is called the Paging file or Virtual memory and Windows will increase and decrease the size of this file as needed. Writing to disk takes much longer than writing to physical RAM, so when Windows uses the paging file, computer performance degrades.
That’s why you’ll always hear people asking if there is enough RAM because the more RAM you have, the better your computer’s performance will be. However, we can tweak the virtual memory settings also so that the paging file does not get fragmented and so that Windows does not have to grow or shrink the size of the paging file, both of which will cause the computer to slow down, especially on older machines.
By default, Windows uses the boot partition (the partition that contains your operating system files) and it is recommended to set the size to 1.5 times the amount of RAM that you have.
To change the virtual memory settings, go to Start, Control Panel and click on System. Click on the Advanced tab and under the Performance box, click Settings
On the Performance dialog, click the Advanced tab and then click Change under the Virtual Memory heading.
Now you’ll see the Virtual Memory settings as shown below:
Here are the rules for setting your paging file correctly:
To get the best performance it is best to create a paging file on a different partition than the boot partition (the drive that contains that operating system, which is usually the C drive) and to also create it on a separate hard drive. In this way, Windows can handle more I/O requests because the paging file will not have to compete with the system folder that needs to be constantly accessed as Windows runs.
The only problem with completely moving the paging file off the boot partition is that Windows uses the page file to write out debug info in case your computer crashes with blue screen of death STOP error. This is important for machines that have critical data, but for the average user, this is not a big deal. If you get the blue screen of death, it’s not an easy process at all to get to read the file and even if you can, it can be quite complex. But if you have enough space, then you can leave the paging file there.
So the best solution is to create on paging file on the boot partition that will take care in case of a crash and create another paging file on a separate partition on a DIFFERENT hard drive preferably. If you only have one hard drive on your computer, then just create another paging file on a different partition. Windows automatically uses the paging file that is on the less accessed partition using an internal algorithm.
Even more ideal would be if you could put the paging file in it’s own partition with no other data. This ensures that the paging file will never become fragmented and hence performance will be better. If it’s on a drive that has other data and the paging file must be expanded, and if there is other data in the way, the file will become fragmented.
Another way to reduce fragmentation of the paging file is to set the initial and maximum sizes to the same number. What this does is ensure that the file does not grow or shrink and therefore will not fragment. However, you should defragment the hard drive before doing this to ensure the paging file is all together on the hard drive.
So if you have only one partition, set the initial and maximum sizes to 1.5 times the amount of RAM you have. If you have more than one partition, select the boot partition and set the initial and max to 250MB. The reason for this is because it’s better to create another paging file on the other partition and create one paging file on the boot partition that’s just big enough for the mini dump file, which is 250MB.
On your second partition, select Custom Size and set the initial and maximum values to 1.5 times the amount of physical RAM you have. You can determine the amount of RAM you have by going to Start, Control Panel, and click System. You’ll see the amount of RAM at the bottom right.
Virtual Memory Settings:
Virtual memory for your computer is hard drive space used by Windows when it fills up the physical RAM. Let’s say you have a computer that has 256MB of RAM and you’re running several applications at once that might need a total of 400MB of memory. Windows will fill up the 256MB and then use the free space on the hard drive to store the rest. This is called the Paging file or Virtual memory and Windows will increase and decrease the size of this file as needed. Writing to disk takes much longer than writing to physical RAM, so when Windows uses the paging file, computer performance degrades.
That’s why you’ll always hear people asking if there is enough RAM because the more RAM you have, the better your computer’s performance will be. However, we can tweak the virtual memory settings also so that the paging file does not get fragmented and so that Windows does not have to grow or shrink the size of the paging file, both of which will cause the computer to slow down, especially on older machines.
By default, Windows uses the boot partition (the partition that contains your operating system files) and it is recommended to set the size to 1.5 times the amount of RAM that you have.
To change the virtual memory settings, go to Start, Control Panel and click on System. Click on the Advanced tab and under the Performance box, click Settings
On the Performance dialog, click the Advanced tab and then click Change under the Virtual Memory heading.
Now you’ll see the Virtual Memory settings as shown below:
Here are the rules for setting your paging file correctly:
To get the best performance it is best to create a paging file on a different partition than the boot partition (the drive that contains that operating system, which is usually the C drive) and to also create it on a separate hard drive. In this way, Windows can handle more I/O requests because the paging file will not have to compete with the system folder that needs to be constantly accessed as Windows runs.
The only problem with completely moving the paging file off the boot partition is that Windows uses the page file to write out debug info in case your computer crashes with blue screen of death STOP error. This is important for machines that have critical data, but for the average user, this is not a big deal. If you get the blue screen of death, it’s not an easy process at all to get to read the file and even if you can, it can be quite complex. But if you have enough space, then you can leave the paging file there.
So the best solution is to create on paging file on the boot partition that will take care in case of a crash and create another paging file on a separate partition on a DIFFERENT hard drive preferably. If you only have one hard drive on your computer, then just create another paging file on a different partition. Windows automatically uses the paging file that is on the less accessed partition using an internal algorithm.
Even more ideal would be if you could put the paging file in it’s own partition with no other data. This ensures that the paging file will never become fragmented and hence performance will be better. If it’s on a drive that has other data and the paging file must be expanded, and if there is other data in the way, the file will become fragmented.
Another way to reduce fragmentation of the paging file is to set the initial and maximum sizes to the same number. What this does is ensure that the file does not grow or shrink and therefore will not fragment. However, you should defragment the hard drive before doing this to ensure the paging file is all together on the hard drive.
So if you have only one partition, set the initial and maximum sizes to 1.5 times the amount of RAM you have. If you have more than one partition, select the boot partition and set the initial and max to 250MB. The reason for this is because it’s better to create another paging file on the other partition and create one paging file on the boot partition that’s just big enough for the mini dump file, which is 250MB.
On your second partition, select Custom Size and set the initial and maximum values to 1.5 times the amount of physical RAM you have. You can determine the amount of RAM you have by going to Start, Control Panel, and click System. You’ll see the amount of RAM at the bottom right.
How to increase computer performance
1– Configuring the paging file
2– Defragmenting your hard drive
3– Stopping the startup programs!
4– Save hard disk space!
5– Turn off indexing on your local drives
6- Disable Visual Effects in the Performance Options tab
7-Keeping Your Computer Cleaner + Faster TUT1
8-Keeping Your Computer Cleaner + Faster TUT2
9-Keeping Your Computer Cleaner + Faster TUT3
10-Deleting all temprary files
2– Defragmenting your hard drive
3– Stopping the startup programs!
4– Save hard disk space!
5– Turn off indexing on your local drives
6- Disable Visual Effects in the Performance Options tab
7-Keeping Your Computer Cleaner + Faster TUT1
8-Keeping Your Computer Cleaner + Faster TUT2
9-Keeping Your Computer Cleaner + Faster TUT3
10-Deleting all temprary files
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