Secure Your Home PC from Invaders

Give your home PC a service

With the ever increasing online credit card fraud scams, identity theft, email spamming and more intrusive spyware, how can you surf safely online these days? Well, by following some basic practical tips you can help keep out unwanted visitors from your PC.

How do I secure my Microsoft Windows home computer? By implementing the following guideline you will be increasing your computers security integrity making it harder for intruders to break in:

1. Anti-Virus. After installing your operating system or purchasing a new computer the first priority is to immediately install an anti-virus package to protect you when you first connect to the internet.  You should choose a package that will automatically update itself on a daily basis or make sure you configure your chosen package to update its virus definitions at a specific time when it is connected to the internet.

2. Patch The Operating System. Once you have your anti-virus installed you can connect to the internet and click on your Update Windows icon which will take you through the process of downloading and installing the latest system patches. Also, make sure that the downloading and installing of important updates is set to automatic.

3. Firewall Defence. Microsoft Windows has a built in basic Firewall but it is always advisable to install a third party Firewall as this will prevent any unrecognised outbound connections or buy a router which has a built in Firewall for the ultimate first line of defence protection.

4. Spyware Protection. Make sure that you have a memory resident Spyware application which monitors any changes that are being made to the registry or Internet Explorer. These tend not to be included in the free Spyware programs available and some of the freeware programs actually contain Spyware. By purchasing a brand named Spyware package you will get a more advanced software package which include the memory resident program and does not contain any Spyware. Configure the Spyware program to automatically download any new updates and allow it to scan your hard drive at least once a week to pick up any malicious code for you to remove.

5. Email Spam.  Be sure to set up an email spam filter on your email account. This is a fairly simple process and there will usually be a help icon which will guide you through the process. Basically you will be blocking all email coming into your inbox until you apply a rule that allows only emails that you define as being safe of from know contacts, anything else is sent to the junkbox. You will have to be careful as if you are awaiting an email from a new contact, the email will be sent to your junkbox. You will have to find that email and add it to your safe contacts list and in the future it will arrive in your inbox. DO NOT OPEN ANY SPAMMED EMAILS OR ATTACHMENTS AS THIS WILL INDICATE THAT YOUR EMAIL ADDRES IS VALID AND / OR IT CAN CONTAIN A VIRUS.

6. Wireless Security. If you have a wireless home network then make sure you have wireless encryption enabled preventing any unauthorised connections to your network or internet.

7. Downloading Software or Music. If you download software applications using a Peer to Peer networking program like Limewire or Kazaa then be careful as some of the files can contain viruses or spyware.

8. Backup, Backup, Backup! Purchase an external hard drive as this can be used to backup all your music, video and picture files, just in case your PC becomes infected with a virus and crashes the operating system and you need to re-install Windows. You can the view all of you files without loosing them.

9. Encryption. If you keep sensitive data on your PC then applying encryption to these files makes it hard for someone to view the contents.

10. . Try to use a password which is not a commonly used name but one that is unique, either by adding uppercase characters and numbers to the word, which strengthens the passwords encryption.

10 Simple Ways To Speed Up Your Windows XP

1. Defrag Disk to Speed Up Access to Data
One of the factors that slow the performance of the computer is disk fragmentation. When files are fragmented, the computer must search the hard disk when the file is opened to piece it back together. To speed up the response time, you should monthly run Disk Defragmenter, a Windows utility that defrags and consolidates fragmented files for quicker computer response.

2. Detect and Repair Disk Errors
Over time, your hard disk develops bad sectors. Bad sectors slow down hard disk performance and sometimes make data writing difficult or even impossible. To detect and repair disk errors, Windows has a built-in tool called the Error Checking utility. It’ll search the hard disk for bad sectors and system errors and repair them for faster performance.

3. Disable Indexing Services
Indexing Services is a little application that uses a lot of CPU. By indexing and updating lists of all the files on the computer, it helps you to do a search for something faster as it scans the index list. But if you know where your files are, you can disable this system service. It won’t do any harm to you machine, whether you search often or not very often.

4. Optimize Display Settings
Windows XP is a looker. But it costs you system resources that are used to display all the visual items and effects. Windows looks fine if you disable most of the settings and leave the following:

5. Speedup Folder Browsing
You may have noticed that everytime you open My Computer to browse folders that there is a little delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing speed, you can disable the “Automatically search for network folders and printers” option.

6. Disable Performance Counters
Windows XP has a performance monitor utility which monitors several areas of your PC’s performance. These utilities take up system resources so disabling is a good idea.

7. Optimize Your Pagefile
You can optimize your pagefile. Setting a fixed size to your pagefile saves the operating system from the need to resize the pagefile.

Windows XP sizes the page file to about 1.5X the amount of actual physical memory by default. While this is good for systems with smaller amounts of memory (under 512MB) it is unlikely that a typical XP desktop system will ever need 1.5 X 512MB or more of virtual memory. If you have less than 512MB of memory, leave the page file at its default size. If you have 512MB or more, change the ratio to 1:1 page file size to physical memory size.

8. Remove Fonts for Speed
Fonts, especially TrueType fonts, use quite a bit of system resources. For optimal performance, trim your fonts down to just those that you need to use on a daily basis and fonts that applications may require.

9. Use a Flash Memory to Boost Performance
To improve performance, you need to install additional RAM memory. It’ll let you boot your OS much quicker and run many applications and access data quicker. There is no easier and more technically elegant way to do it than use eBoostr.

eBoostr is a little program that lets you improve a performance of any computer, powered by Windows XP in much the same way as Vista’s ReadyBoost. With eBoostr, if you have a flash drive, such as a USB flash thumb drive or an SD card, you can use it to make your computer run better. Simply plug in a flash drive through a USB socket and Windows XP will use eBoostr to utilize the flash memory to improve performance.

The product shows the best results for frequently used applications and data, which becomes a great feature for people who are using office programs, graphics applications or developer tools. It’ll surely attract a special attention of laptop owners as laptop upgrade is usually more complicated and laptop hard drives are by definition slower than those of desktops.

10. Perform a Boot Defragment
There's a simple way to speed up XP startup: make your system do a boot defragment, which will put all the boot files next to one another on your hard disk. When boot files are in close proximity to one another, your system will start faster.

On most systems, boot defragment should be enabled by default, but it might not be on yours, or it might have been changed inadvertently. To make sure that boot defragment is enabled:

Hope you find these 10 tips useful. Have a nice day!