Computer Security

We constantly hear about our identities being stolen and nowadays mostly by scumbags stealing our information when we are Online to the Internet. Thieves have now even gone further by intercepting our information through ATM's and eftpos machines used in stores. How do they get it from eftpos machines?

Simple, they pose as technicians come to upgrade or service them. They slip in an electronic device to catch peoples pins and personal information.

One thing I think is amazing with credit cards is that banks accept things being bought Online and all that is generally needed is a person's credit card number and name. Items then are sent to a bogus address. Your credit card number (and cvc) is on display everywhere. Pay your bill in a restaurant for example. The waiter whisks away with your card then returns it for your signature. How many credit card details are written down while this is happening.

True nowadays more and more places are now using portable eftpos machines where your card does not have to leave your person. We now have cards with memory chips on them that are supposed to be safer. How long will it be before the information will be able to be grabbed from it by thieves.

But let me get back to what this article is all about. Safeguarding your information Online. Hackers are finding more and more innovative ways for getting into our PC's. I haven't been hacked you say. I am sorry to say that the reason is that they just haven't found you yet. But never fear they eventually will.

As technology advances at a faster and faster rate new avenues for getting at our information open up. For example not so many years ago connection to the Internet was by wire or cable now we can connect through wireless, wifii and many other ways through the ether. My connection is through a satellite link and then through a wireless router around my home. More homes are now being built with wireless as standard within the home.

What about the connection you use when you stay at a hotel. Most hotels provide Internet access either by wireless or the standard physical LAN connection in your room

Do you know that there are people that drive around with a Laptop looking for unsecured wireless networks so that they can steal not your identity but to use your link to get free internet time. You even see people boasting about this on forums. If they can do this then it's no difficulty for people to steal your identity this way as well.

So how do we prevent these things. Secure your wireless network. This can be enabled in all wireless routers.

Do not keep any personal information on your computer or "type" any information through your keyboard.

Hah! You say, why should I do that. I have all this good stuff installed that is supposed to prevent this sort of thing. Well, nothing is perfect and hackers are smart. They eventually find a way around these things.

You need to use good home computer security practices. Read more about this and how you do not have to have your information on your computer but still can use it Online by visiting my site at "Home Computer Security" also if you have a slow computer find hints also on my site at "Windows XP Slow"

Windows XP Startup Problems

There are many ways to find how to determine what the problem is with your windows xp installation. You need a procedure that enables you to isolate what the problem is.

The root cause of startup failure, including what contributes to it can stem from a variety of problems, like user error, application faults, hardware failures, or virus problems. If the problem is really serious you may even have to resort to completely restoring windows XP in it's entirety.

To get more information on how to approach a windows XP slow problem visit "

Windows XP Startup Problems

Clone Hard Disk Drive

What is cloning? We have all heard about cloning animals and somewhere even humans. But what about clone hard disk drive of your PC. Well it is an exact copy of your hard disk on to another hard disk. With your hard drive you can copy its memory, every last bit of it, and restore it on a completely different hard drive.

Clone hard disk drive is something that you need to do to safeguard not only your data but your complete operating system as well. Hard drives go bad sometimes, and other times you may want to upgrade to a bigger hard drive. Either way, wouldn't it be nice to be able to get a new hard drive and make it an exact replica of your old one. Clone hard disk drive will do this for you.

The easiest way to clone hard disk drive is to use a good hard drive cloning software. If you use cloning software, all you have to do is insert the disk, follow its instructions and then it will start the cloning process.

Your other option then is to store it on a DVD, if it can fit, or the hard drive you actually plan on copying it to. To do this you need to have the disk in a disk USB enclosure or actually installed in your PC.

The clone hard disk drive procedure is preferable to just a simple backup of your data. If the disk fails and you only have a data backup you would have to reinstall Windows and all the applications you had installed.

A clone hard disk drive means that you would have an always, up to date hard drive clone.. So if anything should happen, you can just boot from your other hard drive. Find out more about clone hard disk drive software by visiting "

Clone Hard Disk"

Windows XP Slow Startup

You have a PC with a windows xp slow startup problem. At first your spanking new Desktop PC or laptop was running like a dream. Fast as lightning. Then as time progressed things started to happen. It takes a while to startup when you switch on. Occasionally things just seem to go at a crawl. Hah, Lets try one of those amazing fixit programs advertised. Shell out bucks and she’ll be OK. Humm…. That will fix the slow windows xp startup problems. Things seem to be a little bit better. What about that program that says you have a registry problem. That will fix it. Well believe it or not they may fix a lot of problems but they may not be the one you have got. They most probably not be what a lot of people have got.
I will tell you something about new PC’s and laptops. They have something in them that is mechanical.
Yes a hard drive. They are these days a sophisticated item but they are still mechanical.
My first PC was made by Wang. My first laptop was made by Wang. (I have still got it. Probably a collector’s item now). Some people may remember Wang. They were one of the original Word processing systems companies. Way before MS Word and they were good. (At the time) Well, they produced a PC. It had a 10 megabyte disk drive and I thought that was BIG. Yes it was mechanical and yes today’s disks are still mechanical. Now we consider gigabyte disk drives small.
Eventually disk drives will disappear as static (means it does move anything but bits) ram (for the un-initiated “random access memory”) becomes so cheap that this will do away with them.
In the meantime you have your mechanical disk drive.
Well to get these “bits”, in which a number of them make up your file, a mechanical head has to move over a recorded surface. Occasionally it may pick a bit up wrong. That’s OK the manufacturers knew this would happen so put in things called “checksums” that can up to a certain amount actually figure out what was missing and replace it. Good, that’s fine.
What about those it can’t? Well hard luck you have a corrupted file! The only way to fix that is to restore it from somewhere. But that is another subject. The main thing is that if this is some sort of system file it may cause some problems and slow down your PC until it either sorts itself out or gives up. (WOW a system crash) That makes a system really slow (like stopped).
Back to your slow system.
Let me explain the manufacture of hard disks. One thing the manufacturers know is that the disks they manufacture will have defects on the surfaces of them. They produce millions of them. Do they chuck away the ones with defects? No! Each one goes through a test. As they are tested and a defective part of the disk is found they use a bit of smarts and make that bit of disk unavailable. If the number of defective parts go over a certain number then they reject the disk.
It may be that you have a labeled 80gbyte disk. But in actual fact you may have only a 79.9999 gigabyte disk. What the heck, what’s a few bits between friends.
Unfortunately, sorry I had to say that word. Parts of the disk surface may become defective after-wards. You may not know it until months (or even a year) after you have bought your state of the art PC or laptop.
Why?
Well when you first got your PC you may only have used 6 or 7 gigabytes of your 80 gigabyte disk. Over the months or year you put on all your good stuff, (photo’s, games and such) Your disk gradually uses 30 gigabytes. (Got lots of photos you know) Then bingo one photo is written across the defective part.
One thing about windows xp is that it goes checking all the time around the used portion of the disk. It hits the defective part and hey, hold on minute have a look at this again, and again, and again as it tries to recover the file. Eventually if it can’t it times out. Wow your system springs back to life again. Now if this happens to a system file it may take longer. Your system may not crash but it will take longer checking it out.
This can manifest (yes, I know some posh words) in a slow startup when you first switch on. This is because windows does a lot of checking at this time. Unfortunately windows keeps a lot of this stuff to itself.
That’s what these purveyors of good stuff to fix everything up for you depend on.
Now I have got all the crap out of the way I had better tell you what you should do first before forking anything out. (money that is)
This is pertaining to windows xp but most of it is also relevant to other windows OS’s
The first thing is checking that damn disk for bad spots and corrupted files.
Perform the following:

1. On your start menu (bottom left corner) place your mouse pointer and click the right mouse button.
2. Place your mouse pointer on “explore” and click the left mouse button.
3. You should now have a screen showing your file structure.
4. Place your mouse over the part that probable says “Local Disk (C)” Whatever it is called it should have the (C).
5. Left click and it should highlight. Right click the mouse while it is selected.
6. You should get another menu. Right at the bottom you will see “properties”. Left click it.
7. You should get a box that shows a pretty circle with blue and pink segments in it. (If you have more pink than blue then you are in a good state space wise on your disk. If you have only a small sliver of pink then you are in some other trouble. Send me a comment if you want)
8. At the top of the box there is a menu. Click “Tools” with your left mouse button.
9. You should come up with another box. In it there should be a selection “Check Now”, left click it.
10. In the box that appears tick both of the “check disk” options with your left mouse buttons and then click “start“
11. You should then come up with a message with a load of waffle. Just click “yes“
12. You should now restart your system. When it comes up again it should show a messages saying “Checking Files System on C” and a countdown counter. Do not touch anything just let it count down and it will start checking your disk.
13. It will check in 5 phases. The first three are fairly quick but the last two can vary depending on how much data you have on your disk and the size of your disk. Go and have a cup of coffee and just let it ramble on.
14. What the check will do is make unavailable bad parts and it will attempt to restore some parts from a special segment of disk.
15. Eventually it will restart.

Note: Occasionally Windows XP does not pick up the signal to do a check. If not just repeat the above as I have always found if this happens it does it OK the second time.
Your windows xp slow startup problem and many other problems may have been resolved and if it did recover and clean up bad bits you may see an improvement. There are other factors that affect windows xp slow startup which I cover in other articles in this blog.
If after doing all the things that are recommended (and don’t cost you anything) then maybe you should look at the registry file as this can be a prime source of Windows XP slowing down.

Windows XP Registry File

The windows xp registry file is a database file that is part of windows xp. It contains all the information and parameters pertaining to your windows xp installation. It holds information about the programs that you have installed as well as the entire configuration parameters for your system. The windows xp registry file also holds all the information on how the desktop looks to you.

Your computer runs fast when your computer is new and the windows xp registry file has not got much in it and is clean without leftover information. As your computer gets older and you install more programs as well as removing programs you no longer want, your computer starts to slow down. This is because the  windows xp registry file get larger and larger causing windows XP to take longer to find information. Your registry will also start to contain errors, which also has a slowing effect. By removing unnecessary files, your computer finds what it needs in the registry a lot faster. Despite this, the windows registry will still get filled up over time. Frivolous entries will clutter the windows xp registry file as it becomes fuller and fuller and more and more programs are installed or removed.

One way to reduce this is by using a registry cleaner. This works by removing and deleting unnecessary program information. It will also remove all those errors that have accumulated in the windows xp registry file. When you create or delete files or install or uninstall software, it adds to your registry. Unfortunately by removing programs fragments are frequently left behind. Bits of the software programs are often still on your computer. If you leave these remnants, problems can be caused, sometimes making your Windows XP unstable and slowing it down causing problems in the future. A registry cleaner is programed to clean up your registry file by removing anything that should not be there and compacting it.

Because of the need for Windows XP to use the registry, there is no way to avoid cluttering up your windows xp registry file. You can fix the Windows registry errors, but you should avoid trying to delete registry errors yourself. You would be much better off purchasing a low-cost Windows registry cleaner and periodically running it.

Most types of registry cleaner provide a backup feature, which should be used before using any  registry cleaner software. Using the backup feature allows you to restore your registry settings if there is a problem during the cleaner use. Registry cleaner software allows you to clean and repair windows XP registry file without risk.

You should also have your system checkpoint enabled so that you can use the windows system restore feature if anything gets out of hand.

The most thorough registry cleanup can be performed using registry scanners and cleaners. With minimal instruction, the windows registry will be repaired and cleaned by these tools. Don’t make a mistake, a windows registry clean is of utmost importance to extend your computer’s life.

The commercial registry cleaner programs now sold are much more efficient and up-to-date than the windows free registry repair tools available. Just remember it is important that you periodically clean your windows XP registry file not only to speed up windows XP but to keep it stable.