June 22, 2010
How to Remove Windows XP Messenger
To remove Windows Messenger, follow these simple steps:
1. Navigate to the folder Root:WindowsINF folder, where Root: is your primary hard drive (usually C:)
2. In the INF folder, open sysoc.inf, after making a copy of the file.
3. Look for the line containing “msmsgs” in it.
4. Near the end of that particular line, you’ll notice that the word “hide.”
5. Delete “hide”, leaving the commas surrounding it.
6. Save the file and close it.
7. Open the Add and Remove Programs applet in the Control Panel.
8. Click the Add / Remove Windows Components button.
9. You should see “Windows Messenger” in that list. Remove the checkmark from its box and click Next to remove Windows Messenger.
June 19, 2010
Rename My Computer Via the Registry
Rename My Computer Via the Registry
1. Click Start–>Run. In the Run box, type Regedit
2. Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTCLSID{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}.
3. Rename the value named “LocalizedString” to “LocalizedString.old”. Create a new REG_EXPAND_SZ value named “LocalizedString”, and set the value to “%COMPUTERNAME%” or whatever else you would like to use.
4. The new name will appear the next time the desktop is refreshed.
June 17, 2010
Web Safety for the Family
If you’re not sure where to start when trying to encourage healthy Internet usage for your children, you may wish to consider the following when teaching them to use the Internet safely.
1. Talk about their Internet experience. Encourage dialog about what they see when they surf the web
2. Teach your children to tell you if they see anything on the Internet that makes them nervous.
3. Teach them the same security steps that you take online. For example, teach them to create usernames on chatrooms that do not identify anything about themselves.
4. Consider using monitoring software to track their conversations in chatrooms and the web sites they visit. If you find something objectionable, block the website using the “Restricted Sites” feature of your Internet browser. If you see repeated conversations in a chatroom with a suspicious person, put a stop to it.
5. Teach your children that it is wrong to give out information about themselves in chatrooms, such as their physical address or phone number
6. Make sure your children understand that the rules of right and wrong apply to the virtual world, just as they do in the real world.
7. Teach your children the difference between reading a textbook for class versus reading something online. Make sure they understand how to distinguish a valid online source of information from an opinion.
8. Teach your children internet etiquette and insist that they respect others online.
9. Make sure you have a limited user account for your children. That way, they cannot change settings that you have created to protect them online.
10. Use software such as Bitdefender to protect your computer against phishing attacks and hackers. You can purchase Bitdefender at http://www.product-key.com/software/
June 15, 2010
Restricting Anonymous Access
Did you know that a hacker could list the user names on your computer, simply by connecting to what are known as null shares on your Windows computer? For example, open a command prompt and run this command:
net use \[computername]ipc$ “” /user:”"
Replace [computername] with your actual computer name. You’ve just logged into your computer anonymously and can use tools to list your user names. The IPC$ share is used with temporary connections between clients and servers by using named pipes for communication among network programs. It is primarily used for to remotely administer network servers.
To disable anonymous shares, follow these steps:
1. Open Registry Editor by clicking Start->Run and typing regedit in the Run box
2. Navigate to the registry key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlLsa.
3. Double click the value restrictanonymous and change the value from 0 to 2.
If this registry value does not exists, create a new one.
June 14, 2010
Run Microsoft Updates
The simplest way to secure your home computer is to run Microsoft updates on a regular basis. Every month, Microsoft releases updates to its Windows operating system and Office software suite. The updates patch critical vulnerabilities in the operating system and software, vulnerabilities which are exploited by viruses and malware every day on the Internet.
To update your computer with Microsoft updates, follow these steps in Windows XP:
1. Click Start > All Programs
2. Click Windows Update
3. On the updates site, click the “Express” button to install high priority updates.
You can also configure your operating system to automatically download updates on a regular basis. To do this follow these steps on Windows XP:
1. Click Start > Control Panel
2. Double-click Automatic updates
3. In the Automatic Updates dialog box, select an option to automatically download and install updates.
May 27, 2010
Log on to Windows XP with the Administrator account
Windows XP computers have a built in user account named Administrator to log on with the Administrator account so that you can install software or change computer settings
1. At the Welcome screen, press CTRL+ALT+DEL on your keyboard by holding down both the CTRL and ALT keys and then pressing DELETE.
2.The Log On to Windows dialog box appears. In the User name box, type Administrator. In the Password box, type your Administrator password, if you created one during Windows XP setup. If you can’t remember the Administrator password, you may be able to set it while logged in as another user with administrative rights.
When you are browsing the Web, reading e-mail, or using your computer for every day tasks, you should be logged on using a limited account. Log on as administrator only to install software or change settings. This will protect your computer by disallowing unauthorized software, such as viruses, to install themselves under your user account.
May 26, 2010
Use a secure file system
When you’re installing Windows XP, you get a choice between two file systems: FAT32 and NTFS. On installation, Windows XP defaults to using NTFS. Make sure to keep this as the default.
NTFS has some major benefits, such as providing enhanced reliability and stability. NTFS also supports large hard drives with up to 2 terabytes. In addition, NTFS provides more security for your file system, because it allows you to set permissions on folders in order to allow access only by the users that you choose.
To assign NTFS permissions, follow these steps:
1. On your Windows 2000 desktop, right-click My Computer.
2. Click Explore. This will start the Windows Explorer.
3. Click the plus sign to the left of an NTFS volume that you would like to view.
4. Find a folder and right-click on that folder.
5. Click the Properties option on the list.
6. Now use Alt-Tab to switch to the Securities tab, or select it by clicking on it.
May 25, 2010
Defragmenting your hard disk
You can significantly improve the speed at which Windows accesses file data by defragmenting your hard disk. Defragmenting means that data on the disk will be rearranged so that it is stored sequentially. Over the operational life of the drive, various factors can cause data to become scattered.
Fragmentation slows the drive down considerably because the read/write heads on the drive must constantly seek for a new disk location to piece together different parts of whatever file is being read. Factors that can fragment files include uninstalling software, improper shutdowns, system crashes, etc.
To defragment the disk, you must can access the Windows disk defragmenter by clicking Start | Programs (or All Programs) | Accessories | System Tools | Disk Defragmenter. First, click the “Analyze” button in order to view the amount of fragmentation on the disk. Windows will inform you if defragmentation is recommended.
To defragment the drive, select the drive and hit “Defragment.” You must have 15% of your hard drive free in order to defragment. The process usually takes a long time, so leave it running over night.
Another way to defragment your hard drive is to follow these steps:
1) Open a command prompt by clicking Start and typing “cmd” without quotes in the search box.
2) Type the command “defrag c:,” without quotes, where c: is the name of the drvie you want to degragment.
At James River Software, we use and highly recommend Diskeeper to keep our hard drives healthy. For a limited time, you can get Diskeeper for free when you purchase BitDefender from our affiliation. Please see http://www.product-key.com/software
May 7, 2010
Anti-phishing software
The term “phishing” means a criminal activity that uses social engineering designed to trick you into divulging sensitive, personal information such as username and password to a banking web site. Phishing is usually carried out via email.
A hacker will send you an email asking you to click a link to a bogus web site and asking you to enter personal information. This information then get’s saved in the hacker’s database, where he can access it whenever he needs some extra cash.
You can easily identify a phishing scam. One way is to look for misspelled domain names in the hyperlink contained in the email. For example, an email that appears to be from FirstBank.com may contain a link spelled like www.firtsbank.com
Another way is to mouse over the hyperlink. A yellow help message will appear, showing the actual destination of the hyperlink. When resting the mouse pointer on the link, if the real web address looks nothing like the hyperlink text, then this is a sign of a suspicious email.
Most reputable companies will almost never send you a link to a secure web page in an email. To protect yourself against phising scams, the best software product to use is Bitdefender.
Retrieve Microsoft Office Product Key
If you need to retrieve your Microsoft Office product key, you’ll find that you’re in good company. Many computer users go through the frustration every day of having to reinstall their Microsoft Office product, without being able to locate the product key.
To retrieve your Microsoft Office Product Key, you’ll have to hunt down your original CD Case or the manual which originally came with Office. The product key will be on a yellow sticker inside of the CD. If that’s not possible, another solution is to retrieve the key directly from your hard drive using a Keyfinder utility.
Here’s how it works. Let’s say you already have Microsoft Office installed on your computer. When Office is installed, the product key is stored in an encrypted string in your system registry. This encrypted version of the product key is called a DigitalProductID, which uniquely identifies your version of Office and lets the Office suite know that you have a fully installed, activated version of Office on your computer. Don’t try this at home, but, if you were to delete the DigitalProductID, you would find that Office would then prompt you to re-enter your product key — it’s the setting that determines if your copy of Office is valid.
Does this mean you can open your registry and retrieve the key yourself? Not exactly. This key is an encoded version of the product key, which cannot be read by human eyes.
So, the solution would be to download and install Keyfinder, a software utility that decodes the Microsoft Office DigitalProductID for you. After decoding, Keyfinder will display the full product key.
You should know that the Microsoft Office Product Key that you retrieve with Keyfinder was the one stored on your hard drive at the time Office was installed. So, in order for this solution to be effective, you must ensure that you, in fact, are holding in your hand the same copy of Office that was installed on your hard drive. One mistake a computer user may make is in thinking s/he can borrow a Microsoft Office CD from a friend and then input the product key that was found on their his/her hard drive. In other words, the copy Office on your computer must be the same as the CD you are using to reinstall Office.
Another mistake a computer user may make is in thinking that a Kefyinder has the ability to generate product keys in order to “hack” or “pirate” the software. In fact, Keyfinder, will only retrieve the Microsoft Office product key on your system, not generate one.