The safest thing, Fred, would be to ensure that there's absolutely nothing of any worth left on your machine. If that means clearing your cookies and your browsing history regularly each day and deleting any stored passwords from the registry, then so be it. Also empty your recycle bin.

Even so, these items are unlikely to be permanently deleted from your hard disk and could still be recovered. There is software available which claims to permanently delete stuff.

My experience of anything to do with security and encryption is that everything is crackable. Whichever encryption method that you choose, there will undoubtably be a free crack for it somewhere on the internet.

Re Hilary's mention about clearing out all the the dross from your machine, I am an avid user of CCleaner.

In fact, I must use it several times per day. It makes cookie management a doddle and I do like to keep some cookies undeleted because I can then go to sites where cookie recognition by those sites is an asset for me to have. With CCleaner I can easily choose which cookies to delete or keep.

I could use CCleaner to delete History files but I don't do so because I tend to surf quite a lot using History links.

I use CCleaner to delete Temporary Files and Temporary Internet Files, Clipboard and my Recycle Bin. I also use it to maintain my Registry Integrity - this is a doddle to do too.

I can also use it to control my Windows XP Startup programs and do Uninstalls.

It will do more than this but I don't tend to use it for much more than I've listed above.

A reliable download site for CCleaner for me to recommend is via my friends', The Computer Doctors' Software Download Web Site


Can't help with anything to do with encryption but I'd start looking for it here:



(Note how they have used a topical picture of the brand new and very important 'missing link'. Clever, eh?)

Fred

The best disk encryption is Microsoft Bitlocker which is included with Vista Business and Ultimate and the equivalent Windows 7 versions. You could upgrade to Windows 7 RC which is free until March, the only downside with Windows 7 is that I don't think you can upgrade XP to it so you will have to do a fresh install and possibly another one when you eventually buy the final version.

Bitlocker works seamlessly and has a minimal impact on performance. I think Hilary is a bit unfair in saying that everything is crackable. She is almost right, but the only ways to crack Bitlocker are:-

Guess the password - best of luck to them if you use a strong one.

Steal the computer and get it to some serious diagnostic kit within a few minutes of it being switched off. This hack has been demonstrated but is not going to happen in practise.

Get hold of the recovery key. This is an extremely long number which you need to file away in a very safe place.

Older computers may need a key file that is stored on a USB drive to start them so if you if the USB drive to the computer thief he is in. Older computers also have to support USB drives at boot.

Plugging your machine into the wired network at in Internet Cafe is comparable to connecting to the Internet with a n ADSL modem and no external firewall. Not really to be recommended but slightly safer than public WiFi. If you want to be secure, you can buy a USB device that is a standalone external firewall. This should keep you as safe as you are at home at least if you only use HTTPS or VPN connections.

I haven't used GotomyPC but my guess is that as it is essentially a remote desktop then you should be able to put similar restrictions in place but you will by relying on XP user security which is not bullet proof.

Another possibility is to boot your machine from a live DSL Linux stick that carries minimal personal info. The problem there is that WiFi connections with Linux tend to be interesting challenges.

Doc

If you delete all your temporary files with CCleaner, does it overwrite them on the disk or just delete them? If the latter then you need to also use a disk eraser on the free space.

Hilary,Exec, Optimist, Thank you all, I will have to sit back and digest the information.

I getting to old for IT and new fangled ideas. The words of my 82year old brother, who bought himself a new computer last week.

He was sitting on a bag of ice and cursing at his old one with the 2 fans down, the casing off and a heater fan blowing cold air at it.

I did suggest he poked with a screw driver, but he thank me for my advice but decline it.

Fred, for encryption you might want to look at TrueCrypt http://www.truecrypt.org .

I use it to encrypt USB sticks and so on, but I've never used its whole disk encrpytion facility. It has the advantage of being free and offers various good encryption algorithms such as Bruce Schneier's Twofish

Cheers

MM

Optimist

"For the super cautious users CCleaner also offers secure file erasing. It does this by overwriting the files before deleting them, making it impossible to recover the data."

Re: CCleaner - most people seem to be happy with it, but it utterly bolloxed some of my registry settings to the extent that Office was broken, and could neither be repeaired, uninstalled or reinstalled. Wasn't very happy, and has now been added to the long list of registry cleaning tools that I won't touch with a bargepole.

Opti's Bitlocker certainly looks promising but, if it's only available on certain editions of Vista, it may not be an option for Fred.

From what I've also seen on the internet, I'm inclined to think that TrueCrypt has already been cracked.

I still maintain that the best option for Fred is to ensure that there's nothing whatsoever on his PC of any worth if he's that worried about it being pinched.

The worst thing that's ever happened to me PC-wise while abroad was a few years back when we retrieved a laptop from the boot of the car only to find there was a massive crack going right through the middle of the screen. As it was a ski resort, we were never sure if we'd shut the boot down too hard or if it was the altitude that had caused the crack.

Other than that, we've used laptops with mobile phones and data cards as well as free and paid-for wifi services and never had a problem. I think it's very easy to worry too much about these kind of things.

Never re-install your Windows XP ever again:

http://www.reimage.com/home/....

Just a bought a new DVD player from Philips 5990/05 it has a USB 2 connector, I need to know if I use it with my passport HD and/or USB memory stick, can it get infected with virus like a pc???

I'm running my Vista with the indexing turned off as I'm told it helps - except when searching for a file.

Yesterday I found Windows Explorer hopeless when I did need to track down some photos from their file numbers.

Rather than restarting the indexing (I only need to do this sort of search a few times a year) I decided to look for some freeware. My usual source of safe software, MajorGeeks, does not seem to have anything.

Any suggestions, folks?

TP

TP

Windows Live Photo Gallery is very good at keeping track of pictures though I'm not sure how much it depends on the indexing service. Google do a similar app if you are prepared to trust that company on your machine.

Edit

You could always share your drive to another machine that runs XP and search from that. It may not be much quicker, but at least it should not slow your Vista machine down as much.

Back again - you can tell it's a damp Bank Holiday in London.

My Diskeeper seems to have decided it cannot do the job, so I have removed it.

Lots of people around here like CCleaner. From the same home comes this jobbie.

Has anyone given it a bash?

TP

TP

I've edited my post 8104.

Haven't seen Defraggler before, but as I'm a great Diskeeper fan, what version are you using and why has it decided it can't do the job?

Opt,

Pictures. As it's my hobby I have picture viewer/manipulators coming out of my ears.

It's just when someone looks at my website that has 75,000 images on it and asks for "c04t8308_std.jpg" and give me no clue when it was taken I need to find the original RAW file.

Windows Explorer should, in my book anyway, simply find "8308". Yes, it eventually did, but what a struggle.

As I say it's only needed on the odd occasion, but why spend 30 mins doing what should take 5?

TP

Opt,

I had Diskeeper Pro.

Diskeeper kept hanging/stopping after it had analysed around 24% of the drive. I was alerted to a potential problem when, on looking in the first time, I saw as much red as all the other colours on a drive that is only about 33% full anyway.

That was when I tried to re-run the analyse report.

I could not use the Vista defrag without uninstalling Diskeeper. I've now used the Vista version and it seem the fragmentation is around 1%, but it's jolly hard to see the command exe report as it closes the DOS box after less than 5 seconds.

EDIT. Until you realise you should run it from the DOS box rather than from Start. Now I see have 256 fragmented files on C and just 1 on I. Seems I can live with the Vista defrag. Better as I did feel that Diskeeper was taking resources and I can let Vista do the job with a weekly schedule.

TP

TP

... simply find "8308" ...

I just fired up Windows Live photo Gallery. It will do that - very quickly!

Opt,

Never thought of using that. I'll give it a try later this afternoon.

Thanks,

TP

Opt,

I assumed that Windows Search would find a sequential group of characters in a file name. I was keying in 8308. No luck. You're not telling me to use the inverted commas are you?

If I key in c04t8308 it works.

My jury is out when I try *8308*. It seems to work sometimes and not others.

The Photo Gallery seems to be following the same lines.

In reality I can, in future, key in enough of the start of the filename to be conclusive. It just caught me off guard as a Search in something like word will pick up anything that contains the characters you have picked.

Computers!!

TP