Windows Tools, Help & Guides

Windows Tools, Help & Guides in accociation with Windows Talk and MyWindowsPC is giving away 6 copies of ESET Smart Security Suite (worth $59.99)

To win, simply do the following:

1. Visit Windows Talk (Optional but highly recommended)
2. Join MyWindowsPC
3. Make lots of friends and be in the top 6 popular people on the site.

The competition will end on Sunday, April 12, 2009 at 5PM MDT. Then, the top six members will be contacted by email (yeah I’m in the top six right now, but I’m not eligible to win my own prize :))

There will be more competitions in the future for active members on MyWindowsPC, so get a head start now!

Windows Guides reader littlelooloo asked the following:

I had a question about this worm that is supposed to wreak havoc on computers tomorrow… the news said most security programs have it taken care of.  I just wanted to get your opinion/confirmation if that’s really the case or should I download a patch from Microsoft?

If you are concerned about the Conficker (a.k.a. downandup) worm, possibly scheduled to wreak havoc tomorrow, April 1, 2009, you can download a cleanup tool from ESET. You can also apply a patch from Microsoft

From the Sophos blog:

It’s quite possible that Conficker will not do anything significant on April 1st. Certainly it won’t be “deadly” and your computers won’t melt. :-)

The fact of the matter is that Conficker is not set to activate a specific payload on that date. Rather, on April 1st Conficker will begin to attempt to contact the 50,000-a-day potential call-home web servers from which it may receive updates.

But it’s just as likely that Conficker will receive instructions to do something on March 28th, or April 2nd, or April 14th as it will on April 1st. The emphasis by some media outlets on April 1st is really unfortunate.

What we can say with certainty is that people should keep their protection up-to-date, ensure that they have firewalls and security patches in place, have a proper policy in place regarding USB usage and passwords. In addition it wouldn’t do any harm – if you suspect you may be infected by Conficker – to run a Conficker removal tool such as the free one from Sophos.

Download the ESET Cleanup Tool

Download the Patch from Microsoft

Windows Defender is enabled by default in Windows Vista and I personally use it all the time as I feel it does a good job. Some people don’t like Windows Defender and use other anti-spyware programs. In this guide I’ll show you how to disable Windows Defender in Windows Vista

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You may not want other users of your computer having access to certain data on your machine. In this guide you’ll learn about permissions and how to apply them to drives, files, and folders in Windows 7 and Vista.

One of the readers of Windows Guides asked me how to protect an entire drive from access by other users, which is something you too may want to do. The procedure for this is very simple and very effective.

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You may have come across some security guides on this site, which require you to edit your registry or open the group policy editor. If you don’t feel comfortable following these guides, but want to improve security, Nawras PC Supervisor is for you.

You can customize many security settings at the click of a button. Visit the author’s website to read more…

Download Nawras PC Supervisor

This guide is included as part of the Windows Guides security and administration series. In this guide, you will learn what the Group Policy Editor is and how to access and configure it.

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