Tag: logs

14 Tips to Speed Up Microsoft Outlook 2007

January 09, 2009 by Jason

While Outlook 2007 offers many new features that do indeed offer real benefits it can come at a price – performance.

On my Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM Outlook 2007 originally took a good 20 seconds to fire up from a fully booted PC and appeared to be constantly sluggish. So what can be done about it?

Tip 1: Delete attachments

A little-known feature in Outlook is the ability to keep an email but delete one or several attachment. Firstly, sort your inbox by file size (descending) and open a message (by double clicking so it opens in a new window) where you no longer wish to keep the attachment. Right click over the attachment and select Remove. Now save the email, repeat with all relevant emails in this mailbox and then repeat in any other mailboxes (including your sent items). Read More»

Turn on auditing to monitor account attacks

March 08, 2007 by Jason

There is no doubt that all of the security features in Windows Vista will help keep your computer secure. However, these features become less valuable when they are not turned on by default. One feature, known as user account auditing, is not turned on by default. With this feature is turned off, anyone with physical access or remote access to through a hole in your firewall (such an opening for Remote Desktop) can use a brute force attack against your user account for as long as they want without getting noticed at all. How? The default audit security policy is configured to not log any account logon events, successful or failed.

This allows an attacker to try to hack your accounts for as long as it takes to break in. There are a few ways to protect against this that I am going to go over in my next article about the Account Lockout policy. But first, it is important to turn on this account auditing so that you can see who may be trying to break into your accounts. After you have adjusted the auditing security policy, you will be able to see any account attacks including the account that they tried to logon with and where the request came from. Read More»

Speed Access

January 31, 2007 by Jason

Every time your laptop connects to a Wi-Fi hot spot, whether it’s in your home or down at the coffee shop, it logs the name of the access point that you connected to in the Windows Preferred Network settings. If you accidentally (or maybe even deliberately) connect to your neighbor’s access point, and then find yourself reconnecting again despite your efforts not to, you need to bump that listing down in your connection list and move your router to the top.
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