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»
Posted in Hardware, Windows Vista, Windows XP | No Comments »
February 13, 2007 by
Jason Because Windows XP has to be all things to all people it has many services running that take up system resources that you will never need. Below is a list of services that can be disabled on most machines:
- Alerter
- Clipbook
- Computer Browser
- Distributed Link Tracking Client
- Fast User Switching
- Help and Support - (If you use Windows Help and Support leave this enabled)
- Human Interface Access Devices
- Indexing Service
- IPSEC Services
- Messenger
Read More»
Posted in Windows XP | 3 Comments »
February 07, 2007 by
Jason 
Whenever you start your computer, you are faced with a few moments of thumb twiddling while Windows XP boots and prompts you to log on. Although you should expect to wait for a few moments, sometimes Windows XP seems to boot rather slowly. In fact, you may notice that over a period of time the PC that used to roar to life seems a bit sluggish instead. Fortunately, you can perform several techniques that help Windows XP get the bootup speed you want. This tutorial explores how to put these techniques to work.Stopping Unneeded Startup Services Read More»
Posted in Computer | 2 Comments »
January 25, 2007 by
Jason In Windows XP Professional, you have two remote networking features called Remote Assistance and Remote Desktop Sharing. These remote networking features are very helpful in a variety of situations but if you don’t use them, it is good idea to disable them to save boot time. You can always enable them later if you want to use them.
Note: Read More»
Posted in Windows XP | No Comments »
