PCTips Box

In my last article I showed you how you can protect your computer against anonymous user account attacks by turning on account logon auditing so you could see when someone attempts to remotely logon to your account. Now I am going to help your increase your level of protection with the Account Lockout Policy.

Creating an Account Lockout Policy will protect your account by limiting the number of time a remote application or attacker can try to guess your password. This works by automatically locking out your account after a designated number of incorrect passwords were entered. Your account will remain locked out for a designated period of time before it is automatically unlocked and it can be logged into again. This provides a valuable addition to your account security because it can render brute force password attacks useless. If you have your lockout threshold set to 4 bad attempts and the lockout duration to 15 minutes, an attacker can try to guess your password a maximum of 16 times per hour. (more…)

Are the save password check boxes missing from your network authentication screens? This is one of the most annoying issues with Windows Vista for me since I work off a local NAS I have at home all the time. Rather than just save my password as it should the first time when I checked the save password box, it seems to throw my password away after a reboot. If that was not enough, now Windows Vista no longer even gives me the option to save my password.

One easy way to fix this issue and store my passwords for real is the use the Stored Usernames and Passwords utility. Follow these steps: (more…)

The indexing service in Windows Vista is responsible for making those search boxes all over the operating system lightening fast. By default Windows automatically indexes all files in your user profile folders, start menu and any files you have setup for offline access. If you have a lot of files in these locations and the files change often you can be putting a heavy load on the indexing service. For maximum performance when using Windows Vista I recommend disabling indexing for all other locations other than the Start Menu. This will lessen the background work that Windows Vista has to do. It will also slow down your searches of other locations but that is the price you must pay for this performance benefit. (more…)

If you have a tablet PC and are running Windows Vista you have some new options to customize your pen flicks that will help you become a pen power users.

1. Click on the Start Button and key in Pen and Input Devices and hit Enter.
2. Click or tap on the Flicks tab.
3. Enable flicks by checking Use flicks to perform common actions quickly and easily if it is not already enabled.
4. Select Navigational and editing flicks.
5. The Customize button will now be active. Click it.
6. Customize away and hit OK when you are finished.
7. Hit OK once more to exit

Every time you use the scroll wheel on your mouse you scroll 4 lines at a time in Windows Vista. This is adequate for most users but did you know that it is possible to tweak this setting to make your scroll wheel more or less sensitive? It is possible with a quick little reg hack.

1. Click on the Start Button and key in regedit and hit Enter.
2. Navigate through HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop.
3. Scroll to the bottom and edit WheelScrollLines. Set this to a lower value for a more sensitive scroll wheel. larger for less sensitive.
4. Reboot.

Internet Explorer 7 only allows you to download two files from the same server at a time. This is not a software limit but rather a limit imposed based on the web standard. Since this is simply a software setting, it can be modified and you can increase the limit to something much high such as 10. Follow the steps below to increase your max downloads from the same server: (more…)

Do you have a SATA disk drive in your computer? If so, you can squeeze a little more performance out of your hard disk. This speeds up the performance of your hard disk by enhancing write caching. However, if your computer is not connected to a battery backup and you loose power you have a increased risk for data loss or corruption. If you have a laptop your chances are data loss or corruption are dramatically less since your laptop battery will kick on if your power source is lost. Let’s get started: (more…)

There are two ways to stop applications that start when you startup your computer at login. You can use the System Configuration Utility or the new Software Explorer in Windows Defender. Take a look at the two sections to get control over your startup applications and speed up your computer: (more…)

The My Music folder is the place where Windows automatically saves all the audio clips you download from the Internet or save on your hard drive with Windows Media Player. The My Music folder, like My Pictures, is an automatic part of the My Documents folder.

To open the My Music folder from the Windows XP desktop, click the Start button and then click My Music (normally third from the top in the right-hand column in the Start pop-up menu). To open this folder from another folder, such as My Computer, click the Address bar drop-down button (on the right side) and then click My Documents at the top of the pop-up list (right below Desktop at the very top). You can then open My Music by double-clicking that folder icon (the one with the music note in it) in the My Documents window.
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