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How to keep my laptop secure?
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cmertin
Junior Member
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23. November 2008 @ 02:13 |
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My brother has been looking at porn on my Windows XP system (I dual boot ubuntu and XP). Windows XP is my school OS with all of my very important school work. My brother has been looking at porn on my computer and I need to know how to stop him from getting on. He has trojaned my computer with a USB and I have reinstalled my OS numerous times, yet it still goes creeping slow after a couple of days. I only use XP for my CD calc book, reading my yahoo mail, and listening to music on Youtube. When I'm checking my mail, the only links I click on are the ones from apple.com and youtube.com.
I was wondering, is there a definite way of keeping my brother off my computer? My passwords that I set are VERY secure with numerous upper and lower case letters and with numbers as well.
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onya
Suspended permanently
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23. November 2008 @ 15:09 |
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First things first. How the heck does your brother get past your "VERY secure" password? It's almost pointless if you cannot stop 'him' from infecting your pc. If your brother has an account on your pc, and you are the administrator, it might seem brutal but personally I'd kick him and his profile the heck off that machine. Period.
Chances are that the system is still infected. Download and run Hijackthis. Do not fix anything with hijack at this point. All we need is the log it generates. If there is evidence of infection, we can ask the Mods to teleport this thread into the correct forum ok?
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cmertin
Junior Member
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23. November 2008 @ 22:09 |
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He doesn't have an account on my computer, yet somehow he is still getting into my computer. Is there anyway to restrict what times it can be logged in? I'll even upgrade to vista if you can do that with the administrator account somehow.
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Senior Member
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23. November 2008 @ 22:31 |
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All passwords are crackable; it's just a matter of difficulty.
You need to stop him from getting on your computer? Have you tried locking your account with a password? If he's tech-savvy enough, he'll get through your password.
CMOS passwords are the passwords used to secure extremely confidential laptops. The computer will prompt you for a password before Windows runs, so any password breaking software will fail at this point.
CMOS passwords are much more difficult to get pass. The only way is to remove the motherboard and reset it, which he might not be able to do. Of course, if you forget your own password, you'll have some difficulty using your computer ever again. Here's some information:
How to set a CMOS password:
http://www.softstack.com/password/cmos_passwords.html
How to erase a CMOS password:
http://www.dewassoc.com/support/bios/bios_password.htm
Best Regards :D
Life is but a dream; you dont feel any pain unless you want to or you fall off the bed.
Success is relative; the more success the more relatives.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kickboxing.
To be or not to be; thats a dumb question.
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Senior Member
11 product reviews
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23. November 2008 @ 22:40 |
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the sure shot way, re install windows just 1 more time, set it up the way you want, then install and use Truecrypt
"Encrypts a partition or drive where Windows is installed (pre-boot authentication)."
http://www.truecrypt.org/
you can secure your OS with out a doubt. And no one but you can use it. It is open source and 100% free.
Know how to drive a person CRAZY? <<Click Here>>
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scorpNZ
AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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23. November 2008 @ 23:42 |
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True crypt looks pretty good & would be the safest bet, there's also returnil,it's free & once activated automatically boots windows as a virtual disk so that when you shutdown everything you did or downloaded is now deleted which maens anything you want to keep must be burned to rom or external device first or all of it will be lost.
There's also the ability to make ubuntu the default OS & hide the boot menu on startup or if you really want to go to the extreme make a disk of these files from within drive C:,you'll need to unhide them first
boot.ini or boot
ntldr or NTLDR
ntdetect or NTDETECT
Once disk is made make another as backup then delete ubuntu this will stuff the boot record & the only way to get into windows is with the disk you just made or reinstall noobuntu,while on linux you should checkout the latest Kubuntu OS it's pretty spiffy
Ok another way to go & can't be cracked is with partition magic 8.0,using this you can hide the windows partition it should also stop ubuntu from booting,the only way to boot now is place the pm8.0 disk in the rom drive & unhide it,failing all this remove the battery & power cord & take em with you or a good sized padlock
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cmertin
Junior Member
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24. November 2008 @ 12:12 |
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When using True Crypt, do you know a way to change the password if you forget it?
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scorpNZ
AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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24. November 2008 @ 12:48 |
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At a guess the program will let you make a password recovery disk or some other feature of recovery,you'll have to read the instructions if you buy it or simply burn a text document to a rom with the password on it & just write on the rom in permanent ink a false name not something like password for comp :p
There's something else you should look at in investing & thats cloning software like acronis or ghost i don't know why comp manufacturers don't make it mandatory on their systems
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cmertin
Junior Member
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24. November 2008 @ 12:57 |
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I'm thinking about trying out TrueCrypt but since I'm dual booting, is there going to be problems with my dual booting, or is it just going to block the windows. I'm not really worried about my Ubuntu OS since it's very hard to get viruses on it.
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scorpNZ
AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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24. November 2008 @ 19:36 |
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mmm that's odd truecrypt is free so what the hell was i looking at yesterday..lol.. from what i gather ubuntu will not boot if you hide the partition,you may not need to so STANDARD is what you'll be using so all should be fine
The only issue with this software i'd have is it does'nt decrypt the whole file at once,say you watch an avi,the truecypt will decrypt it bit by bit this will mean extra strain on the cpu & ram,it would pay to see what the specs required are
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