At various times on a Windows PC, a disk defragmentation is needed to regain hard drive performance which will speed up the over-all performance of your computer.

Disk Defragmentation may be defined as a process that reduces the amount of file fragmentation on a computer’s hard disk drive. Over time, a computer will naturally split files up on a hard drive for storage and this file-splitting may drastically slow the performance of your computer as it has to seek or find the fragmented file which takes extra time. If your computer has issues with booting up or shutting down slowly then you may want to find out why your computer freezes up during startup or shutdown first.

Think of a fragmented file as food on a dinner plate. Near the middle of the meal you may have fragments of different types of food spread throughout the plate. If you wish to gather up one type of food on the plate it may take some extra time to seek out the fragments. Same thing happens with a computer’s hard drive over time of use.

It has been said may times by several computer help sources and even security experts about how defragmenting your drive may speed up the performance of your computer. It may even add to the stability of your system allowing you to have a more secure environment.

If you wish to speed up the performance of your computer they you may want to defrag your hard drive. If you have multiple drives on your computer it may be best to start with the drive that contains your operating system (Windows).

Below is a simple process for speeding up your computer by defragmenting your hard drive. (Every Windows PC includes built in software for defragmenting your hard drive(s).)

1. Go to Start menu > My Computer



2. Find and right-click your C: drive
3. Go to and click Properties



4. Click on the Tools tab



5. Click Defragment Now…
6. Click the Defragment button



7. The computer will start to analyze your hard drive to see if it needs to be defragmented. In the case that it does not need to be defragmented it will then return a message saying so. If it does then it will proceed to defragment your hard drive. It may be best to limit use of your computer while it is defragmenting so that it may speed up the process.



8. Once your computer is done you may restart it so your RAM is cleared and your computer will operate faster.

You have now completed defragmenting your hard drive. Did it speed up your computer? Have you noticed that your computer access or opens certain programs faster?

We have come up with list of 10 email security tips based on the IT Security blog posts “More e-mail security tips and “Basic e-email security tips” by Chad Perrin. We feel that by adhering to the email tips you will have taken proactive actions to protect your personal information and provide a more secure environment over the internet for anyone using your computer.

PCHubs.com’s 10 Essentials Email Security Tips

1. Never allow an e-mail client to fully render HTML or XHTML e-mails without careful thought.

   If you use Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird that is usually set to render HTML emails then you may want to set it to render simplified HTML rather than rich HTML (original HTML). In some cases you may want to even choose to render only plain text. When an email client to render the full HTML of an email then it creates the risk of receiving spam containing malware through the embedded code of a full HTML message.

2. Use a local POP3 or IMAP client to retrieve your email to protect the privacy of your data.

   Using web-based email services such as Hotmail, Yahoo or even Gmail may allow private information to be compromised. Some providers are accused of selling email addresses for the purpose of spamming partners.

3. Ensure that your e-mail authentication process is encrypted, even if the e-mail itself is not.

   Hackers may have the ability to listen in on your authentication session with a mail server. If they are able to listen in then they have access to view sent or received messages which may be confidential or contain personal information. You can always check with your ISP’s policies to find out if authentication is encrypted which will greatly reduce the risk of your transmitted data being compromised.

4. Digitally sign your e-mails.

   Using an encryption tool to digitally sign your emails then only the recipients who have your public key will be able know for certain that the message was sent by only someone with the correct private key. Encryption tools such as PGP or GnuPG are available to digitally sign your emails.

5. Use BCC when sending to multiple recipients.

   It is usually not advised to disclose all of the recipients of a particular email message that you send out. It is a privacy issue if the email that you send includes several email addresses if you use the CC (carbon copy) field. Utilizing BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) will hide the email address of your recipients of any message that you send out. Using BCC recipients will not be able to see the other email address that the email was sent too.

6. Only use private accounts for private e-mails.

   Any chance they get, a spammer will target your email address. If you use a prive account for sending private emails then you greatly reduce the risk of a spammer getting your email address used. If you use an email address that may be used on online forms, social sites or mailing list then a spammer can easily use the address to spam.

7. Save e-mails only in a safe place.

   Encryption would be useless if you store an email message that has been opened or unencrypted and then saved in a location that others have access too. This is important especially when using a computer on a network or one that is used by other users.

8. Turn off automated addressing features.

   Many times the automated addressing feature will pull up the incorrect address without you paying attention to it until the email message is sent. It is nothing like sending an email to the wrong person when the message is something confidential or private. You may be liable for sending information to the wrong recipient or even worse, fired from your job for communicating the wrong message.

9. Avoid unsecured networks.

   If you use a WI-FI hot-spot or publicly access network then you may be at risk for having your sent messages compromised. You must also be aware of your physical surroundings when sending email messages. Your account could be compromised if a certain person is monitoring yoru actions over your shoulder. Remember, you may be legally responsible for messages sent from your email account if they are used in such a manor to commit a crime or bring harm to others.

10. Double-check the recipient, every time – especially on mailing lists.

    Once again, it is nothing like sending a confidential or private email message to an unintended recipient. It is better to be safe than sorry so please double check each and every recipient on ANY email message that you are about to send. It does not hurt to proof-read your email as well. If you accidently send a message to hundreds of recipients at one time it may be very difficult to recall the message or explain yourself when your boss is about to let you go.

Chime in now. Do any of these tips help you? What will you change about the way you send and/or check emails?

The boot or startup process seems to be such a system resource intensive task that causes errors, prevents programs from closing or you may even get the dreaded blue-screen-of-death. At shutdown of your PC do you have an uneasy feeling about walking away from your computer because it takes so long to shut down or it may display an error message? Many computer users face the same issues so you are not alone.

Do you ever turn on your PC and it just takes forever to startup or does it ever give you an error message when it finally gets to the desktop screen? Many of these issues are a result of a newly installed driver, software program or hardware configuration conflict.

I can remember when my system would not shut down due to the Roxio Easy CD Creator application. It seemed to be a well-known issue amongst many PC users. Today it seems to be more along the lines of driver or hardware issues. People can resolve a startup or shutdown issue just by simply tracing their previous steps. If your computer had no issues during startup or shut down just before you added a new hardware device, installed new driver or even installed a new application then 9 times out of 10 the “new” change is your culprit. In other situations it is not that easy to identify the issue. Your computer may have had a boot or shutdown issue for some time now. Before you jump ahead I must say reinstalling Windows is your last resort so you may want to try a few other things first.

Pay attention to any error messages on your screen during startup or shutdown. Try to notice the point where your computer hangs or freezes if that is the specific issue that you are trying to resolve. If it is a specific program that you are able to identify on the error message then you may want to uninstall the application and/or reinstall it with the latest and greatest edition.

During your system boot does it hiccup before or after Windows starts to load? Right there you could identify if it is a software or hardware issue. If it happens when Windows starts to load then it may be a software driver or Windows component. It an issue occurs before Windows load then it could be a hardware issue. In this case recheck all of your connections of peripherals and any newly installed cards, memory, drives or media in a removable drive.

If Windows starts to load, comes up and then freezes it could be a problem with your boot or autoloading sequence. In this event you will want to run “eventvwr” (start > run > type eventvwr > press enter). Select “System” and then double click any events with a red flag and the word “error”. Read the dialog box and see if it provides any useful information to help resolve this issue.

Other steps that can be taken is reviewing all loading applications within MSCONFIG. MSCONFIG (start > run > type msconfig > press enter) provides a list of programs that load at startup. If you are able identify ones that are not necessary then you could do a process of elimination to resolve startup conflicts in addition to speeding up the boot for Windows.

You may want to consider Google searching an error message. If you experience a problem with Windows more than likely someone else has posted something online about the issue. This is a good step to take in doing research before you resort to the dreaded task of reinstalling Windows.

You may encounter this if you are not logged in as the administrator on a particular PC running Windows. Many times you may feel that it is necessary to access the task manager for various reasons. It may be bad news to you if you run into this situation when you must check your system resources or end the task of a running program or file. The good news is you can enable the task manager.

Editing or modifying your system registry may render your system unstable or damaged. Make sure you are able to backup the registry and that you are certain that you follow each step in it’s entirety.

Below is a method demonstrating how to enable a disabled task manager using the Registry Editor and via the Run Menu.

How to open a disabled Task Manager using the Registry Editor

1. Go to Start menu > Run > type in regedit and then press enter.





2. Navigate to and find the following registry path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
3. Find the entry DisableTaskMgr. If this entry is not present then you must add one by right clicking the right side pane and then selecting new DWORD value. Rename it DisableTaskMgr. Double click this entry and make sure the DWORD value is set to 00000000.





4. Navigate to and find the following registry path:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Group Policy/Objects\LocalUser\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
5. Find the entry DisableTaskMgr. If this entry is not present then you must add one by right clicking the right side pane and then selecting new DWORD value. Rename it DisableTaskMgr. Double click this entry and make sure the DWORD value is set to 00000000.
6. Navigate to and find the following registry path:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system
7. Find the entry DisableTaskMgr. If this entry is not present then you must add one by right clicking the right side pane and then selecting new DWORD value. Rename it DisableTaskMgr. Double click this entry and make sure the DWORD value is set to 00000000.
8. Navigate to and find the following registry path:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
9. Find the entry DisableCAD. If this entry is not present then you must add one by right clicking the right side pane and then selecting new DWORD value. Rename it DisableCAD. Double click this entry and make sure the DWORD value is set to 00000000.
10. Close the registry editor.
11. Restart your computer.

A much shorter process for enabling a disabled task manager is using the Run menu to enter a simple command line.

1. Go to Start menu > Run
2. Copy and paste the following line:
   REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableTaskMgr /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f



3. Press enter.
4. Restart your computer.

You are not alone, many of us face this issue at times and our computer may require some “spring cleaning” to get it running faster and more stable.

If you run Windows 9x/Me or Windows XP/Vista you can start speeding up your computer by freeing up some memory. First you can start off by uninstalling programs loading at startup that you do not need. Many times we never utilize some programs that load into memory during startup. These are the programs that we can either uninstall or disable the boot process for that program.

How do you disable a program from loading at startup to free up memory?

Utilizing the MSConfig utility will allow you to disable a program from loading at startup which will free up memory that you can use for other tasks. Freeing up memory will also speed up the operation of your computer in most cases. MSConfig is included with the Windows operating system and can be accessed by clicking on Start then Run and type in msconfig and press enter.

Caution: You must remember that you can seriously damage your computer or the operation of your system if you check off the wrong items. Please be cautious.

Before you disable or uninstall any programs you must identify which program that you do not want loading at startup and make sure it is something that you do not need. If you have trouble identifying the program listed in MSConfig then you can use the Sysinfo.org startup list as a reference or search tool to identify any startup application.

With the MSConfig utility open you will want to select the Startup tab to view the programs that load during your current boot process. Once again, make sure you DO NOT uncheck any items that are essential for the security or operation of your computers day to day functions such as your antivirus or antispyware software. This is also a good time to see if you have any spyware items or files present on your computer. If you see any spyware directories present then you must remove them at once. Find any programs that you do not need to boot at startup and uncheck them. Click Apply. Click OK and exit the MSConfig utility. At this point you will be prompted to restart your computer. You may choose to restart at this time. You will notice when your computer starts back up that the selected program will no longer load and you will have more available memory. You may get a “System Configuration Utility” message notifying you of changes made. Click on the check box that says “Don’t show this message or launch the System Configuration Utility when Windows start:” then click OK.

You may perform the above steps at your own risk. This article is for informational purposes only. If you have anything to add to this discussion then we want to hear from you. Post your comments below.

With any type of network, it is not an obvious way of assuring that it is 100% secure. However, you can utilize a scanner utility to scan your network for any vulnerability. Believe it or not, there are several programs available that will scan your network for vulnerabilities.

If you do not understand the inner workings of a network then we will probably speculate that you do not have a big network that may be a big target for hackers. This scenario would be your single home computer connected to the internet via a cable or DSL. In this case you should not worry too much as your ISP (Internet Service Provider) will direct you in the right direction if you have a vulnerability concern. Now for others who have a “network”, lets run down a few tools you can use to make sure you are secure.

Microsoft has a great tool, which is free, that scans your network to look for common misconfigurations that will lead to your network being vulnerable to attacks. This utility is called the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer. This may not be for novice computer users as it is not a one source solution to your network security.

We have found that 3rd party tools do excellent job in assisting you with the security of your network. Two applications that we were able to get our hands on were AppDetective by Application Security, Inc and Retina from eEye. Both programs are able to detect well known issues and receive updates for the detection of new issues. Each program proved to be user friendly enough for beginner and advanced computer users. With any beginner user a little reading may be required to fully understand the potential threats and vulnerabilities of a network.

With a large network you have to be mindful of inside and outside attacks such as with a corporation. In the case of a home network with only a few computers connected you are more concerned with outside attacks. Either way you can always start with a reputable network scan utility or program that has network scanning functions built in. We always recommend that you check the credentials of any given network scan utility before using it. In some rare cases you could be causing more harm than good if you utilize a tool that does not fit your specific networking needs.

1. Click Start, and then click Run.

2. Type Regedit, and then click OK.

3. Press F3, then type the name in the box and click Find Next.

4. Then right-click, select delete.

2. In Task Manager , click the Processes tab to see a list of running processes.

3. Select the process that you want to stop.

4. Right-click on the intended process, then select “End task”.

5. Done.

1. Turn on the computer.

2. As your computer restarts but before Windows launches, press F8.

3. Select safe mode from the screen options, and then press ENTER.

4. Done.