Alexander’s Blog

I recently discovered a nice little utility that locks your PC (especially useful for laptops). It’s called PREDATOR and it’s FREE. This utility can lock your PC, while you are running your Window session. It uses a USB flash drive as an access control device. You simply insert your USB flash drive, run PREDATOR, and work in Windows as you normally do. When you want to walk away from your PC, remove the USB flash drive. Your screen will darken in 30 seconds (you can change this default interval) and your mouse and keyboard will be disabled. No one will be able to use CTRL-ALT-DEL or anything else. When you get back, you simply insert your USB flash drive and your display, mouse and keyboard will be unlocked.

There are a few differences between using “Windows + L” to lock your PC or logging out from your PC and using PREDATOR. With PREDATOR you don’t even need to enter your password, just insert the USB flash drive.

You can configure PREDATOR to autostart with Windows. If your laptop is locked with PREDATOR and someone steals your laptop, when the laptop is rebooted it will remain locked. I know what you are thinking. What if I lose my USB flash drive? Well, when you setup PREDATOR you can configure a password. You can use the password to unlock the PC anytime, even if you don’t have the USB flash drive with you.

According to the manufacturer, here are some advanced security features.

Advanced Security Features:

• PREDATOR records all security-related events in a log file: start, alarms, stop. By reading this log, you will know if intruders have tried to use your computer while you have been away.
• PREDATOR frequently changes the security codes recorded on your USB drive. If an intruder manages to copy your stick, this copy will not work because the codes on your own stick will have changed in the meantime.
• PREDATOR disables the Windows task manager when you unplug the USB drive. Nobody can stop it with Ctrl-Alt-Del.
• PREDATOR lets you regain control of your computer if you lose your stick: when you start the software for the first time, you set a password that will unlock your session if your USB drive is not available.
• PREDATOR can sound an audible alarm if somebody enters an invalid password.
• And finally, PREDATOR can protect several PCs with the same USB flash drive, e.g. your home and office computers.

You can download this utility here.

A lot of my students are interested in learning about TCP/IP. I try to post resources that help them with their work or in preparation for their certification exams. Here’s a book by Joe Davies of Microsoft that is available at no cost to the readers. Joe is an awesome author and has written numerous books, including several books for Microsoft Press on TCP/IP.

Joe will be the guest speaker at our Windows Networking User Group meeting on September 2, 2009. He will talk about IPv6 transition technologies. Click here to access the FREE TCP/IP book.

Group nesting and membership can get confusing, especially when you are dealing with multiple domains and different types of groups in Windows Server 2000/2003/2008. I have created a table (color-coded to make it more readable) that you may find helpful whether you are designing or troubleshooting group membership, or preparing to take a Microsoft exam.

Here’s how you can read this table. Keep in mind that I have tried to cover both the bases by listing: “Can contain from” and “Can be a member of.” I will use Global Group as an example.

- A Global Group can contain User Accounts from the same domain.

- A Global Group can be a member of Local Groups in the same domain as well as Local Groups in the other domains.

- A Global Group can contain a Global Group from the same domain and a Global Group can be a member of a Global Group in the same domain.

This planning tool from Microsoft includes descriptions and requirements for the following categories of accounts:

- Server farm-level accounts
- Shared Services Provider (SSP) accounts
- Windows SharePoint Services search accounts
- Additional application pool accounts

Use this planning tool with the following article: Plan for administrative and service accounts. If you work with MOSS 2007, this is a must have tool. This tool is really a document that provides the necessary information. Click here to download the tool.

Assuming you are interested in installing, or have already installed, Windows XP SP3, here’s some interesting browser comparison reported by BetaNews today.

“In a set of comprehensive Windows Web browser performance tests conducted by Betanews on August 7 — our first test of browsers running on the final Windows 7 RTM Build 7600 distributed by Microsoft yesterday — the five major families of browsers tended to run 13% faster on Windows XP Service Pack 3 than on Windows 7, and 29% faster than on Windows Vista Service Pack 2.

That reflects a decline in the speed gap between XP and Win7 of about 1%, from tests conducted comparing XP-based browsers to those running on Windows 7 Release Candidate Build 7100. Some browsers are faster in Windows 7 RTM, although Mozilla Firefox 3.5.2 ran just a tick slower.”

You can read the entire article here.

Well, since I am not interested in Chrome, I think I’ll stick to Mozilla Firefox. By the way, I am not pleased with IE 8 at all and I am lukewarm about IE 7. Firefox, although not perfect, is much more reliable, well-organized, safer, offers gazillions of nice add-ons, and have far better support than the rest.