Let’s look at DEP and how to configure it, or turn DEP off, depending on your needs.

What Is DEP & What Does It Do?

According to Microsoft, DEP is :

“…a set of hardware and software technologies that perform additional checks on memory to help prevent malicious code from running on a system.”  

Dell simplifies it a bit and tells us that DEP

“…can help protect your computer by monitoring your programs to make sure that they use system memory safely.”

What does that mean? There are certain areas in the computer’s memory which aren’t intended to have code running in them, but sometimes code does run there. 

Usually, the code that will run there is malicious. DEP will monitor those areas and if it sees something going on in those areas it will shut it down. If you want to get in-depth about how it works, read Microsoft’s detailed description of Data Execution Prevention.

So Why Does DEP Cause Problems?

Even today, computers are dumb. They cannot reason, they can only use the most basic of logic. Plus, that logic is put into them by humans so computers also get our mistakes put into them. 

Sometimes, good programs will wander off into the areas that DEP monitors and work in those spaces. 

When this happens, DEP will sometimes shut the entire program down and let you know via an error message. But sometimes DEP will just cause the program to run very poorly and there won’t be anything obvious to tell you why. 

What Programs Have Problems With DEP?

Programs that conflict with DEP are typically older programs or built on old codebases. A lot of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is built on codebases that go back to the 1970s. There was no DEP then, so the program will go into areas that DEP patrols.

64-bit programs were created after DEP was well established, so they were developed to comply. Most programs that conflict with DEP will be 32-bit programs. 

Non-Microsoft programs that interact with Windows Services heavily or run their own Windows Services may be tripped up by DEP. If that is the case, the vendor will recommend to completely turn off DEP.

For the home user, old games that are 32-bit, and some emulators for playing even older games, are the most likely to conflict with DEP.

Old device drivers or drivers downloaded from unofficial sources may also trigger DEP errors. Only download drivers from the hardware manufacturer or Microsoft, and update your drivers regularly.

How Do I Know If DEP Is The Problem?

You may have to go into Event Viewer and sift through the logs for Event ID 1000. If you find one, it may look like this:

Event ID : 1000 - DEP Error : Generic host for Win32 servicesGeneric Host Process for Win32 Services - DEP : Application Error
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Application Error
Event Category: (100)
Event ID: 1000

 You may see other errors referencing things like:

• 0xFC:ATTEMPTED_EXECUTE_OF_NOEXECUTE_MEMORY – occurs when a device driver is trying to run in memory. It may be a bad or outdated driver. You’ll want to update your drivers. 
• STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) – occurs when programs are trying to run in DEP protected memory space.

How To Configure Or Turn Off DEP

In Windows 10, DEP defaults to the setting Turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only. Most of the time, this is sufficient. It means that the majority of your programs will be ignored by DEP. 

But if DEP helps protect the computer and it doesn’t have a performance hit, you may want to select Turn on DEP for all programs except those that I select. Then if you find a program that has a problem with DEP, we can add it as an exception. Let’s look at how to do that.

• Open the Control Panel then open System.

• On the left side of the System window, click on Advanced System Settings.

• The System Properties window should open and already be set to the Advanced tab. In the Performance area, click on Settings.

• In the Performance Options window, click on the Data Execution Prevention tab.

• With Turn on DEP for all programs except those that I select selected, click on the Add button near the bottom of the window.

• Navigate to the executable for the program that we’d like to add as an exception. It will most likely be in C:/Program Files (x86). 
• In this example, we’re adding MediaMonkey, an old music player utility. Click on the .exe file once we find it and click on Open.

• In Performance Options, click on Apply. Now, MediaMonkey will run outside of DEP protection while all others will run within DEP protection.

Turn DEP Completely Off

If you want to turn DEP completely off, we advise only doing that as part of troubleshooting an issue. DEP is there for your protection. 

Since it’s something that isn’t advised, there isn’t a good point-and-click way to do it. Let’s look at how we can turn off DEP.

• Open the Command window as Administrator. Do this by typing cmd in the program search field near the Start menu.

• Enter the command bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff and press enter.

bcdedit.exe is a Windows utility for editing boot configuration data, hence bdcedit.

/set tells bcedit to set an option value entry in the boot configuration.

{current} tells becedit to work with the boot configuration being used right now.

nx is short for no execute and is the setting name for DEP in the boot configuration.

AlwaysOff is self-explanatory.

• Restart the computer.
• DEP will now be completely, and permanently off.

Turn DEP On For Everything

To turn DEP on for absolutely everything, the process and command is like above.

• Open the Command window as Administrator, following the instructions in the procedure above.
• Enter the command bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOn. 

• Restart the computer.
• DEP will be turned on and all programs monitored.

After turning DEP to being always on or always off, it CANNOT be changed via the Data Execution Prevention tab in system settings. 

Let’s look at how to change it so that the radio buttons in the DEP tab can be used again.

Set DEP Back To Default Behavior

To set DEP behavior back to default and make it manageable again via system settings, do the following.

• Open the Command window as Administrator.
• Enter the command bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx OptIn.

• Restart the computer.
• Now the radio buttons in the DEP tab in systems settings are accessible again.

To DEP Or Not To DEP

We recommend leaving DEP on its default setting of Turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only, unless it’s necessary to change it to troubleshoot problems that may be DEP-related.

If this problem annoys you also, there is a simple way to change the default photo viewing program in Windows to the application of your choice! Actually, there are two ways to go about it.

Also, you can configure it so that one image type opens with one application and another image type opens with a different program. So you could have JPG images open with Photoshop and GIF images open with Photo Viewer, for example.

Note that in addition to changing the default picture viewer, you can follow the same steps below to change the default media player, default web browser, etc. For example, for the default media player, you would select your media player from the list, i.e. VLC Media Player, and then adjust the settings for it.

Adjust Default Programs

If you’re still running Windows XP, then make sure to read my separate post on changing the default program to open a file with since the XP procedure is different.

In Windows 7 and higher, you can change which file types a program opens or you can change which program is used when opening a specific file type. Click on the Control Panel and then click on Default Programs while under the icons view.

Here you will see the two options I mentioned above: Set your default programs and Associate a file type or protocol with a program.

If you click on the first link, you’ll get a list of the different programs installed on your computer. Select the program and Windows will tell you how many defaults this programs is set to open.

You can then click on Set this program as default to have it open all the default file types or you can click Choose defaults for this program to choose specific file types.

In the example above, Internet Explorer is set to open GIF images and Microsoft Office 2010 is set to open JPG files. All other formats are set to open with Windows Photo Viewer. If you want to use a different program to open pictures, for example, select that program from the list and then choose Set this program as default.

Adjust via Open With

Going back and clicking on Adjust a file type or protocol with a program will allow you to browse through the hundreds of file types stored on the computer and then change the default program for opening that type of file.

When you click Change Program, you’ll get a list of Recommended Programs and Other Programs, along with an option to Browse to a program that is not currently listed.

The advantage to this method as opposed to the first option is that here you can choose any program you like to open a file. In the first method, only programs that have registered with Windows will show up in that list and there is no way to manually add a missing program.

You can also get to this same dialog by right-clicking on the any file in Explorer, clicking on Open With and then clicking on Choose default program.

Windows 8, 10 Default Programs

In Windows 8 and Windows 10, things are slightly different because now you have desktop apps and you have Windows Store apps. By default, all Windows 8/10 PCs will have Windows Photo Viewer and the Photos app installed. The former is a desktop app and will load there and the latter is a Windows Store app and will load as an app.

You can follow the same procedures as for Windows 7, but the only difference is that you will see the Windows Store apps listed as options too. As mentioned earlier, you can change other defaults like the default media player to another program or app of your choice rather than the Video or Movies & TV app in Windows 8 and Windows 10.

Hopefully, you can now double-click on an image and expect the correct program to open. You do want to be careful changing these settings because there is no way to simply reset all default programs back to their original values. I’m not sure why this option doesn’t exist, because it should, but it’s just not there.

The only real way to reset default programs is to either download a registry file that will manually change each value or create a new user profile. These settings are stored on a per user basis, so creating a new user account will start you from scratch. If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment. Enjoy!

Most of the time you will see this in corporate environments where the IT staff has locked down the computer by disabling Windows settings and services. If it’s a policy pushed out by the main servers, it can be very hard or impossible to bypass. However, you can still give it a shot!

Another major reason the registry gets disabled is due to malicious viruses. By disabling access to the registry, the virus can prevent the user from repairing their system.

In this article, I’m going to go through a couple of different methods you can try for enabling access to the registry.

Method 1 – Group Policy

The first method involves opening the Group Policy editor in Windows and checking the setting for registry access. Unfortunately, the group policy editor is only available in the Professional, Ultimate and Pro versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8. If you have the Starter or Home editions, this method won’t work.

Step 1: Click on Start and typing gpedit.msc into the search box.

Step 2: Navigate to User Configuration – Administrative Templates – System.

Step 3: In the right hand pane, double click on Prevent access to registry editing tools.

Step 4: If the setting is set to Enabled, you can change it to Not Configured or Disabled.

Now try to run the registry editor and see if it works. If not, go to the command prompt (Start, Run, type cmd) and type in gpupdate, but only if you are not in a corporate environment. In a corporate network, the gpupdate command will download the settings from the server again, which might just overwrite the setting to Enabled.

You can try to avoid receiving the setting from the server by restarting your computer, but disconnecting your network card so that it can’t communicate with the network. You may also want to try the whole procedure above while disconnected from the network in order to ensure that the corporate policy does not override the local policy.

If you have a home computer, then you don’t have to worry about all of this, just restart your computer and you should be able to edit the registry again.

Method 2 – Registry Key

Even if you can’t open the GUI registry editor, there is a DOS command line tool called REG that lets you edit, update and manipulate the registry.   Using this command, we can try to add a key that enables the registry. Click on Start, type Run and paste the following line into the Run box:

REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableRegistryTools /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Now try to open the registry editor and see if it is accessible. You may have to restart your computer first. Since Windows is running, you might run into problems using this method.

Luckily, there are ways to edit the registry while offline, meaning editing the registry without having to load Windows. Another good tech blog has written a detailed article on different ways to edit the registry offline, so check that out if the Run command method didn’t work. If this didn’t work either, keep reading!

Method 3 – Rename regedit

Sometimes a virus or malware program will simply prevent the registry loading by the name of the EXE file (regedit.exe). This is quite easy to bypass because you can just rename the EXE file to something else like regedit_new.exe and it might load just fine.

You can find the regedit executable file in the C:\Windows directory. Since this folder is a Windows system folder, you won’t be able to simply right-click and rename it. You’ll get an error message saying that you don’t have permission from TrustedInstaller.

In order to rename the file, you’ll have to change the owner to yourself and then change the permissions to give yourself Full Control. I’ve written up the entire procedure for changing permissions from TrustedInstaller so that you can delete, rename or move the file.

Also, check to see if regedit was already named something else like regedit.com. Some viruses rename the .exe file so that it doesn’t load when you try to run it. In these cases, just rename the file back to regedit.exe and see if it works.

Method 4 – Symantec

Symantec has a really old file from 2005 that still seems to work with this registry issue. Some viruses will change the shell command registry keys so that anytime you run an EXE file, it just runs the virus instead. This file will replace those keys with the original default values. Once you download it, just right-click on it and choose Install.

When you open the link above, make sure you right-click on the link to UnHookExec.inf and choose Save link as, otherwise it will simply load the contents of the file in your web browser.

The Save as type should already be set to Setup Information, but in case it’s not, change it to that.

There are a couple of other ways you can try to enable the registry, but I haven’t had any success with any of them and that’s why I’m not mentioning them here. If you’re not in a corporate environment, the first thing you should do is install anti-virus and anti-malware software to try and remove any malicious program that could be causing the issue.

Check out my previous articles that can help you with removing viruses and malware:

Best Software for Malware and Spyware Removal

Use Windows Defender Offline to Remove Viruses

How to Protect Your Computer From Viruses and Malware

If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment. Enjoy!

I guess Microsoft didn’t think about that issue when the released Windows XP. Nor did they add the option in Service Pack 3, the last major non-security update to XP. By default, the thumbnails in Windows XP look like this:

That size is simply not large enough, especially for anyone with vision problems! Luckily, there’s an easy way to modify these settings so that the thumbnails can be any size you want up to 256×256. Unfortunately, the max size for icons in Explorer is 256×256 pixels. If you want to see them bigger than that, you’ll have to use a third-party program. Scroll down past Tweak UI to learn about adjust thumbnail sizes in Windows 7/8.

Tweak UI

Previously, I had written about a cool little utility that you can get for free from Microsoft called Tweak UI that lets you modify and tweak a bunch of Windows XP settings. Using this program, we can quickly and easily change the default 96 pixels size of thumbnails to something more visible.

Once you install the program, go to the Start Menu and click on All Programs – Powertoys for Windows XP – Tweak UI. After you have opened the program, click on Explorer from the left hand menu and then click on Thumbnails.

Change the default size from 96 to something higher. In my case, I chose 256. Also, make sure to keep the Image Quality closer to high so that the thumbnails look nice. Of course, it will take more resources when browsing pictures, but if you have a fairly new computer, it should not be a problem.

Now when you browse through your photos in My Pictures or anywhere where you have thumbnails turned on, you should see something like this:

Now that is much better! I can actually see what’s going on in a picture! Cheers! The second method for changing the thumbnail size is to modify the registry.

ThumbnailSize Registry Hack

If you decide to use the registry hack, then you can change the size of the thumbnails on Windwos XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 since the same hacks works for all these versions. The only clear advantage to using the registry hack at all in Windows Vista and higher is if you want to use a custom size for the thumbnails.

By default, in Windows 7 and Windows 8, you can choose from Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large icons. You can adjust the size by moving the slider in Windows 7.

In Windows 8, the Explorer interface has change a little bit and Microsoft removed the whole slider option. Instead, you have to click on the View tab and there you will see the same options in the Layout box.

Anyway, back to the registry hack. If you want a custom size for your icons, you can open the registry editor by going to Start and then typing in regedit. Then navigate to the following registry key in the left pane:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER – Software – Microsoft – Windows – CurrentVersion – Explorer

Now on the right pane, you should look for a key called ThumbnailSize. If it’s not there, you will have to right-click in the right-pane and choose New – DWORD (32-bit) Value. Give it a name of Thumbnail Size and then double-click on it to edit it. Choose Decimal give it a value from 32 to 256.

You should be able to see the effects immediately when you open a new Explorer window. Note that the thumbnail size will apply to all folders and files regardless of what other settings you may have previously chosen. You can still manually change the thumbnail size for a particular folder, but when you browse back to the same folder later, the thumbnails will display with the custom size you set in the registry.

Preview Pane in Windows 7/8

If you’re still not happy with the 256 max size for thumbnails in Windows and you don’t want to install any third-party software, you have one other option. Both Windows 7 and Windows 8 have a Preview Pane option that basically lets you view a preview that is as large as you can make the preview pane itself.

As you can see, the preview is much bigger. You can expand the explorer window to as large as your monitor and the preview will expand as well. In Windows 7, just click on that small little window button at the top right. In Windows 8, click on the View tab and then click on Preview Pane to enable it.

Hopefully, whether you are running Windows XP or Windows 8, you now have enough options to view thumbnails at a desirable size. If you have any questions, post a comment. Enjoy!

In this article, I’ll talk only about network or Ethernet printers. Also, this article is for Windows XP users. If you’re using Windows 7 or Windows 8, the process is far easier and you can read my other post on adding a printer to Windows 8 here. Now let’s get started. Here’s what you’ll need to do in order to setup the printer on your Windows XP machine:

Step 1: First, connect the printer to your network by connecting one end of a Cat 5 or 6 cable (which should have come with your printer) to your router and the other end into the network port of your printer. Now, turn your printer on and wait for it to become ready.

Step 2: Next you’ll need to get the IP address of your printer. The IP address is what will let your computer know where to find your printer on the network. All network printers allow you to print a configuration sheet that will list basic information about the printer along with the current network configuration.

For most printers, this involves pressing the Menu button on the printer, going to the Information option and choosing Print Configuration. Sometimes if there is no display, you just press and hold the Go or Print button down for about 10 seconds and it’ll print the configuration page. You will be looking for the TCP/IP section:

The IP Address is what you’ll need for the next steps. You printer should automatically get an IP address from the DHCP server on your network. At home, the IP should be coming from the wireless router or residential gateway if you have one that acts as a cable modem plus router.

Step 3: The last step is to add the printer to your computer. Click on Start, then Printers and Faxes.

If you don’t see this in your Start Menu, you can go to Start, Control Panel and then click on Printers and Faxes there. Click Add Printer from the task pane on the left.

The Add Printer wizard will begin, so click Next to get started. On the next screen you’ll be asked whether your printer is a local printer or a network printer. These options are confusing because a network printer is actually referring either a printer connected to another computer or a printer on a print server. Our printer is a stand-alone printer and so you must select Local printer attached to this computer and make sure that you uncheck the box for automatically detecting the printer.

Click Next and you’ll be asked to select the printer port. Since our printer is a network printer with a IP address, we need to select the Create a new port option and choose Standard TCP/IP Port.

Click Next and you’ll get another wizard to add a TCP/IP printer port. On the main wizard screen click Next. In the first text box, Printer Name or IP Address, enter the IP address from the printer configuration sheet you printer earlier.

Click Next and depending on the printer you have, you may get one more dialogs before the end of the wizard. If the network card for the printer cannot be identified, the wizard will ask you to choose the card type. You can leave the default of “Generic Network Card” and click Next.

Click Next and click Finish. You will then continue on with the Add Printer wizard and you’ll need to either choose the printer from the list of manufacturers or click Have Disk and insert your printer driver cd in the computer.

Click Next and enter a name for your printer and click the Yes radio button if you would like the printer to be your default printer.

Click Next and you’ll be asked whether you want to share the printer or not. Click No because anyone else who wants to connect will be able to do so following the same steps. In later versions of Windows XP, the printer sharing dialog has been removed. Click Next and click Yes to print a test page and make sure that the computer and printer can communicate!

Click Next and then click Finish! The new printer will appear in your Printers and Faxes screen and you’re ready to print to your network printer in Windows XP!

In order to use Remote Desktop, there are a couple of things you need to understand. First off, remote desktop only works with Windows XP and Windows 2003. What I mean by this is that you can only connect INTO a Window XP or 2003 machine. You can use a Windows 98, ME, or 2000 to connect INTO a Windows XP or 2003 machine, but you cannot connect INTO a 98, ME or 2000 machine remotely. If you want to be able to connect to a Windows 2000 or earlier machine, you’ll have to buy commercial software.

Since this post is over 7 years old, the above statement is out-dated. You can also connect into a Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8 machine. Also, since Microsoft has recently ended support for Windows XP, this tutorial will becomes less useful as time passes. If interested, check out my post on configuring remote desktop for Windows 8.

Secondly, you need to make sure that you are logged in as a computer administrator on the machine in order to set it up for remote access. If you brought a computer from a store or got it straight from the manufacturer, the first user name you create is always an Administrator account.

An easy way to check whether or not you are an Administrator is to go to Start, Control Panel and then click on User Accounts. You’ll see your user name and it should have “Administrators” or “Computer Administrator” written next to it.

Thirdly, the administrator account on your machine must have a password. If you do not have to type in a password in order to access Windows when you start up your computer, then you do not have a password set up and Remote Desktop will not work. Remote desktop does not allow you to connect to a computer with a user account that does not have a password.

When you go to User Accounts and click on the Administrator account, you will see an option to create a password for the account. Go ahead and do that before moving on.

Next, if the computer you are connecting to is running Windows XP SP3, then you need to open the firewall to allow remote desktop connections. To do this, go to Start, Control Panel, Windows Firewall and click on the Exceptions tab.

Make sure that the Remote Desktop check box is checked. The last thing that needs to be done in order for Remote Desktop to work correctly is to tell Windows that we want to allow users to connect remotely. So far we’ve just fulfilled the requirements, but now we have to actually allow remote desktop connections to this computer.

Go to Start, Control Panel, and click on System. Click on the Remote tab and make sure that the “Allows users to connect remotely to this computer” box is checked. Don’t worry about clicking the Select Remote Users button because Administrators have access by default. If you want to give an non-administrator account remote desktop access, then click that button and add the user.

And that’s it! Your computer is now setup for remote desktop! First try connecting to the XP machine from another computer on your home network. In order to connect, go to the other computer and click on Start, All programs, Accessories, Communications, and Remote Desktop Connection. If you want to connect to the XP machine from Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8, just click on Start and perform a search for remote desktop connection. On Windows 8, go to the Start Screen and start typing to perform a search.

In the dialog box, you can type in the IP address or the name of the computer. The best way to connect is to type in the IP address of the computer. In order to get the IP address of the computer you want to connect to, go to the computer and click on Start, Run and type in CMD.

In the black command window, type in the word “ipconfig” without the quotes as shown below and press Enter.

You’ll see your IP address listed along with some other info, but you don’t need to worry about that. Write down that IP address (192.x.x.x or something similar) and type that number exactly into the remote desktop text box on the other computer (the computer you are connecting from).

Click Connect and you should get a login screen pop up, which means you have successfully connected to the other computer. You can now enter the Computer Administrator user name and password.

If you get an error saying that computer cannot accept new connections, etc. that means something was not configured correctly. Remember you need to give the administrator account a password, open the port in the firewall, and check the allow remote connections check box in the System properties. All  three items need to be performed on computer you want to connect TO.

Once you are able to connect from within the same network, now you can try to connect from outside. So if you want to connect to your home computer from the office, you can do that, but you’ll have to do a few extra things.

First, you have to get your public IP Address (not the 192.168.x.x number). You can do this by going to the computer you want to connect to and navigating to the What Is My IP site to get your public IP address. This is the address that can be used from anywhere in the world to connect to your specific location and is unique. Unfortunately, on most home connections, this public IP address changes often and without notice. Basically to solve that problem, you have to use dynamic DNS. I won’t go into much detail in this post, but read my other posts on how to configure it:

Configuring a Router for Dynamic DNS

What is Dynamic DNS and How to Set It Up

The second thing you have to do is open the port in your router (unless you’re connecting your cable modem directly into your computer) and forward that port to the computer you want to connect to. Here’s how you would do this on a Netgear router (as I have that) and the procedure is pretty much the same for other routers, except that it might be called something else. Most manufacturer’s web sites have an article on how to configure their particular router for port forwarding since it’s very common.

You’ll need to log into your router by typing it’s IP address into the browser address bar. You can figure out the IP address of your router by going to any computer on your network (that you want to connect into) and opening the command prompt like we did above and typing ipconfig again. In addition to the IP Address field, you’ll also see Default Gateway, this is your router. From the above screenshot, you can see mine is 192.168.244.2.

Type that address into your browser address bar as follows and press Enter:

You’ll most likely be prompted for a user name and password. Usually, you can find this in the documentation or on the under side of the router itself. For my Netgear router, the username as “admin” (lowercase) and the password was “password”.

Once you’re in, you should see an option called “Port Forwarding/Port Triggering” or something very similar. I know Netopia calls these Pinholes and on Linksys it might be called a Service or Applications.

Once you’re on the Port Forwarding page, you might see different layouts/options. The basic parts will be giving the forward a name like “Remote Desktop”, choosing the external port and the internal port, the protocol and picking the IP address for the device the data is supposed to be forward to.

For remote desktop, you’ll always want to choose TCP for Protocol. Be default, remote desktop uses port 3389, so type that into both the internal and export port boxes. Lastly, the internal IP address should be the IP address of the XP machine. On some setups, you’ll be asked for a starting port, ending port and triggering port. Just put 3389 for any port boxes.

Click Apply and you’re done! You should now be able to use your public IP address (type this into the Computer text box in the Remote Desktop Connection dialog) to connect through your router to your computer!

If you have any problems remotely connecting to your Windows XP machine, please post a comment here and I’ll try to help. Enjoy!

This feature is actually part of a Windows security feature called Group Policy, which is used by most IT Professionals who manage computers in the corporate network via servers, however, it can also be used locally on a PC without any servers. The only downside to using Group Policy is that it is not available in lower versions of Windows. For Windows 7, you need to have Windows 7 Professional or higher. For Windows 8, you need Pro or Enterprise.

The term Group Policy basically refers to a set of registry settings that can be controlled via a graphical user interface. You enable or disable various settings and these edits are then updated in the Windows registry.

In Windows XP, to get to the policy editor, click on Start and then Run. In the text box, type “gpedit.msc” without the quotes as shown below:

In Windows 7, you would just click on the Start button and type gpedit.msc into the search box at the bottom of the Start Menu. In Windows 8, simply go to the Start Screen and start typing or move your mouse cursor to the far top or bottom right of the screen to open the Charms bar and click on Search. Then just type in gpedit. Now you should see something that is similar to the image below:

There are two main categories of policies: User and Computer. As you might have guessed, the user policies control the settings for each user whereas the computer settings will be system wide settings and will effect all users. In our case we’re going to want our setting to be for all users, so we’ll expand the Computer Configuration section.

Continue expanding to Windows Settings -> Security Settings -> Local Policies -> Audit Policy. I’m not going to explain much of the other settings here since this is primarily focused on auditing a folder. Now you’ll see a set of policies and their current settings on the right hand side. Audit policy is what controls whether or not the operating system is configured and ready to track changes.

Now check the setting for Audit Object Access by double clicking on it and selecting both Success and Failure. Click OK and now we’re done the first part which is telling Windows that we want it to be ready to monitor changes. Now the next step is to tell it what EXACTLY we want to track. You can close out of the Group Policy console now.

Now navigate to the folder using Windows Explorer that you would like to monitor. In Explorer, right click on the folder and click Properties. Click on the Security Tab and you see something similar to this:

Now click on the Advanced button and click on the Auditing tab. This is where we’ll actually configure what we want to monitor for this folder.

Go ahead and click the Add button. A dialog will appear asking you to select a User or Group. In the box, type in the word “users” and click Check Names. The box will automatically update with the name of the local users group for your computer in the form COMPUTERNAME\Users.

Click OK and now you’ll get another dialog called “Audit Entry for X“. This is the real meat of what we’ve been wanting to do. Here is where you’ll select what you want to watch for this folder. You can individually choose which types of activity you want to track, such as deleting or creating new files/folders, etc. To make things easier, I suggest selecting Full Control, which will automatically select all the other options below it. Do this for Success and Failure. This way, whatever is done to that folder or the files within it, you will have a record.

Now click OK and click OK again and OK one more time to get out of the multiple dialog box set. And now you have successfully configured auditing on a folder! So you might ask, how do you view the events?

In order to view the events, you need to go to the Control Panel and click on Administrative Tools. Then open up the Event Viewer. Click on the Security section and you’ll see a large listing of events on the right hand side:

If you go ahead and create a file or simply open the folder and click the Refresh button in the Event Viewer (the button with the two green arrows), you’ll see a bunch of events in the category of File System. These pertain to any delete, create, read, write operations on the folders/files you are auditing. In Windows 7, everything now shows up under File System task category, so in order to see what happened, you’ll have to click on each one and scroll through it.

In order to make it easier to look through so many events, you can put a filter and just see the important stuff. Click on the View menu at the top and click on Filter. If there is no option for Filter, then right-click on the Security log in the left-hand page and choose Filter Current Log. In the Event ID box, type in the number 4656. This is the event associated with a particular user performing a File System action and will give you the relevant information without having to look through thousands of entries.

If you want to get more information about an event, simply double click on it to view.

This is the information from the screen above:

A handle to an object was requested.

Subject:
Security ID: Aseem-Lenovo\Aseem
Account Name: Aseem
Account Domain: Aseem-Lenovo
Logon ID: 0x175a1

Object:
Object Server: Security
Object Type: File
Object Name: C:\Users\Aseem\Desktop\Tufu\New Text Document.txt
Handle ID: 0x16a0

Process Information:
Process ID: 0x820
Process Name: C:\Windows\explorer.exe

Access Request Information:
Transaction ID: {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
Accesses: DELETE
SYNCHRONIZE
ReadAttributes

In the example above, the file worked on was New Text Document.txt in the Tufu folder on my desktop and the accesses that I requested were DELETE followed by SYNCHRONIZE. What I did here was delete the file. Here’s another example:

Object Type: File
Object Name: C:\Users\Aseem\Desktop\Tufu\Address Labels.docx
Handle ID: 0x178

Process Information:
Process ID: 0x1008
Process Name: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\WINWORD.EXE

Access Request Information:
Transaction ID: {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
Accesses: READ_CONTROL
SYNCHRONIZE
ReadData (or ListDirectory)
WriteData (or AddFile)
AppendData (or AddSubdirectory or CreatePipeInstance)
ReadEA
WriteEA
ReadAttributes
WriteAttributes

Access Reasons: READ_CONTROL: Granted by Ownership
SYNCHRONIZE: Granted by D:(A;ID;FA;;;S-1-5-21-597862309-2018615179-2090787082-1000)

As you read through this, you can see I accessed Address Labels.docx using the WINWORD.EXE program and my accesses included READ_CONTROL and my access reasons were also READ_CONTROL. Usually, you’ll see a bunch more accesses, but just focus on the first one as that’s usually the main type of access. In this case, I simply opened the file using Word. It does take a little testing and reading through the events to understand what’s going on, but once you have it down, it’s a very reliable system. I suggest creating a test folder with files and performing various actions to see what shows up in the Event Viewer.

That’s pretty much it! A quick and free way to track access or changes to a folder!

Your computer might be at risk. Antivirus software might not be installed.

It’s fine if you don’t know how to use a computer or forget to install something, but if you know what you are doing, then this nagging popup message is bothersome. So how can you turn off the message? In this article, I explain how.

Step 1: Open the Control Panel and click on Security Center.

Step 2: Now for the item(s) that are in red, Firewall, Automatic Updates, or Virus Protection, click on the double arrow that is pointing down and click on Recommendations.

Step 3: At the bottom, click on the checkbox that says “I have an antivirus program that I’ll monitor myself” and then click OK.

Note that you can do this for the Firewall is not turned on and Automatic updates is not turned on popup messages also.

You can also click on the Change the way Security Center alerts me link at the left in Windows Security Center and turn off monitoring completely.

Just uncheck what you do not want monitored anymore and you won’t get the Your computer might be at risk message again!

That’s it! Of course, you should make sure you do have some kind of anti-virus program installed and a firewall also. Keeping Automatic Updates on is a smart idea too! Enjoy!