For the past 3-4 years I have been recommending Windows XP users to install a small combo of basic applications that will grant a more secure and thus stable experience with the OS.

Nowadays SP2/Windows Defender should be a given and along with it you should install a good non-bloated anti-virus like AVG or AntiVir (both free), a good software firewall like ZoneAlarm, and a couple of trusted anti-spyware apps to run at least once a month. Everyone’s favorites seem to be the free Adaware and Spybot.

If you are familiar with all of those and you don’t rely on any untrusted sites, you should be in pretty good shape. Now I have another one to add to your list if you want to keep your system as secure as possible and rootkit-free. So, what are rootkits?

Rootkits are a specific type of malware which hide in other applications or a computer‘s operating system kernel. They allow malicious applications to collect passwords and sensitive data from the infected computer without the user’s knowledge, this can be used for personal information theft, spam relay and other criminal activities.

From the programs I just mentioned above, the anti-viruses should help a bit but none are specialized in detecting this kind of malware.

There used to be a pretty good free scanner from F-secure but the utility is no longer available. But don’t worry, AVG has got you covered with their Anti-rootkit Free utility, download that here and add it to your list of important programs.

Firefox is my browser of choice. Although we happen to have a rather large number of Opera followers at the TS forums, I have been left unconvinced and kept faithful to Firefox ever since version 1.5 came out. At that point the browser was more secure than ever, rock solid, very polished and popular enough that you had dozens of extensions to customize it to your liking. I haven’t looked back ever since.

Now, one of the most obvious tweaks you can apply to your Firefox installation is removing the annoyance of letting websites resize the browser window at their will. Despite of the more sophisticated pop-up blocker that comes in most recent versions of the browser, many websites still do away with popping those up and in many cases resizing either your main window or maximizing the pop-up window to get your full attention (just before you hit the X button).

You won’t even need an add-on to do this.

1. Go to Tools > Options
2. Click on the Content tab
3. Next to where it says “Enable Javascript”, click on Advanced
4. Uncheck the option “Move or resize existing windows”

You’re done! I will try to bring more of these basic, and other not so basic tips on a regular basis to the blog.

Also remember we have a complete Firefox tweak guide posted in the main site.

Bashing Vista for whatever reason you can imagine seems to be the most hip thing to do nowadays, and while a post with my take on Vista is on its way, for now I wanted to share a tip with you for connecting external hard drives successfully to the OS.

I should note that not all external drives should be having this kind of problem, however when I upgraded from XP and wanted to get access to my Maxtor Shared Storage Plus external drive, the Maxtor utilities simply refused to communicate with the drive. As a side note, the drive I’m talking about is a networked drive a.k.a. Network-attached storage (not USB). Also Maxtor was acquired by Seagate last year, so my almost brand new 500gb drive receives limited support for the rest of its life span.

Now, the problem and its solution…

Windows Vista defaults to allow only NTLMv2 authentication on a network for increased security, and the Maxtor Shared Storage drives do not work with this type of authentication (that’s why only Public areas were accessible). The solution is to enable LM and NTLM authentications on the network to get full access back.

1. Click on Start and on the command/search field, enter secpol.msc
2. This will open the Local Security Policy app. Now on the left menu go to Local Policies > Security Options.
3. On the right pane, scroll down to Network Security: LAN Manager authentication level and double click it.
4. On the Local Security Setting tab you should see a drop down menu with options. Choose “Send LM & NTLM – use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated.” Accept all dialogs and restart.
5. That should do the trick (on Vista Ultimate).

Because the Home editions of Vista do not include the Local Security Policy utility, on those machines you will need to edit a setting in the registry. If you follow my instructions exactly there should be nothing to be worried about:

1. Click on Start and on the command/search field, enter regedit.
2. This will open the Registry Editor. Now browse on the left pane to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Control > Lsa.
3. That should show a bunch of settings on the right pane, select LmCompatibilityLevel (double-click it).
4. Change the current setting, from 3 to 1.
5. Accept all dialogs and restart.

If you rely on a remote connection client to get access to your files at the office or from your home, chances are you have probably tried using the client built-in into Windows called Remote Desktop Connection (also Terminal Services Client).

Personally, I don’t like opening up my main PC to the Internet but only to those computers on my local LAN (which only I use). So I use RDC to access my desktop when I’m in bed or somewhere else around the house using my laptop. The biggest gripe of using RDC (which has been way improved since Windows 2000 days) was that I couldn’t use any font smoothing (Cleartype in Windows) so reading documents or browsing the web on an LCD screen was adequate at best.

Well, it just happens that with the latest update of the RDC client (6.0) for Windows XP and Server 2003 that dates back to November, you can now use font smoothing as long as the client PC is running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008. I just noticed about the change over the last few weeks, so now I’m happily writing this from my laptop running the RDC client connected to my main PC…

Over a LAN it’s not any slower than with Cleartype off, plus it should save some battery on the laptop since I’m not accessing the hard drive or processing stuff on the laptop itself, and my desktop PC is much much faster in the first place.

If you don’t have the latest RDC client installed you can download it here, and enable font smoothing using these instructions:

To enable font smoothing, follow these steps:
1.    Click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, click Communication, and then click Remote Desktop Connection.
2.    Click Options, click the Experience tab, and then click to select the Font smoothing check box.

A complete list of features on the latest version of Remote Desktop Connection can be found here.