Everyday Nerd

We’ve all been in need of securely wiping a hard drive before - Either selling an old computer, or donating it to a charity.  Either way, you want to make SURE that all of your private data is gone before it leaves your hands. 

DBAN’s Boot and Nuke is your solution!  Coming in many different bootable formats, this is THE way to protect yourself before ditching a drive.  I personally like the bootable CD image - but make sure you label it with a big warning!  You don’t want someone coming by and booting your machine to this by accident!

Source [LifeHacker]

Windows only: Freeware application Elevator disables the User Account Control prompt for specific applications through your right-click menu, getting rid of the UAC annoyance for apps that require administrator privileges every time they run.  Elevator is freeware, Windows Vista only; installation requires a little finesse, so be sure to read the instructions.

Link:  Elevator

Of all things that most home users seem to have a problem backing up is their email.  Now, MailStore Home is a easy and free way to backup your email

The Single-User Desktop Solution for E-mail Archiving and Backup
MailStore Home keeps all your valuable e-mail messages in one persistent and safe place. Lightning-fast search, one-click backup, powerful export - all information from your e-mail is at your fingertips anytime. Never lose important e-mail again!

MailStore Home archives e-mail from:

• Microsoft Outlook
• Microsoft Outlook Express
• Microsoft Windows Mail
• Microsoft Exchange Server Mailboxes
• AVM KEN! Mailboxes
• Mozilla Thunderbird
• Mozilla SeaMonkey
• Webmailer
• POP3 and IMAP
• File Import

Website: [MailStore]

TIP: Once you backup your email, you can use Mozy to backup your files online

You can grab a free copy of ZoneAlarm Anti-Spyware from now until Wednesday, November 14th, at 7:00 AM PST as part of their "Patch Tuesday" giveaway.

The site’s is down at the moment - due to heavy traffic, but should be up soon.

Site is back up now - download away!

Get it Here: [Zone Alarm]

I reported back on  June 19th, about Steady State, but IntelliAdmin.com has written a very nice review of the product.

——–

Microsoft has just released Windows SteadyState. It is a free program that allows you to lock down a Windows installation, and make it suitable for use in a public environment.

It is actually a major upgrade (So major they renamed it) from an older tool called the Microsoft® Shared Computer Toolkit for Windows XP.
A few features that make it much more attractive than the older version:
-You don’t need to repartition your hard drive to take advantage of the hard drive protection features
-User settings have been simplified to a high, medium, and low setting for each account.
-It enables you to import and export user accounts from one computer to another
-It includes a fully-revised Windows SteadyState Handbook
I decided to take it for a quick test drive, and one of the most compelling features is the hard drive protection.

This is great. Even if a script kiddy takes over my kiosk and vandalizes the thing, I can set it to refresh back to my original configuration after a reboot.
Another nice feature is the ability to hide the administrator account from the welcome screen

All in all, this program is packed with features, and provides a level of functionality I had only seen previously in expensive third party products.

Best of all, it is free. Download from Microsoft