Secure Your Vista PC in 10 Easy Steps
You can lock down Windows Vista using free software and a few easy system tweaks.
Instead, install TweakUAC, a free utility that enables you to turn UAC on or off as well as provides an intermediate "quiet" mode that keeps UAC on but suppresses administration-elevation prompts. With TweakUAC in quiet mode, UAC will appear to be off to those running as administrator accounts, while people with standard user accounts will still be prompted.
10. Check your work
Now that you've tweaked Windows Vista, you can keep tabs on your system's security with the System Health Report. This diagnostic tool takes input from the Performance and Reliability Monitor and turns it into an information-packed report that can spotlight potential security problems.
- Open Control Panel.
- Click System.
- In the Tasks list, click Performance (near the bottom).
- In the resulting Tasks list, click Advanced tools (near the top).
- Click the last item on the resulting list -- "Generate a system health report."
The report will list any missing drivers that might be causing error codes, tell you whether your antivirus protection is installed and declare whether UAC is turned on. You may want to run this report once a month just to make sure everything's still good.
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