Easy way to protect files from holiday guests

For the past nine years at holiday time I’ve reminded Good Booters to protect their computer’s operating system from potential misadventures inflicted upon it by visiting friends and relatives as well as recommendations on how to hide personal files from the likes of Sara Snoop and Nosey Ned.

But this year rather than suggesting you create a bunch of password protected User Accounts and exotic ways to hide your sensitive files and folders on your hard drive I’m recommending a much simpler and more expeditious way to secure your system and protect your sensitive files. A novice friendly two stepper.

Step 1: Do an exact backup of all your “Stuff” (files that cannot be replaced should your computer crash) to an external hard drive or CD/DVD.  

Step 2: Then before the arrival of each new gaggle of guests create a “just in case” System Restore Point.

For those personal files you would like to keep from the prying eyes of Sara Snoop and Nosey Ned after you

do an exact backup of all your “Stuff” backup ‘just’ your personal files/folders to a Jump/Thumb drive. 

After insuring the files on your Jump/Thumb drive are readable, delete the backed up personal files from your hard drive.

You now have both a complete backup of all your “Stuff” and a second copy of just your personal files which can be conveniently restored to your hard drive when your guests have departed.

Should you also like to hide your Desktop shortcuts from Sara Snoop and Nosey Ned:

* Right click on your Desktop.

* Click View

* Click on to uncheck “Show Desktop Icons”.

To restore your Desktop icons:

* Right click on your Desktop.

* Click View

* Click on to check “Show Desktop Icons”.

By the way, for those who have the Business, Enterprise or Ultimate version of Vista , should you forget to back up an important file or folder and you or whomever inadvertently change it, you can restore the file or folder to a previous version.

* Right- click on the file or folder

* Click “Restore previous versions”

You'll see a list of available previous versions of the file or folder. The list will include files saved by Vista’s Shadow Copy utility and Vista’s backup utility.

However, before restoring a file or folder to a previous version, open it to make sure it's the version you want. When a file or folder is replaced the replacement cannot be undone.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.