How can I hide the stuff on my computer from my cousin who is coming to visit?

Question

My cousin is coming to visit us from North Dakota next week. He is a computer nut and seems to know just about everything there is about computers. That is what scares us. We have all kinds of personal things on our computer hard drive and on Microsoft Word and Excel files. He will of course attempt to use our computer when we are at work. He is staying in the same room as our computer.

I know we can password protect our log in and have him log in under a guest account but I am afraid he will find a way to get around this and then have access to our personal stuff and files.

Any technical people with advice?

Answer 1

Password protecting your logins is the best first step. He'd have to either pull the hard drive out of your computer and connect it to another, or use a boot disk capable of reseting admin passwords in order to get to your information. If you think he's not capable of either, you should be okay.



If either of these things sounds like something he'd be capable of, then you won't be able to secure yourself, and you should remove and hide the computer while he's around.



Another important thing to do is to set the Administrator account's password. By default in Windows, the built-in Admin account has no password. This is good advice to give anyone, not just someone in your situation. Click Start, right-click on My Computer, and click Manage. On the left, find "Users." Click it once, this should show the computer's users on the right. Right click on Administrator and click Reset Password. Set a good password that you WON'T FORGET!

Answer 2

Well, you could simply move all personal files into 1 big file and hide it. Simply hide it / make it invisible. Since he wont suspect that the file is invisible, he wont even try to find it.





1. Right click on your folder you want to disappear and select: Rename

2. Now, hold down the ALT key on your keyboard and press 0160 from the numpad while holding down.

3. Press enter to confirm it.

4. Now right click again on the folder and select Properties

5. Select Customize (last tab, don't know the exact translation)

6. Change the symbol to an invisible space.



Or you could use a program that locks / encrypts your folder/folders.



♣ Free Hide Folder. Hides the software and password protects the program to view it.



How to use it : http://www.ecuhq.com/tested-programs-how-to-use-f32/free-hide-folder-how-to-use-t184.htm



Edit : you could also put password in BIOS ( stage before Windows ). The only way of resetting BIOS password is by putting the motherboard battery out.



How to do it : http://www.ecuhq.com/security-f5/set-a-bios-password-t220.htm



Hope it helped.



More computer tricks, at : http://www.ecuhq.com

Answer 3

All you can do is password protect really. If he knows how to crack security codes, then not much you can do.

Otherwise, don't have him stay there if you all are that scared of your computer protection being violated.

Why would you allow someone like that then visit? I would not no way in hell would have someone over if I felt they were going to misuse my computer even when password protected. If you can trust anyone to be left behind in your home when you are not there, simply don't have them there.



Take your computer with you to work.

Answer 4

u can use folder lock software or u can hide it by using a small code.if suppose ur file is at destination d: drive then

go to command prompt and type: d: and enter

then type attrib foldername +s +h

that particular folder will be hided or



method 2





right click on "folder"(which u want to hide) and then select properties and click at hidden and close that and go to tools option in the drive located at top tool bar and select view option

in view click at do not show hidden folders and close that it over

Answer 5

There's one sure fire way to stop him. Just disconnect the cable running from the monitor to the PC and take it with you. He can't access your PC if he can't see what's on the screen.



Just make sure that you don't have a spare cable around the house, and tell your neighbors not to loan him one.



Else just lock your PC in the garage or something.

Answer 6

you can put all of your files in your AppData folder, its a hidden folder holding a whole bunch of **** and some other stuff like your temp folder if your on vista its hard to get on to if you password block all names but the guest because all he will be able to see is the guest account AppData folder

Answer 7

I would put everything you want to keep away from him in one folder and then put that folder in another folder and that folder in another folder and that folder in another folder!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!