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Is Windows Firewall enough protection?

Dave Farquhar security, Windows August 17, 2017August 6, 2018antivirus, firewall, spam, steve gibson

Windows versions from XP onward include a built in firewall. But is Windows Firewall enough protection?

Yes. And no. Security answers are almost always complicated. But I’ll explain.

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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Command line for active directory users and computers

Dave Farquhar Windows July 28, 2017September 13, 2023

Sometimes it’s faster just to type a command than to dig around in the start menu. That’s especially true for many sysadmin tasks. Knowing the command line for active directory users and computers can save you a lot of time.

Dave Farquhar

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What went wrong with Windows Vista

Dave Farquhar Windows June 4, 2017December 3, 2018vista, windows 7, windows 98, Windows Vista, Windows XP

What went wrong with Windows Vista? If you were around when it launched, you probably wouldn’t argue with me if I said the things that went right were easier to count than the things that went wrong. Windows XP lived nearly forever because Vista was so bad.

Dave Farquhar

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Still using Windows XP? Let’s talk options.

Dave Farquhar Windows June 1, 2017February 4, 2022

If you’re still using Windows XP, I wish you’d stop. Seriously, for your safety and the safety of others, I wish you’d stop. The good news is you have some options, and you’ll probably be happier with one of them.

I advised a Fortune 25 company on how, when, and why to migrate off Windows XP in a professional capacity. So hopefully I can help you like I helped them. The reasons for doing it are the same. The only difference is scale.

Dave Farquhar

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Benefits of defragmenting your computer hard drive

Dave Farquhar Windows May 31, 2017August 1, 2017defragmenter, speedup, Windows 10

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone explain the benefits of defragmenting your computer hard drive. I do see a lot of misconceptions out there. I explained defragmenting in my 1999 book, so I’ll explain it again.

Part of the misconception is that things have changed. The tools have changed, yes. But the need hasn’t.

Dave Farquhar

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Windows registry explained simply

Dave Farquhar Windows April 26, 2017August 1, 20171990s

I can’t say I’ve ever seen the Windows registry explained well. It helps to think of the registry as a database. Microsoft loves databases, and they’ve been trying for decades to stuff as much database technology into Windows as they can. The registry was one of the earliest and most successful of those efforts.

Although it was controversial in the 1990s, the registry solved a very real problem. Windows 3.1 and earlier stored all of its settings in huge plaintext files called ini files. They were a tangled mess, and the more you used your computer, the slower it became. The registry made it a lot faster for the computer to find each setting it needed.

Dave Farquhar

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Start button disappeared? Here’s the fastest fix.

Dave Farquhar Windows April 21, 2017April 16, 2017Task Manager, Windows 10, windows 7, windows 8, Windows Explorer

If your start button disappeared, I have the fastest possible fix for you. It works with Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10, and server versions, in addition to versions of Windows you shouldn’t be running anymore.

Dave Farquhar

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Taming Windows 95/98/98SE/ME Out of Memory Errors

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, Windows April 6, 2017June 19, 2025disk cache, optimizing windows, win9x, windows 2000, windows 7, windows 9x

The symptom: If you install more than 512 MB of RAM in a system running Windows 9x (that’s any version of Windows 95, 98, 98SE, or ME), you get weird out of memory errors. Here’s how to get around those memory limitations to make Windows 95 and Windows 98 work with 2 GB of RAM.

The culprit is a bug in Windows 9x’s disk cache. The solution is to limit the cache to use 512MB of memory, or less, which is a good thing to do anyway.

Dave Farquhar

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Check SSD alignment in Windows

Dave Farquhar Windows March 27, 2017August 17, 2018command prompt, raid array, vista, Windows 10, windows 7, windows 8

It’s important to check SSD alignment in Windows. If your SSD isn’t aligned, you reduce its performance and its life expectancy. Fortunately in many cases, your SSD will be properly aligned, but it only takes a minute to check.

Dave Farquhar

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Migrate Windows 7 to SSD or install fresh?

Dave Farquhar Windows March 8, 2017July 27, 2017chrome, firefox, optimizing windows, Windows 10, windows 7

Here’s a good question. Should you migrate Windows 7 to SSD or install fresh? And what about Windows 10? This is likely to be controversial and everyone has an opinion. I’ll weigh the pros and cons of each, as a guy who knows a little about optimizing Windows, and who has been using SSDs since 2009.

Dave Farquhar

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