Brought to you by affordable Alienware laptop computers. Many home users have unknowingly become computer geeks. Not too long ago using the terms ‘router’ or ‘wireless’ signaled the presence of the enthusiast or professional. No longer. Now, routers, hubs, switches, Ethernet cards, firewalls and a bewildering array of other network related buzzwords have entered the home.

By making the installation of these devices easy and inexpensive, vendors opened new sources of revenue for themselves and offered a significant value to home users. Now multiple home computers could share resources without ‘sneaker net’ – physically transporting files or moving printer connections. Now the whole family could use a single network connection to the Internet, and often without having to string wires all over the house.

What users didn’t get is what every networking and computer professional has early on – training in how to secure that gear from hackers.

But, don’t panic. The settings from the vendor are often quite good. Now, for some guidance…

RFM is a common acronym known to computer professionals. For the sake of propriety I’ll ignore the middle letter, but the first and last stand for Read the Manual. It’ll give you common useful settings and configuration information. Now read it again.

ROUTER PORTS

First, change the password and if possible rename the administrator account. The person who bought the same model you did has that information, and he may not be as trustworthy as you.

Port 80 is the standard for HTTP, needed for any web browsing. ‘Ports’ are network numbers used by software to distinguish traffic. Open that, but only for specific IP addresses or ranges going out. That way, only known computers can generate traffic out of your home network.

That tip is imperfect if you acquire an IP address automatically. I.e. use DHCP, as most do. But many providers allow you to purchase one static address for your router. That’s the one that should have access out.

Why do you care about traffic going out? Because you can infect others. Practice safe networking. Don’t spread viruses. Also, if you have wireless – see below – you may not know who’s on your network. Even if you don’t and you’re not home, no one can sneak in with a laptop and get out of your network. Yes, it’s happened.

You’ll have to open Port 80 for all incoming traffic, unless you want to try to track which sites have which IP address – nearly impossible.

If you use a desktop e-mail client, rather than being entirely browser based, you need to open Port 25 for outgoing mail (SMTP) and 110 for incoming (POP3, ignore the acronym meanings).

And that’s ALL… usually.

Manual or desktop FTP clients, which you should avoid because of their weak Security, will need another, and specialized programs will require a few others. In most cases you’ll find their numbers easily discoverable. Keep them to the bare minimum. The rule of thumb with network Security is: everything closed by default, allow only those truly needed and only to those who need it.

By the way, if these sound a lot like firewall settings it’s because routers and firewalls have some overlapping functionality. Routers route traffic, firewalls prevent or allow it.

WIRELESS NETWORKS

If you have wireless gear, you have more to do. Some, by default, allow anyone nearby to use them to access that network and hence the Internet. That means not only the teenager in the upstairs bedroom, but the neighbor next door and the hacker parked at the curb can access resources inside your home. Yes, that does happen.

Lock down your wireless gear by, you guessed it, reading the manual to learn how to configure passwords and implement any other Security features available.

It isn’t necessary to dedicate your life to becoming a network or Security expert in order to safeguard your resources. But having a home network connected to the Internet via a home router, puts you at extra risk compared to dial-up or single-connection users.

If you don’t spend a modest amount of time to take simple steps today, someday you may spend much more after you’ve been hacked.

For more see inexpensive refurbished Alienware laptops and Earn An Online College Degree: Not So Hard.

Cleaning you registry may sound like a scary thing for people who are not computer experts. Many people do not know how to even access their own registry. In order to clean your registry, you need to have a registry cleaner or have extensive knowledge of your registry.

Cleaning out your registry can be done using the windows registry tool that is built into your computer. This tool can be accessed by typing in “regedit” without the “” in the run box. You need to clean your registry whenever it is corrupted by a virus, or by spyware. It is important to note that you should only clean your registry manually if you know what you are doing. People who are beginners are much better off leaving the cleaning of their registry to a program or computer professional who knows what each and every file in the registry does.

Every time, regardless of whether the registry cleaning is by a program or manually you need to create a backup of your registry. You can easily do this from the regedit meun, by clicking on file at the top of the editor. Then click on export. Finally click on save and save it to a folder. Also, try to save a copy to some type of external media in case of a corruption of your registry while the cleaning is in progress.

Registry editing programs are one of the best investments you can make in your computer. A good anti-virus program is necessary first, however, with a good registry editor you can save yourself from losing hours of hard work and thousands of personal files. Registry editors work much in the same way as a caulk gun. They will kick out all the nasty files, such as missing files and viruses and then seal over them by adding back any missing DLL files or other necessary files. While a registry editing program may not be the least expensive you buy for your computer, it can increase the speed of your computer by quite a bit.

Windows is as good about cleaning as a teenager. It often just leaves files that it is using in the registry, and will get around to cleaning them out whenever you make it. Luckily, the registry editor is doing the hard work for you. Always do your research before you buy a registry editor program, as some registry editors may cause conflicts if you have Windows Vista installed on your computer. Other programs may just be fakes, in order to add further spyware and many other lovely problems to your computer. Having a clean registry is quite difficult, and once you decide which registry editor you want, you need to run it at least once a week. Once you have a clean registry, the speed of your computer will skyrocket! To really fix the problems with your computer, you need a registry editor that has a good track record and that will clean out all of your computers problems!

The windows registry is an important part of the windows operating system, without which your computer cannot function. If errors occur in the windows registry, then you will need to fix them, otherwise your computer system might become irreversibly damaged and stop working entirely. When this happens, you might have to restore your entire system, wiping out all of your files, data, and important information in the process.

How can you tell when errors occur in your windows registry? There are some signs and symptoms that will tell you that there is something wrong with your windows registry. One of the first symptoms that will show up when there are errors in your registry is that your computer takes much longer than normal to start up. This is because your computer checks the windows registry to find out what your settings and options should be when your computer first turns on, and if there are errors, this process takes much longer.

Another common symptom of errors in the registry are frequent crashes, when your computer simply stops working and displays a blue screen with some undecipherable words on it. This means that the errors in your registry have interfered with your computer system so much that it simply cannot continue to work and needs to be restarted.

So how can you fix windows registry errors? There are a few ways you can fix errors in your windows registry when you realize that they’re the cause of your computer malfunctioning. The first is to engage the services of a qualified computer professional who will be able to diagnose your problem and provide you with a solution. This is a relatively expensive option, however, as professional computer services do not come cheaply. The best registry cleaner services are hard to find.

Is there some way to accomplish this more cheaply? With registry cleaning software, that is definitely possible. These are programs that have been written for people whose computer systems are suffering from registry errors. They are designed to seek out errors in the registry and eliminate them, without the need for any form of intervention from the user. Even if you know next-to-nothing about fixing computers, all you need to do is run a registry cleaning program, and your computer will be running as if it were brand new in no time at all. To find more on the best registry cleaner click on the links in this article.