Related: In case you are not bothered to recover the password, there is a simple and usual trick of removing the battery associated with the BIOS, which will stop the power supplied to the BIOS and the data stored in it will be reset.

But in case you are interested in the recovery of the BIOS Password, then you may need to use a tool like PC CMOS Cleaner.

PC CMOS Cleaner is an easy-to-use tool to recover, delete, decode and display the superior passwords stored in BIOS whatever the brand is. Most types of BIOS are supported. It’s an bootable CD that runs on x86 and x86_64 computers. No need to pay expensive fees to experts. It’s a useful tool for users to get their lost BIOS password back, or clean passwords from an old computer bought from others.

Key Feature of this handy BIOS Password Cracker

• Support all x86, x86_64 Personal Computers.
• Support most BIOS, such as: AWARD, AMI, Compaq, Phoenix, Samsung, IBM, Compaq, DTK, Thinkpad, Sony, Toshiba and so on.
• Display the  superior passwords of the BIOS .
• Remove BIOS password(will set the BIOS to default status, need reset date).
• Set the BIOS to default state

[Download PC CMOS Cleaner]

SecretDisk is a freeware, lightweight and efficient software, which can create upto eight secret hidden partitions onto your HDD Disk. The encryption algorithms used are industry standards like AES (Rijndael), GOST 28174-89, Blowfish, Wwofish and CAST 256.

The 32 bit version SecretDisk is absolutely free, but you can also download the 64 bit version limited to 30 days’ trial period.

Features of SecretDrive, The Free Virual Partition Maker

• 32/64 bit architecture support
• Strong “on the fly” data encryption by one of five modern encryption algorithms
• Simultaneous work up to 16 virtual disks
• RAM disk support
• Optional creation up to 4 hidden disks in an existing one
• Backup and restore secret disk header
• Encryption/decryption of files
• Simple and intuitive user interface
• Containers are protected from accidental deletion
• Built-in wipe manager
• Built-in text encrypter
• Built-in passwords generator

[Download SecretDisk]

And this sometimes land you in a situation, when you want to limit the bandwidth used by a background activity, when you are doing something else. For instance, you may be downloading a video file in the background, which may take a few minutes to download, and at the same time you may be surfing the web. The heavy data download used by the video, might cripple your Internet surfing and you may want to control the Internet traffic bandwidth used by the Video Download application.

NetBalancer – Control Internet Traffic Used by Different Applications

In such a situation, you may want to use a software like NetBalancer. It allows you to control and limit the bandwidth used by different applications on your computer. his helps you to continue browsing the web and do other Internet activities at the same time, when some other bandwith intensive activity is running in the background.

NetBalancer allows you to …

• Set download and upload speed limits for a process
• Show all system processes with their in and out network traffic speed
• Show current connection for any process
• Show downloaded and uploaded traffic for any process since NetBlancer’s start
• View overall system traffic as a graph
• Show last 15 seconds traffic in system tray
• Fine tune priorities (see Level Severity setting).

NetBalancer is currently a freeware applications but the free version is limited to 5 process priorities/limits at a time.

[Download NetBalancer]

This will lock your computer and nobody can access it in your absence. Once you are back to your computer, you just have to enter your password to gain the access.

Problems With Win+L Key as Auto Lock / Unlock Computer

Although easy, this method has some disadvantages. First thing is that you have to enter the password every time you have gain the access. And the other disadvantage is that passwords are always breakable. There are ways and means to crack even some of the strongest passwords and also they can be bypassed / harvested from your system files.

If you want an absolute security, then the solution may be like using a hardware lock on your computer, whose key you can take with yourself.

Lock Computer with USB – Use Predator

Predator is a freeware software, which does the job just perfectly. It workd with a USB and makes the USB like a key. As long as that USB is inserted in the computer, your computer will remain unlocked and you can use it. When you are going away, just take that USB out with you, and the computer will instantly be locked.

You have to install this auto lock onto your computer to use it. At the time of installation, it asks you to enter a password. This password is used to allow you to get access in case you lose your USB Key.

You can monitor, more than one computer with the same USB lock and also multiple USB’s can be used to lock / unlock the same computer depending upon your requirements.

Advanced Security Features of Predator

There are some advanced security features built in for added security.

• t records all security-related events in a log file, to let you know if intruders have tried to use your computer while you have been away.
• It can replicate this log on your Twitter account so as to allow you to remotely monitor all access-control activity on your PC.
• It frequently changes the security codes recorded on your USB drive.
• It disables the Windows task manager when you unplug the USB drive. Nobody can stop it with Ctrl-Alt-Del.
• It can sound an audible alarm if somebody enters an invalid password.

Great Features.

[Download Predator]

http://192.168.1.1 is the URL, which you have to enter in your web browser, in case you want to access and tweak the settings, admin and password of your network router. It is a way to access the network device attached to your computer connected at the private IP address 192.168.1.1.

What is Private IP Address 192.168.1.1

192.168.1.1 is one of the private IP address, which most of the manufacturers of network router set as default. The private IP means that this IP address is being referred from the home computer only. Unlike other public IP addresses, which are unique for the entire web, the private IP can be repeated in different networks. In other words, both you and I, and everyone else, can use http://192.168.1.1 at the same time to configure the settings of our routers. It is not possible for public IP Addressses.

http://192.168.1.1 Router Admin & Password List

The admin and password details are not used by most of the people on a regular basis. Once they are set, people usually forget about them, and this is the reason, I have found many people struggling for the default router login details at a later date.

In case you have changed the default username and password of the http://192.168.1.1 Router, then there is no solution other than trying a hardware reset. But in case, you have not changed the password, then you can try to access the router by using a combination of password given below.

DiskDigger is a freeware tool, which allows you to recover files from any type of media that your computer can read. This includes USB flash drives, memory cards (SD, CompactFlash, Memory Stick, etc), and of course your hard drive. The types of files that it recovers include photos, videos, music, documents, and many other formats.

DiskDigger can even scan reformatted or badly formatted disks (disks to which Windows can’t assign a drive letter), and even disks with bad sectors. It bypasses the Windows file system drivers and scans your disk directly. It has its own built-in support for the following file systems: FAT12 (floppy disks), FAT16 (older memory cards), FAT32 (newer memory cards and hard disks), NTFS (newer hard disks), and exFAT (Microsoft’s new successor to FAT32).

Advice: Like any other data recovery tool, it is advised that you should save DiskDigger on a different drive from the one on which the data recovery attempt is being made. You should run it in portable mode for best results. And like any other tool, the efficiency of the data recovery depends upon the time elapsed after the data was deleted and the use of the disk.

[Download DiskDigger]

But there are certain tools free from Microsoft, and which do the job to the perfection.

Automatated TroubleShooting Service – A Freeware Tool to Fix Common Windows XP / Vista / 7 Errors

Microsoft’s ATS is one such freeware tool, which can scan your computer for possible common Windows errors automatically and fix them. It can automatically detect and fix common maintenance problems such as broken desktop shortcuts, unused icons, disk volume errors, and incorrect system time display. There are lots of other features also to make your life easier.

Check it out.

[Microsoft's ATS Download]

Twitter is no doubt in rage. With the recent joining of celebrities like Barack Obama and Bill Gates, Twitter has gained unprecedented popularity in such a short time.

And as a general rule, popularity not only attracts the genuine users, but also attracts scammers, spammers, hackers and malware writers. Keeping the trend you might come across lots of Twitter traffic scam sites, which lure innocent Twitter users by promising them loads of followers and traffic.

Someone, just sent a link for such a website (http://twitterbuilding.com/) to me. I used my sandbox to go to the link. And Google Chrome warned me it as a possible phishing site. I carefully proceeded and found the following.

This site is promising you to make a VIP member and you just have to give them your Twitter username and password. Pretty easy stuff to fool around.

But it is dis-heartening to note that people continue to fall for such simple traps and give their credentials.

Passwords are like your keys to online security. It is a pity that despite understanding the need of strong passwords, most people still continue to use weak passwords.

Convenience of use and security are often at diagonally opposite ends, when it comes to web applications. People fall for convenience and avoid using strong passwords, because they do not want to get into the hassles of remembering strong passwords. But, we always give more importance to PC Security then convenience.

And in case, you want to have your cake and eat it too, then you always have the option of using a good password manager like Roboform.

Most Commonly Used Password List – Is Your Password There on the List?

Recently a popular website Rockyou.com was hacked to steal the passwords of several of its users, which landed on a few hacker’s fora. Imperva has published an analysis of the data and some of the findings are really interesting.

1. About 30% of users chose passwords whose length is equal or below six characters.
2. Moreover, almost 60% of users chose their passwords from a limited set of alpha-numeric characters.
3. Nearly 50% of users used names, slang words, dictionary words or trivial passwords (consecutive digits, adjacent keyboard keys, and so on). The most common password among Rockyou.com account owners is “123456”.

Here is a list of the top 20 most commonly used passwords in the list.

How Such Lists of Most Commonly Used Passwords Help the Hackers

If a hacker would have used the list of the top 5000 passwords as a dictionary for brute force attack on Rockyou.com users, it would take only one attempt (per account) to guess 0.9% of the users passwords or a rate of one
success per 111 attempts.

Assuming an attacker with a DSL connection of 55KBPS upload rate and that each attempt is 0.5KB in size, it means that the attacker can have 110 attempts per second. At this rate, a hacker will gain access to one new account every second or just less than 17 minutes to compromise 1000 accounts.

And the problem is exponential. After the first wave of attacks, it would only take 116 attempts per account to compromise 5% of the accounts, 683 attempts to compromise 10% of accounts and about 5000 attempts to compromise 20% of accounts.

[Link to Complete Report (pdf)]

Wireless Router for Internet access, are a rage today because of the convenience provided by them. No cables are to be used, and this means that you can move your laptop to virtually any corner of your house or office.

But convenience comes at a cost, and in most cases, it means vulnerability in your PC Security. And in this case, the vulnerability is the chances of somebody else listening or sniffing to the data sent / received by you through your wireless router.

Protecting the security of your wireless router is extremely important, and one of the basic thing you can do is to protect the administration of your router through the use of a secured wireless router password.

Are You afraid of Forgetting the Wireless Router Password

Since the password on the wireless router is not used on a regular basis, because you do not require to change the router settings daily, many people tend to forget their router password. If you are like that, then there are few steps you can take.

Step 1: If the password is stored in your browser memory, and you are able to access the router administration panel, then you can read another post on this blog to show Hidden Password Field Text.

Step 2: In case, you do not remember the router password and are not even able to login into its admin panel, then you can try to use a set of default password. We have earlier published a list of default router passwords for it.

Step 3: Step 2 will be applicable only in case you have not changed the default settings of your wireless router password. In case you have changed it earlier, then you might have to use the hardware reset button often found on the down / back side of your wireless router. Remember to hold it down for at least 30 seconds. This will return all the settings of your router to the factory settings.