Safeguard Laptop?

I had all of your safeguards in place and then added whole drive encryption with the free/open source truecrypt not to mention added encrypted mounted volumes also using truecrypte.

No problem, I used NTBACK program in connection with a large external USB hard drive that is also protected with truecrypt and had have no problem and even had done a full backup with this setup not that long ago.

Good to know BillRM!

Bios chips can be replace for all types of computers for around 30 dollars and ATA hard drive lock breaking will cost you around a 100 dollars.

Chumly you might wish to look at the following

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truecrypt

To give you an idea of what truecrypt is along with their own website

http://truecrypt.org

As a user of this program for a number of years I could not be happier with it and never had a problem with it working or performed of any kind. Hell in fact I had run if forrunner program scandisk on 98 systems also without problems for a number of years before truecrypt replaced it.

With it on your system your information should be safe from any reasonable level of attack short of someone with the resources of a government or a very large firm behind them and even there you would give them one hell of a headache.

Someone just randomly stealing your laptop at a airport would be stop cold by truecrypt unlike with an bios lock and an ATA lock that can be gotten around for at most 200 dollars.

If I was you I would still keep my bios and ATA lock in place in order to made what is call an evil maid attack a great deal harder.

An evil maid attack is someone that is targeting you knowing you are running truecrypt and had access to your computer long enough to boot up with a USB stick and place a keylogger in the MBR area of the hard drive to record your truecrypt passphase as you enter it and then they would need access once more to your computer.

That is also a highly directed attack and not an issue for most people.

I do indeed appreciate your confirmation as to its efficacy and all the info you've provided; tsarstepan pointed out a valid mobile methodology in his posting as per http://nerdbusiness.com/blog/what-if-someone-steals-your-laptop-tutorial-mobile-data-encryption

Second comment one big safe guard to keep people from placing evil malware on your computer by way of the internet and thereby maybe endangering your information/files is a program by the name of sandboxie.

The free version is just fine and once more I been running any program that connect to the net under it for a year or so now without a problem.

Sounds interesting, I have heard about the sandbox concept and my backup software Acronis has this feature as per: "When the Try mode is on, all alterations of your system will be performed with your computer's virtual replica on Acronis Secure Zone. You will be able to apply them to your actual system or reject them at any time."

Chumly I fear you had open a can of worms as I am a computer security nut of the first order and as such would like to also direct your attention toward a non-free program call “Process Guard”(around 30 dollars) that will not allow any program to run and or install in your system until you grant it permission and if a program had change since it were last started it will tell you that fact and once more ask for your ok.

It also will not allow any program to place keyboard hooks as in keyloggers unless you ok that program to do so. It also offer protection to memory(as in memory overflow attackes)/registors changes in XP similar to what you will now find build into window 7.

Of course it is a pain at first set up, even with a learn mode you can turn on but afterward the only time you know it is there is when you or your system had done some program upgrade or you add another software package.

Hope you will forgive me for going a little overboard on the issue of security.

Oh you can also set a password on this program so no one else can install a program on your computer if they do gain access to it.

Process Guard sounds interesting, however I do wonder if it's worth the time, trouble and expense over Acronis Try and Decide (via Acronis Secure Zone) since that is already part of my Acronis backup software and I know how to use it.

Here are the two videos describing Acronis Try and Decide:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OUfys5AHQQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1hMqtOqFLg

Give 'em a look-see and tell me what you think!

Will do..........................................................

Chumly Process Guard does not seem to overlap Acronis in it functions.

It is a overall monitoring/security program that protect from memory and other route for malware attacks and add security featuries to XP that can now be found in Microsoft windows 7 OS to XP systems along with being similar to Microsoft Steady State program for XP without locking the whole system down to the same degree and that Steady State does.

Sandboxie is the similar program to Acronis and both seem to greatly overlap however sandboxie had been design more to act as an ongoing barrier between programs that interface with the internet and therefore are targets for malwares and the rest of your system.

It had a numbers of nice features that allow you to set it up to act with your browsers and p2p and mail programs with little pain.

See the youtube link below for more details.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjFup73WIFE

Alrighty then, from what I can tell given that I have:
Spybot
Avast!
Acronis Try and Decide
CCleaner
Hardware-based firewall
Windows Firewall
Windows System Restore
Four external HD's with multiple dated images of all my laptops

I've got enough going on in the protection/redundancy department and my efforts would be best spent in encrypting the data. Not that I do not appreciate the input about Process Guard.

So if you or anyone else has further advice as to encrypting the data for laptops that would be great otherwise I'm going with the combo of KeePass & TrueCrypt as noted here http://nerdbusiness.com/blog/what-if-someone-steals-your-laptop-tutorial-mobile-data-encryption

My great thanks to all!

Ok and good luck however here are a few more comments you know me!

All routers are hardware firewalls, with the whole drive encrypted you do not need to run CClean.

Have fun.............

Yes I know a router can be configured as a hardware-based firewall, less port forwarding.
I very much disagree that CClean has no use simply because the whole drive is encrypted.

Thank you again to all, and to all a good evening.