Protecting your computer can be a super difficult task. Many users do not even know where to begin. Others think that installing an anti virus tool and enabling Windows Firewall will do the trick. Others prefer using two or three anti-spyware tools at once and a stand alone firewall utility. These are all pretty viable options and they will indeed help you protect your machine from remote attacks.

But what about all the friends you have that once they come visit, start using your computer, navigating on God knows what websites? Or decide to show you the experts they are and begin configuring your computer in a way you are not to comfortable with? Their activity in Control Panel or Task Manager, sharing your files over the local network, disabling services and similar actions may result in serious damage of your computer on the next reboot.

Sometimes, we all feel the need for a little privacy and some of the folders should not be open by anyone else but you. What can you do about that? Restricting the access is the solution. Also, optical drives play an important role in a computer and restricting the access could be of some help when you have kids.

Lock My Computer is a solution provided by PC-Safety and costs $49.95. That's a bargain if you have jumping jack kids that grew a taste for messing with your computer. The trial period offered by the developer is 14 days. It is enough to fully test the software as there is no other restriction imposed.

From the beginning of the installation, it will allow you to configure the security of your machine. The first screen is dedicated to IE protection and some of the preventions will be enabled by default. The user can also disable the automatic password caching or downloading files from the Internet with IE. Preventing the changes to IE local page or on IE customize search option together with changes on IE home page can also be restricted.

The next page of configuration Lock My PC is dedicated to Windows Settings. Disabling the access to various areas of your computer like Control Panel, Start>Run menu, disabling the mapping of a network drive, disabling the changes of Start menu, not to mention changing the password, are all part of Windows Settings. You can restrict the access to sensitive areas of the machine thus improving your security level.

Other Protections offered by Lock My Computer include disabling the access to CD/DVD-ROM or floppy drives, disabling the Registry Editor, Command Prompt and restricting the access to the computer via NetHood (stores the path to the folder containing shortcuts to servers that the user has added to My Network Places) could be of real help.

Management consoles can also be made inaccessible. Computer Management, Certificates, Performance, Local User and Groups, Local Security settings, Services, Event Viewer or Disk Defragmenter can all be restricted just by checking the respective boxes.

Of course, all of the above mentioned restrictions are to be enforced the moment the user of Lock My Computer is a network administrator and the software is installed on the workstations. This way, the user of the computer cannot fiddle with all the options provided by Windows, the damage risks being much decreased. A legal notice can be set up to warn the user of the machine about the company policy. Once enabled, it will appear at the start of the machine.

Restricting and disabling certain features and functions of the user can be stored as profiles by the administrator. The profiles can later be exported and loaded from and into the software.

The interesting part is just beginning as only after all these settings have been made and restrictions applied you can see the software itself, with interface, features and options. The looks of the program are Windows 98 like and everything is kept at a minimalist level, nothing standing out or drawing your attention. A bit more color could have been a perfect idea of transforming the old hag into a Cinderella.

All the options available are displayed vertically on the left side of the application window. They will allow the user to protect files and folders on your computer, the drives you have installed (both internal and external), IE and Windows settings (the ones you have configured before the installation of the application) and the accounts.

In order to preserve all the settings you make you should be able to lock the program with a password. Lock My Computer supports this feature and, more than that, it can be managed by more than one user. The only thing you have to do is to assign the necessary rights to the other users.

A quick start wizard will open each time you launch the software, guiding you through the steps of the desired operation in what concerns the files and folders. It will explain each option Lock My Computer makes available (making read only, invisible and inaccessible files or folders).

Restricting the drives access does not require a wizard and even a child could set the protection in this case.

The Good

Lock My Computer is too easy to use. After getting past the initial protection configuration (which can be modified later on) everything is clear and the intuitive interface will make you think you're a skilled computer user.

The Bad

The interface is rather plain and simple. A more ample Help file would be of great use for novices to understand what exactly are they restricting and how it will affect the machine.

The Truth

I tried accessing a restricted drive through a command line and the answer was that it was not accessible. The application is worth a shot. You have 14 days to try it for free.

Be careful with the password you assign to the program, as - once it is lost - you will have to reinstall your Windows in order to gain access to what you have restricted (remembering the password would be less a better way out of this jam). No data will be lost during the operation, just your time and effort.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: