On 21 Jun 99, at 23:05, Pete Tremblay wrote:

>    I was wondering if there is any way to password protect a folder on a
> computer that is accessed by others ? This wouldn't be on a network , just
> a household PC with Win95 .  If there is anyway it can be done it'd be very
> helpful .

  There are various shareware and freeware utilities which claim to provide
this feature.  I say "claim to", because unless the utility encrypts the
folder contents -- which could be a big performance hit! -- they're not all
that difficult to bypass.  What if, for instance, the machine is booted from
a floppy instead of the hard drive, and so the password utility never gets
loaded?

  Security like this really needs to be built into the OS to be effective.
And Microsoft has no reason to build it into 95/98, because they already have
a Windows version with that level of security built in:  NT.  If this is a
serious problem, that's an option you might consider.

  Another possibility is to get one of the utilities that lets you treat .ZIP
files like folders, and then use the password facility provided by the .ZIP
format.  In this case, compression could be an adequate substitute for
encryption.


David G

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