What you trying to protect there Dan.... ?? Your Porn ? LOL. Sorry, had to say that. But seriously though, lock your **** with the tools you got around you like MacGyver would yo. Go to DOS and make a dir that has extended ascii chars in it's name, then when someone tries to open them through windows, they will be denied access or any information to that folder and it's contents if done properly. Give the dir Read-Only, Hidden, and System attributes. Then, make sure your OS is setup to not view hidden or system files. You said that you were a newbie so I gave you a newbie way of securing your stash, using a bit of trickery. Use like (alt-255) "win" (alt-255) or something, lol. Don't make the name more than 5 chars long though or your stuff can be accessed through DOS via the DOS 8.3 filenaming scheme if the extended char was only put at the end (in some cases). Don't know if this works on XP but I know that this works great on 95/98/ME. A batch file could be created to lock and unlock the folder to allow access to or deny access to the contents on-the-fly. Here's how you'd do it:

"Lock.bat"

@echo off
ren C:\hi ÿhiÿ
attrib +r +s +h C:\ÿhiÿ
cls
exit

"Unlock.bat"

@echo off
attrib -r -s -h C:\ÿhiÿ
ren C:\ÿhiÿ hi
cls
exit

Of course it wouldn't be wise to name these "Lock" and "Unlock" but I just used these to give you an example. Make a folder named whatever you want without the extended chars... like "hi" then put it in a physical drive & directory of your choosing that you want your stuff hidden in. Then, match the name of the folder and it's parent directory location to fit these 2 batch files accordingly. Just plug these into DOS's "edit" program, make these changes, and you're good to go. When in edit, lastly, change the "ÿ" extended chars and replace them with fresh "ÿ" extended chars by holding down alt and typing 255. This is the most important part or they won't work right. Make sure to save these 2 separately with .bat extensions. You could hide these files too, I would, but you'll also have to hide the 2 generated files that come with these two... the .pif files that correspond to these programs storing their information. Either way, this ony takes two seconds to pull off, no data loss required. You'd be surprised at how many people would be tricked by these techniques. You could change the .pif icons if you wanted too but if they are hidden and have inconspicuous names that look legit then it wouldn't matter if they have ms-dos shortcut icons or not. These .pif files will only be generated if the batch file's properties are altered, such as making them hidden or changing other outside pieces of info after they've been created. When you need access just enable hidden and system files to be seen and run your unlock batch file. When you're done, run your lock batch file and enable hide hidden and system files again. This is what I call the "Toy Box" technique. Put it back how you found it.

Sometimes it's the simplest things in life that people overlook. Believe it or not a lot of novice - capable users don't know about this trick, as simple as it is and as long as it's been around. Better then a macro-virus, and you could say that you did it yourself. If you're running an OS that's compatible with this little trick you might want to consider it. Happy hiding................... or destroying, whichever you choose.

A-d-a-m