1. Start

2. Case prep 1

3. Case prep 2

4. Data and power cables

5. Serial ATA stuff

6. General motherboard/CPU info

   • SocketA (AthlonXP, Duron, Socket462Semprons)

   • Intel Socket478 (last-generation Pentium4 & Celeron)

   • AMD64 (Athlon64 & Socket754 Sempron)

   • Intel LGA775 and LGA1366(pinless Intel processors)

7. Testing & installing the motherboard assembly

8. Installing the hard drive

9. Final connections

10. Security during Windows Setup

    • How a router helps

    • How SP2 for WinXP helps

    • General antivirus configuration

    • Kaspersky Antivirus trialware & configuration

11. Best practices for ongoing security

    • How a Limited account helps

    • How to make software cooperate with Limited accounts

12. Resources (drivers, diagnostics, links, online antivirus scans, antispyware resources)

13. A brief visual glossary

back to the Best-practices security page

If software refuses to run properly under a limited account, try these steps:

• Step 1 Check whether there's a patch that fixes the problem. There's an update for The Sims 2, for example, that makes it work under Limited accounts among other things.

• Step 2 Temporarily change your Limited account to a Computer Administrator account, run the software once, then close it and change your account back to Limited. This is all it takes for some programs to get their act together.

• Step 3Start the computer in Safe Mode by pressing the F8 key repeatedly when you anticipate that the first WindowsXP bootup screen is about to show. This gets you access to the Security and Permissions tabs when you right-click folders and choose Properties.

  Find the program's folder within C:\Program Files, right-click it, and give the Users group Full Control Security. Some programs also have a folder in the C:\Program Files\Common Files folder and in the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data folder (which is a hidden/protected OS folder), so check those too and adjust their Security also.

There is some software that simply will not let itself run from a Limited account. QuickBooks from Intuit is notable for this. In these cases, when you're in your Limited account, you can right-click the program and choose Run As..., and use an Administrator-class account to run that program. If you're interested in a narrated Windows Media Player video showing RunAs tricks, I shot one which you can download from here: right-click this link and save the file, then play it

back to the Best-practices security page