Tech & IT – Page 9 – Jonathan Mumm

Secure your Windows 7 Welcome Screen Login & Require Control + Alt + Delete

Disabling the Windows 7 Welcome screen can provide an increase in security for logging into the computer, as someone who steals a laptop isn’t presented with a list of all possible users.

Unfortunately, you cannot hide the list of all users in Windows 7 Home Premium, but you can in Professional and above.

Disable the Display of All User Accounts on login

To increase login security, you can also force the user to press CTRL+ALT+DEL like older Windows versions required.

Enable Control + Alt + Delete for Windows 7 or Vista

This link also listed a couple other registry settings that I have not tried yet, but will soon.

Firefox Is BFFs with Google

I recently switched back to Firefox from Chrome, and tried to change the default search engine used in the omnibar. It turns out you need to do all of these steps below to change that search engine. Most Firefox users won’t ever switch this because it’s not a simple option to find.

Type “about:config” in Firefox Address bar. Press enter.
Find “keyword.URL.” Right-click and click Modify.
Enter the specific URL for the search engine you want to change it to:

Google: http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=
Bing Search: http://www.bing.com/search?q=
Yahoo Search: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=

How many basic web users will change this in Firefox? Slim to none. It’s a shame Firefox doesn’t give you an easy way to switch this.

Super Easy Way to Mount a Shared Drive in OSX

OSX has problems “mounting” shared drives. The typical process is to open finder, click “Go” and then “Connect to Server”….

By following these quick steps you can get a Shared Drive icon on your OSX Dock.

Open Finder, go to Preferences, Enable “Show Connected Servers”
Connect to a Share via Finder -> Go -> Connect to Server (Typically SMB Share from a Windows Server or computer)
After Connecting, you’ll see an icon for the Share on your Desktop. Drag that icon to the right side (document side) of your OSX Dock.
Click the Icon for the Share anytime you need to connect to it!

Why Apple has to make this so difficult, I’ll never know. OSX needs a “Mount Shared Drive” option like Windows does. Until then, this is the closest solution.