Unless your organization’s Web site has been the victim of defacement or injection of some hostile code, a hacker’s attempt to break into your Web server can often go unnoticed, thanks to the sheer volume of traffic that the server’s likely to receive. But you can make things a little more difficult for hackers to hide their mischief—and easier for yourself to uncover their deeds. All it takes is adding a little security to your Web server’s log files.

If a hacker attacks your Web server—or even if you just want to check its security status—Web logs are the first place you should go for information. By default, you can find these logs in %SYSTEMROOT%/System32/logfiles.

However, this is a well-known location, so you should move the log files to a non-system drive that doesn’t house your Web site. To change the location of your log files, log on to the Web server with an account that has administrative rights.

Follow these steps:

1. Go to Start, right-click My Computer, and select Explore.
2. Navigate to the drive and folder location where you want to relocate the IIS log files.
3. Right-click inside the right-hand window pane, and select New | Folder.
4. Enter a name for the folder (e.g., MyIISLogs), and press [Enter].
5. Go to Start | Control Panel, double-click the Administrative Tools applet, and double-click Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
6. Right-click the Web site, and select Properties.
7. On the Web Site tab, select Properties in the Enable Logging frame.
8. On the General Properties tab, click Browse, and then navigate to the folder you just created to store the IIS log files.
9. Click OK three times.

Repeat these steps for each Web site. Don’t forget that you’ll need to manually move any previous files from the old log directory to the new one.

Now that your log files have a new home, you need to assign the directory the proper permissions. Follow these steps:

1. Right-click the folder you just created, and select Properties.
2. On the Security tab, deselect the Allow Inheritable Permissions From Parent To Propagate To This Object check box.
3. A warning box will appear that says you’re preventing inheritable permissions from propagating; select Remove, and select Add.
4. Add the System and Local Administrator accounts, and select OK.
5. Click Administrators, and set to Full Control.
6. Click System, set to Full Control, and click OK.

You’ve now tucked away your Web logs in a secure remote location.

Final thoughts

Log files are the only way you’ll ever reconstruct events that aspire to bring down your Web server. Move them, monitor them, and consider transferring them daily (or backing them up) to an off-Web location.

This Microsoft Windows Registry edit put add Copy To and Move To on the right-click context menu of Windows Explorer.

Adding Copy To and Move To functionality to the Windows Explorer right-click menu starts with the finding the key in the Windows Registry file. (Be sure to back up the Registry file before you begin.)

1. 1. Start Regedit by navigating Start | Run and typing

regedit in the dialog box.

2. Navigate to this key in the Registry file:HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers Note: The Send To key is already there

1. 3. Right-click on the

ContextMenuHandlers folder and select New | Key to add a new key.

2. 4. Give it the name

Copy To and then double-click the (Default) value of the new key’s right-hand pane.

3. 5. Type in this code as the new data:

{C2FBB630-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}

4. 6. Right-click on the

ContextMenuHandlers folder and select New | Key to add a new key.

5. 7. Give it the name

Move To and then double-click the (Default) value of the new key’s right-hand pane.

6. 8. Type in this code as the new data:

{C2FBB631-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}

7. 9. Click OK and close Regedit
8. 10.

Copy To and Move To should now be available options on the right-click context menu in Windows Explorer.<<< (before) <<< (after)

Consider some of your options from Intel alone. Just on the desktop, from the Intel Celeron D to the Core 2 Extreme you can choose from seven different CPU types. Within the Pentium D processor family, there are 12 different speeds. That’s not counting the additional six additional mobile processor, six server processor families, and the number of flavors of each.

With AMD, it’s not any less confusing. AMD has four different desktop processor families and five for mobile computers. At least there’s only one choice when it comes to servers, but when you look at one model line like the Athlon 64 X2 dual-core CPU, there are 13 individual flavors of the CPU.

PC makers such as Dell and HP help somewhat by making most of the choices for you. They don’t offer every single CPU choice in their models. Even when you have the option of customizing the CPU in a unit, you only have limited selection of CPUs. This helps minimize the confusion somewhat, but you still need to know the difference in CPU types when comparing models from different makers. Like hard drive sizes, amount of RAM and video card selections, CPUs are now included in the pricing shell game. By shuffling components around a little, one manufacturer can “match” the price of another machine, but the performance may differ wildly.

It’s next to impossible to remember all of the different CPU types like you could way back in the 20th century. But at the same time, processors are increasing speed at an exponential rate.

This is where it comes in handy to standardize your purchases for your organization. Pick an individual model that meets your needs and then forget about it. Buy as many of those units as possible, and then start the process over again next year.

The Administrator account exists on all computers running Windows XP Professional and Home. This gives potential hackers, half the information they need to access your computer—all they have to do is guess your password.

You can make it more difficult for unauthorized persons to get into your system by renaming the Administrator account. Follow these steps for a Windows XP Pro machine:

1. Go to Control Panel and open Administrative Tools. Double-click the Local Security Policy.
2. When the Local Security Settings snap-in appears, open the Local Policies\Security Options branch and double-click the Accounts: Rename Administrator Account policy.
3. When the Accounts: Rename Administrator Account Properties dialog box appears, type a new name in the text box, and click OK.

Follow these steps to rename the Administrator account in Windows XP Home:

1. Press [Windows]R to access the Run dialog box.
2. In the Open text box, type Control userpasswords2 and click OK to access the User Accounts dialog box.
3. Select the Administrator Account from the list and click the Properties button.
4. In the User Name text box, type a new name, and click OK.

Note: This tip applies to both Windows XP Home and Professional editions.

Simply set the debugger symbol path as follows, substituting your downstream store path for DownstreamStore.

SRV*DownstreamStore*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download

/symbols

For example, to download symbols to c:\websymbols, you would add the following to your symbol path: SRV*c:\websymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/

download/symbols and then click Files | Save Workspace..

Now you are ready to click File | Open Crash Dump and you can run diagnostics after a BSOD in safe mode.

As time went on though, a processor’s clock speed became a lot less important. It became possible for two processors to have the same clock speed, but to have entirely different Levels of performance. The earliest example I can think of was when the Pentium was first released. Prior to that point, the fastest PC available was the 486 DX4 100, which had a clock speed of 100 MHz. When the Pentium chip was introduced, it was first made available in 75 MHz and 90 MHz clock speeds. Eventually though, there was a 100 MHz version available. Although the Pentium and the 486 both ran at 100 MHz, the Pentium was a lot faster than the 486.

I know this is ancient history, but the same basic thing is going on today. Both Intel and AMD offer several different types of processors. These processors may run at similar clock speeds, but often perform very differently. My goal in writing this article is to help you to understand what the differences are in such processors, and how those differences ultimately affect performance.

Clock Speed

As I explained earlier, for years clock speed was the single most important factor in determining a processor’s performance. Although clock speed is not as important as a used to be, it is still relatively important. That being the case, I want to begin by explaining what clock speed is and how it affects a processor’s performance.

Clock speed, as it relates to a microprocessor is a complicated matter -so complicated in fact, that I could probably write an entire book on the subject. Since I don’t have that kind of space to work with, I will break down the concept is simply as I possibly can.

As I’m sure you know, computers work with binary code. Binary code is nothing more than a series of zeros and ones that represents the presence or absence of electricity at a given moment. The real key to a processor being able to work with binary code is that it has to be able to understand when one instruction ends and the next instruction begins. At first this probably doesn’t seem like any big deal. However, what would happen if the CPU were to receive several identical instructions in a row?

In a situation like this, the CPU would not be able to use changes in the voltage state to determine where one instruction ends and the next one begins. If the CPU were to only look at state changes, then a series of identical instructions would appear as a single instruction. This is where the clock comes into play.

Have you ever seen one of those antique manual calculators with a crank? On those calculators, you could type in a series of numbers and a mathematical operator sign, but no calculation would be performed until you pull the crank. Pulling the crank was a way of telling the calculator that you’re done entering numbers and are ready to enter the next number or to perform the calculation.

A clock inside a computer works in a similar way. Clock cycles are used to separate one instruction from another. To see how this works, let’s take a look at a very oversimplified example. Imagine for a moment that you had an eight bit processor that you needed to send a series of instructions to. In our overly simplified example, this processor would have nine wires. Eight of those wires represent individual bits. Since binary code is really just representation of whether or not power is on or off, we can represent an eight bit binary instruction by applying or not applying power to eight of the nine wires.

So we’ve sent an instruction to our imaginary processor by applying electricity (or not) on eight of the processor’s wires that represent eight bits of data. Now it’s time to pull the crank, so to speak. To do so, the computer would apply power to the processor’s ninth wire. This would let the computer know that the instruction is complete and that it can be acted on. The processor’s ninth wire, would be connected to the computer clock. Every time the clock ticks, power would be applied to this wire. If the clock ticked once per second, then the processor would be able to process one instruction per second. It isn’t that data can’t be sent to the processor any faster, but the clock has to keep everything in sync. Without the clock, the processor has no way of knowing where one instruction ends and the next one begins.

As I said earlier though, this example is grossly oversimplified. Today’s processors can handle 64-bit instruction sets, and clock speeds are measured in gigahertz. A gigahert is roughly equivalent to a billion clock cycles per second.

Earlier I mentioned that clock speeds are not as important today as they once were. Today, clock speeds represent the number of instruction sets that can be processed each second, just as has always been the case.

For many years Intel and AMD were in the constant race with each other to produce the CPUs with the highest clock speeds. The problem is that as clock speeds began to approach 4 GHz., heat dissipation became a serious issue. Generally speaking, the higher the clock speed, the more heat the processor is going to produce. Currently, the lack of a low-cost heat dissipation mechanism is preventing Intel and AMD from mass marketing CPUs with higher clock speeds. This seems to have put an end to the clock speed wars have gone on for so long.

Rather than focusing on higher clock speeds, both Intel and AMD have turned their focus toward doing more with existing clock cycles. The reason why clock speeds are less important than they once were is because newer processor designs can allow multiple instruction sets to be processed with each clock cycle. For example, a 2 GHz processor that processes two instruction sets per clock cycle could potentially be faster than a 3 GHz processor that processes one instruction set per clock cycle. I say could potentially be, because it really depends on the chip architecture and on the operating system and applications that are being run.

Processing multiple instruction sets per clock cycle almost always means running parallel threads. Unless you are running multithreaded application on an operating system that is designed to simultaneously run multiple threads, you will see no real benefit processing multiple instruction sets in a single clock cycle. I will talk about multiple threads in a lot more detail later on in another article.

Caching

Another factor that greatly affects a processor’s performance is the processor’s cache. The processor’s cache has absolutely nothing to do with the speed at which the processor runs (at least not in terms of clock speed). However, it greatly affects the system’s overall performance.

The basic idea behind the CPU cache is that the cache consists of a small amount of very expensive, but very fast memory. This memory is integrated onto the CPU. It is much faster for the CPU to access frequently used data from the CPU cache than it is to retrieve the data from the system’s RAM.

Probably the best analogy that I’ve heard to describe how a CPU cache works is to compare it to the way that a library works. As you know, in a library there are rows and rows of shelves filled with books. Let’s pretend that the shelves represent system RAM, and that the books represent data. Another thing that libraries have is a librarian. For the purpose of this example, let’s pretend that there is only one librarian in this library. This library and will represent the CPU (if there were multiple librarians, they could represent multiple CPUs).

Now, let’s pretend that someone comes into the library and requests a specific book. The librarian has to get up and walk across the library to the shelves containing the books. From there, the librarian has to look through the shelves to locate the book that the person is asking for. Once the librarian finds the requested book, the librarian has to travel back to the front desk where the person is waiting for it.

This is similar to how a CPU without a cache works. When an application requests data, the CPU has to retrieve data from across the memory bus from the system’s RAM. In computer terms, the memory bus is relatively slow. It therefore takes time for the CPU to retrieve the necessary data. Because the current instruction is dependent on the data that is being retrieved, the CPU is powerless to do anything but wait for the necessary data. Having to wait for data to be retrieved is not exactly conducive to fast processing.

Now let’s see how the situation can be improved by using a CPU cache. Going back to our library example, let’s pretend that the CPU cache is a small shelf right next to the librarian’s chair. When the person comes in and requests a specific book, the librarian still has to get up and walk across the library to the shelves, hunt for the book, and bring it back to the front desk. This time though when the person is finally done with the book, the librarian places the book on the small shelf next to their desk, rather than returning the book to its place on the library shelves.

Now let’s pretend that another person comes into the library and requests a certain book. If they happen to request a different book than what the first person requested, then the librarian will once again have to get up and go hunting for a book. Let’s say though that the books that the first person requested was something really popular, and that the second person who came into a library requested the same book. Since the librarian placed the book are small shelf next to their desk, the librarian can just pick up the book and hand at the person who ask for it. There is no need for the librarian to go hunting through the shelves for the book.

This is basically how a cache works. The CPU works under the assumption that if data has been requested once, it will probably eventually be requested again. Therefore, after data has been initially retrieved, it is placed into the CPU’s cache in case it is needed again.

Of course a cache isn’t a perfect solution. Eventually the cache is going to fill up. As I said before, the cache is extremely small in comparison to the system RAM. If the cache does fill up though, then some of the data is going to have to be removed from the cache to make room for new data.

What I have just described is a single Level cache. Most modern CPUs actually use a two Level cache though. The Level 1 cache is the small, extremely fast, but extremely expensive memory that I just talked about. The Level 2 cache also exists on the CPU, but it’s a little bit slower and less expensive than the memory used for the Level 1 cache. Because the memory used for the Level 2 cache is less expensive than the memory used for the Level 1 cache, the Level 2 cache tends to be a little bit larger in size than the Level 1 cache.

To see how this multiLevel cache works, let’s go back to our library example. The first two people that I talked about walked into the library in both requested a very popular book. Let’s pretend though that over the course of the day a fairly large number of people visited the library, and requested all varieties of books. Because the librarian is placing all of the books that have been requested on a small shelf next to the desk, the shelf fills up. This is the equivalent to the Level 1 cache filling up.

Just because the library has had a sudden spike in activity, does it make the book that the first two people requested any less popular? Of course not. That being the case, it probably doesn’t make much sense for the librarian to return the book to the shelves. The librarian has to take the book off of the small shelf next to the desk to make room for other books that are being requested. Rather than return the popular book to its shelf though, the librarian places the book onto another small shelf that’s just a little bit further from the desk. In computer terms, this secondary shelf would represent the Level 2 cache.

Now let’s pretend that later in the afternoon someone walks into the library and requests the popular book. The librarian first checks the small shelf next to the desk. Since the book is not there, the library and checks the slightly larger shelf that’s a little bit further from the desk, and finds the book. It took the librarian a little bit longer to find the book than it would have if the book had been on the small shelf next to the desk. Even so, the process of retrieving the book still took way less time than it would have if the librarian had to pull the book from its place in the stacks.

As you can see, the Level 2 cache is a temporary repository for data that has not been requested recently, but that could be requested in the near future. The Level 2 cache will eventually fill up, and when it does some data will have to be removed from the cache. Even so, having a Level 1 and Level 2 cache greatly improves a CPU’s efficiency.

A lot of factors go into speed

As you can see, two of the things that tend to have the most impact on a CPUs performance are its clock speed and the sizes of its Level 1 and Level 2 cache.

You can obtain detailed information about the amount of available and used space on your Windows XP disk by right-clicking any drive icon in My Computer and selecting Properties. You also get a nice pie chart display that depicts this information graphically, which makes it very easy to quickly analyze your hard disk usage.

If you have multiple drives, performing this operation on each one can be time consuming. Fortunately, Windows XP can provide the same type of pie chart display for all your drives in one tabbed dialog box. Here’s how:

1. Open My Computer.
2. Hold down [Ctrl] and select each one of the drive icons.
3. Right-click the last one and select Properties.

The resulting dialog box will have a tab containing a pie chart for each drive. You can use this technique with removable as well as floppy disk drives.

Note: This tip applies to both Windows XP Home and Professional editions.

Do you occasionally find yourself needing more room on the taskbar in order to view your applications running on Windows XP? While the Group Similar Taskbar Buttons option allows you to consolidate the amount of space that applications use on the taskbar, you still might need more space.

For instance, the clock and the Quick Launch toolbar are extremely useful features, but you may want to temporarily disable them to free up some room on the taskbar. Here’s how:

1. Right-click an empty area of the taskbar and select Properties.
2. In the Taskbar And Start Menu Properties dialog box, select the Taskbar tab.
3. In the Taskbar Appearance section, clear the Show Quick Launch check box.
4. In the Notification area, clear the Show The Clock check box.
5. Click OK to close the Taskbar And Start Menu Properties dialog box.

This will expand the available space on the taskbar and give you more room to spread out. When you’re done, you can simply reverse the procedure to get the clock and the Quick Launch toolbar back.

Note: This tip applies to both Windows XP Home and Professional editions.

You may already know how to use command-line options with Windows Explorer (Explorer.exe) to specify the folder in which Explorer starts, have it focus on a particular folder or file, and other options. But if you simply want to know how to make Explorer open a specific folder or volume in Windows each time, there’s an easy method.

For example, assume you keep most of your documents on drive D: for reasons of performance or disk space, and you want Explorer to open in that folder each time automatically. While you could modify the shortcut that starts Explorer from the Start menu, there is an easier way to achieve the same result.

First, create a shortcut on the Quick Start toolbar to the volume or folder. To do so:

1. Right-drag the volume or folder to the Quick Start toolbar to the right of the Start menu on the taskbar.
2. Choose Create Shortcut Here.
3. When you want to open the folder as a folder window, just click the icon.
4. When you want to open the folder as a two-pane Explorer window, hold down [Shift] and click the icon on the Quick Start toolbar.

Fortunately, there’s an easier way. The next time you locate your special character in Character Map, look at the bottom right corner of the Character Map window to find a keyboard shortcut that you can use to insert the special character. (For instance, the euro sign is [Alt]0128.) Write it down, and whenever you want to insert your special character, here’s what you can do:

1. Turn on [Num Lock] if it’s not already on.
2. Position the cursor where you want to insert your special character.
3. Press and hold down [Alt].
4. While holding down [Alt], use the number pad to enter the number assigned to your special character. For example, to insert the euro sign, you would enter [Alt]+0128.