The solution is to use Remote Desktop Web Connection, which loads the Remote Desktop client within a browser. The Remote Desktop Web Connection is a perfect solution for connecting to your home or office PC when you can’t install the Remote Desktop client software on a computer. By pointing a browser that supports ActiveX controls at a host computer running Windows XP Professional, you can access your remote desktop over the Internet.

Get Your Host Computer Ready

The Remote Desktop feature is only available in Windows XP Professional. It’s not included with Windows XP Home Edition. For more information about how Remote Desktop Web Connection works, see About Remote Desktop Web Connection.

The first step in enabling Remote Desktop Web Connection is to install the necessary software on the host computer. Remote Desktop Web Connection is an optional World Wide Web Service component of Internet Information Services (IIS), which is included by default in Windows XP Professional. IIS responds to requests from a Web browser. Have your Windows XP Professional CD handy, and follow these steps:

Enabling IIS without installing the appropriate security patches can make your system vulnerable to intruders. For more information, read Microsoft Security Bulletin MS01-018 and Security and Privacy for Home Users.

To check for updates:

I highly recommend using Automatic Updates, especially after installing Internet Information Services.

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Configure Internet Information Services

By default, IIS is identified on your computer by the TCP port number 80. The steps in this section change the TCP port number and make it much more difficult for a potential attacker to communicate with your computer. The steps in this section are optional, but if you do follow them, you’ll dramatically improve the security of your system. If you are already using your computer as a Web server, you should leave the TCP port number at the default setting of 80.

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Configure Remote Desktop

To connect using Remote Desktop, you must have a user account with a password. If you don’t yet have a password on your account, create a password by opening Control Panel, and clicking User Accounts. Click your account, click Create a password, and follow the prompts. After you have a password, follow these steps to enable Remote Desktop:

1.	Right-click My Computer, and click Properties.
2.	On the Remote tab, click the Allow users to connect remotely to this computer check box, as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: Enabling remote desktop
3.	Click Select Remote Users, and then click Add.
4.	In the Select Users dialog box, type the name of the user and then click OK. Click OK again to return to the System Properties dialog box, and then click OK to close it.

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Configure Your Router

If you use a router to connect to the Internet, you probably need to configure it to allow the Remote Desktop connection to your computer. For more information on routers and firewalls, see my Internet Firewalls column. You need to forward two ports to your Windows XP Professional-based computer: TCP port 3389, which Remote Desktop requires, and the port you specified in the TCP Port field in Internet Information Services (or TCP port 80 if you did not change the default). If you use Internet Connection Firewall (and you should!), see How to Manually Open Ports in Internet Connection Firewall in Windows XP for instructions on allowing traffic by TCP port.

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Connect to Your Desktop

Computers are identified on the Internet using a unique IP address. To connect to your home computer from the Internet, you’ll need to know your home IP address. Visit one of these sites from your home computer to learn your IP address: What Is My IP,What Is My IP.com, or Atlantic PC Solutions. Your IP address may change occasionally, so always check your IP address before you plan to connect. When you’re ready to connect to your host computer, follow these steps:

1.	Open Internet Explorer, and enter the URL http://ipaddress:port/tsweb/. For example, if your IP address is 192.168.1.120, and you chose the TCP Port 1374, you would enter the URL http://192.168.1.120:1374/tsweb/.
2.	If you’re prompted to install the Remote Desktop ActiveX control, click Yes.
3.	On the Remote Desktop Web Connection page, shown in Figure 2, click Connect. You don’t need to fill in the Server field. If you leave the Size field set to Full-screen, the remote desktop will take over your local desktop. Figure 2: Remote Desktop Web Connection page
4.	Enter your user name and password at the Windows logon prompt, as shown in Figure 3, and then click OK. You’ll see your desktop, complete with any windows that were left open the last time you used the computer. Figure 3: The Remote Desktop Web Connection logon screen

When you’re done, disconnect by closing the browser, or clicking the X at the top of the screen in full-screen mode. Be sure to close all browser windows. Your user name and password aren’t stored, so you don’t have to worry about someone else accessing your system.

If you’re Internet-savvy and plan to connect to your home computer regularly, you can get a domain name to save yourself the trouble of writing down your IP address every time you plan to connect to your computer. You’re already familiar with domain names; they’re the “.com” names Web sites use to identify themselves. For example, the domain name for this Web site is Microsoft.com. If you have your own domain name, you can enter that into a browser to connect to your home computer, instead of the unfriendly IP address. For information on getting your own domain name and associating it with your home computer, visit theDynamic DNS Providers List.

If you have Windows XP Professional and an always-on Internet connection, you can securely access your applications and data from work, an Internet café, or any place that has a compatible Web browser. Getting Remote Desktop Web Connection set up takes more than one click, but it’s definitely easier than lugging your computer everywhere.

• Wireless networks use radio waves, so just like your FM radio - make sure that the hub and the receivers are away from strong magnetic fields like TVs, speakers, etc
• Make sure that all antennae are vertical
• If you are using a desktop with an internal card, try fitting an external aerial that you can move around to find a stronger signal
• Dumb down your router - by default most modern routers will search for the “best” channel and also offer both ‘b’ and ‘g’ type connections.  Each time your router changes channels, all of your computers lose their connection and have to go searching for the router again - giving dropped downloads, lost websites, etc.  Get into your router’s admin settings and fix which channel it uses and, unless you reall need it, turn off the ‘b’ capability - most people only use ‘g’ now anyway.

If all else fails - look into switching to something like the Netgear Powerline equipment - VERY fast transfer speeds and no extra wiring - ideal for a fixed computer like a desktop!

The heart of a TomTom is its software - and just like a PC it has a central hard drive to store that software on, along with all your settings, routing information, etc.  Although TomTom have used a linux-like operating system, they have chosen to stay with a FAT32 file system on the hard drive - if you’ve been around Windows a while, you’ll know that FAT32 is not the most robust file system in the world.  So when your TomTom starts to behave a little strangely (or even as a sensible maintenance job) - start by checking that file system for errors.  Since I found out about this, I check mine weekly - only takes a moment and it saves a lot of grief!

• Connect your TomTom to your computer as usual
• Close down TomTom Home
• Open Windows Explorer
• You should see your TomTom as one of the drives connected to your computer - if you have an SD card installed, that will show as a second drive on your TomTom
• Right click on the TomTom drive, select “properties”
• Click the “tools” tab
• Click the button that says “scan for errors” and press the start button
• Once completed, you will see a little window telling you if any errors were found or not
• Repeat for the SD card if you have one fitted

So why don’t we?  Cost is often an issue - but really, does that make sense?  It took me over 8 hours to clean up and restore one PC - you can do the math yourself at a typical hourly rate up to 50 or 60 per hour - that pays for a lot of anti-virus software!  And what’s more, there are some very good packages out there that don’t have to cost anything for personal use.

Here’s a selection that we have listed on our mallsite - all of these are free for personal use with manual updates for life, although they do also have subscription options if you prefer something that does automatic updating in the background.  If you have never done anything before - I recommend you download, install, update and run all three of these - and make it at least a monthly chore to review their updates and rescan if needed.  You could save yourself a LOT of time and heartache!

Download from MySimpleShopOnline here.

To see what I mean, take a look here - each page has the same basic table structure:

• Header - including the page meta tags, company logo and top navigation bar
• Side bar - slightly different navigation menu, plus google ads
• Main body - this bit changes from page to page
• Footer - close out the page properly

Enter the <iframe> command!  This is no harder to use than inserting an image, but now you have a “shell” webpage that is part of your domain, and inserted into that <iframe> goes the website that you want to use to process or present information.  What is seen by the search engines is the information on YOUR website, so now you have complete control over the optimisation of keywords, etc, but it can be almost transparent to your users.  Take a look here: msso.co.uk to see it in action - the basic page layout is mine, complete with top navigation bar and all the metatags and my customer never leaves msso.co.uk, but the content in this case comes from the “master cleanser” website - which will also handle the payment processing, etc.  Take a look at the source of that page to see the syntax I have used.

Now you can work on building your website brand with a single domain name - getting linked to all the key directories and listed on all the key search engines - but you can incorporate many different streams of income into that website!

A lot of the latest PCs (and Macs, for that matter) are increasingly being designed to be as compact as possible, and for visual appeal.  And, with the increasing reliability of computer parts, this really is not causing any problems for most users, at least in the beginning.  HOWEVER - if you are in the market for a new computer, there are a couple of things to consider before you buy that super-compact, sleek looking new computer…

1. How long do you expect to keep this machine?  Technology moves forward so quickly, that there will be a new, sleek machine to buy in a few months’ time - will you be upgrading or do you need this machine to last?  If you want it to last, then consider how replaceable the parts might be - if everything is integrated onto the motherboard then the breakdown of anything is a major rebuild.
2. Is it powerful enough?  Just like technology, software is constantly developing and demanding more and more of the hardware.  It’s always a good idea to buy the fastest machine that fits your budget today, but what about upgrading tomorrow?  Compact usually means no space for a second harddrive for all those photos and MP3’s - and can the motherboard take additional RAM?

What this is all about, of course, is making sure you get the right machine for your needs.  For example, my server is in the biggest case I could find - giving me plenty of space for lots of hard drives, RAM and air cooling and who knows what expansion in the future.  But when I was travelling through the airport yesterday, I needed the lightest, most compact laptop possible - I wouldn’t want to have to carry my server on my shoulder everywhere!  So - before you succumb to the latest promotion from your friendly local PC store (and remember, the best discounts are on the computers they are trying to get rid of!!) - take a few moments to think about and even write down just what you want this computer to do for you, and how the rest of the family are likely to use it.  That way, you will get exactly what you need now and in the future, and you might even be pleasantly suprised at how much money you save in the process!

So the job was to install Windows XP, anti-virus, etc onto this machine.  Here’s the tricky part - although it already HAD XP on it, I needed to format the drive to clean off all the viruses and spyware.  When you install Windows XP from scratch, there are a LOT of upgrades and patches to be applied - although the final version has plenty of space, XP needs a certain amount of elbow room to carry out the upgrade.

This is proof that it CAN be done on a 10GB harddrive, but you need to be careful about the sequence you do things in…

1. Format the drive - even if you “know” it’s empty, format it when prompted by windows setup and make sure that the full 10GB is in one big partition
2. Install the minimum Windows - preferably from an XP install disc, but if you have to use recover discs select only the minimum that you can get away with
3. Once you have windows installed, it will STILL have installed a bunch of non-essential items that are just taking up space - go into the control panel, open up “add/remove programs” and uninstall anything that is not related to networking - so all the games go to start with!  You will be able to put these back on later, but we need the space for now.
4. Before you do ANYTHING else, download and install the service packs - these are the big packages that need the most space.  Ideally, you’d have your anti-virus installed before connecting to the internet, but there just isn’t space…  Make sure you are doing this from behind a NAT firewall or similar - do not expose your computer to the internet without protection, otherwise you’ll be doing the whole thing again real soon!
5. Now add anti-virus and the rest of the Windows patches.  Once you’re done, make sure you stay on top of deleting temporary files and generally cleaning up to make the most of that little hard drive!

Now - one BIG caveat - this will restore your computer to the “fresh from the factory condition”. Now it didn’t have all your photos, your music and your favorite games on it when it left the factory, and it won’t after this procedure! So if you have anything important - back it up on another disk or a CD before you do this. A trick I like is to use a Knoppix CD to boot up, then copy the files onto a memory stick - no matter how badly damaged Windows is, Knoppix will be unaffected.

One other thing to note - this is NOT a quick process! Especially if your computer is a few years old, Microsoft have released a LOT of patches and you need to download ALL of them to make sure your restored system is secure. And don’t forget that antivirus and antispyware too. But it will feel like you have a new computer!