Windows 10: Security: How to Make My PC More Secure?

I want to make my Windows 10 Pro PC more secure from something like a robbery or where my physical PC is in danger, not from a threat like a hacker or something on the internet who gains access to my PC.

As I was using my PC, I just realized that I store so much personal information on my PC: my personal photos, my personal journal and so on all on my PC. I have setup a "login password" where I'm asked to enter a password whenever I boot into Windows, however, aside from this I don't have any other passwords on it.

It'd be so easy for a burglar to walk into my study and just detach my external USB drives, my internal HDD's and so on. What's to prevent someone from taking my USB HDD's or internal HDD's and then connecting them to their PC at home and accessing my data?

Thank you!

:)

 

How to stop the "Make my PC more secure" pop-up

I found the fix! So the next time I got the pop-up I searched the task manager and found "Exchange Active Sync Policies Broker". I killed that process and then googled it, and found an article that mentioned that potentially the user account has the exchange
account attached to it. When I checked user accounts, I found my work exchange account listed twice and removed both entries. Post reboot, I have not received any new pop-ups.

 

How to stop the "Make my PC more secure" pop-up

Hi,

Thank you for being part of Microsoft Community.

I would request you to place the computer in clean boot and then check if it helps.

Place your computer in clean boot state and check if it helps.

Putting your system in Clean Boot state helps in identifying if any third party applications or startup items are causing the issue. You need to follow the steps from the article mentioned below to perform a Clean Boot.

How to perform a clean boot in Windows

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929135

Note: After troubleshooting, refer to this section "How to reset the computer to start normally after clean boot troubleshooting".

Hope this information was helpful. Please get back to us with the above details so that we can assist you further.

 

Two things if you keep your photos docs ect on Google drive or 1 drive if your pc is lost your stuff is safe on the cloud so you wont loose them in a fire etc. The protecting from someone putting the hd in another pc the only real option is to encrypt the drives

 

Encrypting my PC's internal HDD would take a long time... Is there another way for me to secure my PC?

 

detach your hard drive from your computer.

 

Thanks for the reply, but I'm not sure what you mean?

 

Are there any other options?

If someone stole my PC's internal HDD and plugged it into their own PC, would my "login password" show up for them to enter before they could access my files?

 

Unless your user files are encrypted, anyone could steal your HDD, install it in another PC and read all of your files.

Either store very sensitive files on an external disk and keep it in a secure physical location or encrypt your sensitive user files.

 

Where did you get that idea? And who cares how long it takes? It happens in the background and doesn't affect your use of the computer. You can even shut it down, and when it starts up, it continues the encryption (BitLocker)

There is also the option to encrypt specific folders, rather than your whole drive. This is tied to your login though, and if you ever had to re-install, you have to remember to unencrypt the folder before hand, then re-encrypt it again after reinstallation.

 

Could they even plug the HDD that Windows 10 Pro is currently running on and access my files or would they need to enter my "Windows login" password?

 

No, they would have full access to all files without needing a password. I recently replaced the hard drive in my laptop with a SSD and put the old HDD containing Windows 10 and all user files in an external disk caddy. I confirm I can read every file on that HDD without needing any passwords.

 

Woah, really??? I didn't know this was the case. How can I secure my files by using something built into Windows because I don't want to use a 3rd party app unless it's completely necessary...

I've got Truecrypt installed already so can I use this?

 

Trecrypt is out of date - see TrueCrypt - Wikipedia. I would remove it since it is no longer supported.

You could use the built-in Bitlocker for which you need Windows 10 Pro. Personally, I don't keep any really sensitive data left installed on my PC. This is kept on a separate drive stored securely or printed and saved as hard copy securely.

 

It depends on the price you are willing to pay for assurance. I would suggest buying a NAS box. With some NAS's you can attach something like flash drives to them which act as further backups which you can then take offsite if you wish. Perhaps store that in a bank deposit box.