Power off options

Newbie to the AA1 here. Can anyone confirm what happens under the option LOCK as one of the power options. More importantly how does the process of unlocking or restoring work. Still looking for a way of securing my data as the AA1 gives anyone free access. Havent yet tried the user account setting option.
Appreciate this is pretty basic but dont want to risk freezing myself out of the machine.
All comments most appreciated.

 

Usually Lock means that before you will be allowed to start using your computer you will be required to enter a password.

 

I want to add:

The screensaver/standby mode can ask you for your password, but a full reboot will give access to your desktop.
So to really secure the notebook, it has to prompt you for a login instead of giving you the desktop.

It's usually done by a program call gdm (or xdm or kdm depending on the linux distribution) . But I'm sorry I don't know how to enable this feature on the Linpus version of Linux that is on the acer one aspire. Maybe someone has a clue how to ?

TheTilde

 

Why not set a bios password then if you do lock your system and someone reboots your computer they will need the bios password.

 

[/quote]Why not set a bios password then if you do lock your system and someone reboots your computer they will need the bios password.[/quote]

Can someone elaborate on this,
A> can you point me to the article explaining how to set a bios password.
B> “lock your system and someone reboots your computer” do I take this to mean as simply as someone finding the machine off and turning it on?
Forgive me if this is obvious but I am still finding my way around this.



In the meanttime I will look for gmp.

 

I don't personally use bios passwords so to answer your question I had to create one on my AAO. @#$#@$% Be careful when typing in your passwords. When I did it for this post I learned that when you enter your password it will automatically be in "Caps". since I did not know this I knew real panic when I tried to enter the password to log on. I thought I had figured out that I must have accidentally hit the "Caps Lock" while typing the passwords, but that is not the case because I tried again and was very careful checking the caps lock was not on. However when I tried to enter my password it would not work unless it in caps. So remember your password will be all caps. Also the first time I tried the user password the password I used was longer than 8 characters and so dropped off the last characters. That said, for the AAO you must set 2 passwords "Supervisor Password and User Password then you must also Enable Power on Password.

To do this when you AAO first starts you look at the bottom of the screen during the Acer boot screen and you will see a statement telling you to hit F2 to enter setup. Then you will use the arrow buttons to move to the "Security" tab. then you will see "Supervisor password" is highlighted hit enter and it will show a space for you to enter your 8 digit or less password. When you type it in and hit enter you will then be able to confirm your 8 digit or less password and hit enter again. That sets your "Supervisor password". Then you will need to set your 8 digit or less user password the same way. Then click on Power on Password and select enable. F10 will cause a window to open that allows you to save and exit setup.

Yes but also someone finding your machine on but locked with a password and just turning off the machine and rebooting into your system if you do not have a boot password.

 

Thanks Donec, appreciate yuur time spent in trying it out too.
Tried the Acer Lock function first, worked ok, then felt confident - used lock and then turned the machine off. Turned on and blank screen-!.*7<<. see Help blank screen post.
Learnt the recovery Cd process now, hurrah back to the beginning..
So next step to try the setting of a boot an bios password.
You say you dont use this, is your machine for fun only , no private data held or do you have some encrypt capability???
Thanks again for your contribution.

 

There is very little chance of others using my AAO so I don't worry about BIOS passwords. The few things I do want secured are things like passwords and personal information in the form of text. So I use a Windows program running under Wine. It is called Fsekrit and can be gotten via.....
http://bestwebstop.webcentr.net/programs3.php

The home page is....
http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Other/fSekrit/