Washington (dpa) - If your Windows computer freezes, sometimes the only way to defrost it is by hitting the power button. But what happens if you press the power button and the machine still won't shut down? Hold down that power button for at least five seconds. Doing so forces your computer to shut down, unceremoniously. Don't do this unless you have to, though, as you could lose any unsaved data.

Washington (dpa) - The Mozilla Firefox browser remembers more passwords than Microsoft's Internet Explorer does and that can be a good thing. But it can also cause trouble, if you share your computer. To secure those passwords, make sure you create a master password that can block or unlock all passwords for a particular user. To enable the feature, open the Tools menu, and select Options. Then click the Security lock, and select the "Use Master Password" check box. Set the master password and you're done.

Washington (dpa) - Do you use a keyboard shortcut or a free program such as HotKeyz to open Microsoft's Outlook e-mail program? If so, set up the shortcut with the "/recycle" parameter. That way, Outlook will not open the program anew every time you use the assigned hotkey. If you don't do this, you could end up with multiple Outlook windows all over your screen.

Washington (dpa) - If you regularly transfer data using Zip files, consider securing that data with a password. Most Zip creation tools, including WinZip and WinRAR, have a password setting feature. To use it, you generally set the password either while creating the Zip file, using the Advanced setting or after creating the zip file. If you'd like to add a password to an already-created Zip file, open the file in your Zip creation program and use the menus to search for the "add password" function. Passwords are a standard feature of Zip files, so every good Zip creator should be able to secure your files this way.

Washington (dpa) - Do you have a backup of your e-mail? Even if you regularly back up your PC, it's a good idea to keep a separate backup of just your e-mail files as e-mail is one of the most important types of data on people's PCs nowadays, and extracting just the e-mail files from a larger backup can be time-consuming and difficult. Plus a separate backup of your e-mail will allow you easily to move your e-mail to another machine. (dpa)