After my 2nd (more careful) reinstall of W2k after a disk failure I've figured out my mysterious BSOD on shutdown and Standby-not-working problem - PGP 6.02. Specifically the PGP Disk portion of the software. It installs two hidden hardware drivers that do not un-install with the rest of the program. After uninstalling the software and removing them from the Device Manager my system will now Standby with no problems.

Now that I've purged my system of PGP 6.02 I'm wondering what if any alternatives there are to the PGP Disk functionality? PGP Disk would make an encrypted file of arbitrary size which would mount as a drive letter when opened via PGP Disk. The newest freeware of PGP dropped this function, and there doesn't seem to be any mention of a commercial version of PGP on MacAfee's site.

I don't simply want to use W2k's encrypted files as I like the user independance & portability provided by the PGP Disk files.

Any suggestions for good low-cost / freeware alternatives?

-Zeke

I use bestcrypt, which seems to be pretty good. Fast, transparent, and reliable.

By the way, if you're really paranoid, don't use DES (obviously), or AES. According to a cryptographer friend of mine, AES has significant holes that are just now coming to light. He recommends 448-bit blowfish as being one of the more secure systems. He also said to keep the partition size to less than a gigabyte, which makes decryption attacks less successful in any case.

Pca

I'm only moderately paranoid :-P

Thanks for the recommendation. My funds are a bit lean at the moment, thanks to a new Canon S30 camera. That software seems to be exactly what I'm looking for though.

-Zeke