There’s not much you can do in terms of some creep stealing your laptop physically from you. Unless, of course, you try to strap it to yourself with cuffs and shackles. But sometimes, all the security you need is from that bozo from the next cubicle who’d like to mess with your computer when you’re by the water cooler or that brown-noser in the meeting room always fidgeting with your laptop right after your presentation. That can easily be fixed by a simple security measure - enabling the password request on wakeup.

It’s quite easy to enable (disable) the password request. If you haven’t really explored Vista, it’s a feature that comes with Vista’s power settings. First, you have to access Power Options. A quick way to do this is to hit the Windows button to bring up the Start menu and at the Start search bar, type in “power options” then hit Enter.

At the left pane, you can see as the first option, click on the “Require a password on wakeup” option.

This will open the Power Buttons and Password Requirement window. The password settings are located at the bottom half of the window but chances are you might see them disabled.

To enable it, click on the “Change settings that are currently available” link. This will prompt an administrator verification popup. Click on allow. This will enable the password requirement options.

Choose either one of the options to enable or disable password requirement on wakeup. Click Save changes and the OK buttons on previous windows to exit.