How do u make sure the person working on your PC can't access ur files

I had problems with my computer a while back and couldn't fix it myself. So I had to take my computer to a place that could fix it for me. And you have to leave your computer with them while they work on it. I have a password to log into my user account, but they had to have it in order to fix my computer since my user account is the administrator account. I don't like that because they could access my private documents. They probably wouldn't, but still they could.

I tried a free software that password protects your files, but I didn't like the way it worked. I'm wondering if there isn't another way. Like, could I create another user account that isn't an administrator account and make that my main account? That way they couldn't access it because I would have a password and they wouldn't need that password because it's not an administrator account. Would that work?

If it would work, it would be a lot of work to transfer all my files from one user account to another, could I just change my current user account from being an administrator account to not being an administrator account? And then create another user account and make it the administrator?

I am using Windows 7 if it matters.

If someone has physical access to your pc there is little you can do to stop them accessing everything unless you encrypt folders

Why wouldn't my idea of using a non-administrator account work? It would have a password and they wouldn't need to access that user account.

I've never heard of that. Do people save all their stuff to a data drive? Don't most people save their stuff to the C drive? I'm not sure I really like that idea because you could lose your data drive.

Your more likleyto loose c than a data drive and it doesnt matter if you create another account they canget to all the data simple boot linux and they can read everything your banks details internet history one hopes its a good company and they dont do that but they can if they want

How would you lose your c drive - it's built into the computer? I suppose you could have a hard drive failure, but I do occasionally back up my files to a zip drive. I just don't like the idea of having my files stored in only one place. I don't have linux on my computer, I just have Windows 7, so I don't know how they could boot linux.

kuurt said:

Why wouldn't my idea of using a non-administrator account work? It would have a password and they wouldn't need to access that user account.

An adminstrator can access all accounts on the machine, without a password. Heck, administrators set the passwords to begin with. That's why it's an administrator. If you are worried about this in future, the best bet is to put any sensitive data on a removable drive, or encrypt it. But everything in your User folder is totally accessible to an administrator login - Documents, Pictures, Music, Downloads, whatever.

I tried a free software for encrypting my files. I was hoping it would encrypt my My Documents folder so that once I used my password to open that I could access all my files. Instead it wanted to go through and encrypt every single thing in the My Documents folder separately. Which would be a pain to have to put in a password every time you open a file. Seems like it also had trouble encrypting some things.