What is the worse thing can happen to your computer is that your computer is stolen and you are wondering about your computer. Locate PC is a very good free utility that will help in case you lost or some one steal your computer. Locate PC keeps in touch your PC with you, it will send you emails on daily basis or when ever your computer changes it’s IP address. The mail that Locate PC send’s is contains all the information that can help you to track your stolen computer. Most of us probably not paying to get a static IP address from your ISP, right? That means your IP address might change periodically, and this program can notify you via an email each time the IP changes. This isn’t a stated purpose of the application, but that was one of the first things that popped into my mind after I looked at some of the configuration options.

It’s very easy to download and install Locate PC, only thing is required is that you must have the administrative account to install Locate PC. You can’t find Locate PC in system tray nor in the Windows task manager (With name Locate PC) the process name is some thing different. You can access the console at any time by pressing Alt+Shift+Home.

To use Locate PC we first have to setup an E-Mail account because Locate PC only supports POP E-Mail accounts that don’t use SSL.

How to setup Locate PC account

Email Account: This is where you give the details about your email account and password. The E-Mail account that you are giving here don’t have SSL support. If you have Yahoo plus E-Mail then use that other use AOL Email.

E-Mail Message: This is where you want to enter in the address to send the notifications to, and also any other information you want included in the email. Maybe enter in the model and serial number of the PC so that you don’t have to try and dig it out once the PC is stolen.

Email Schedule: Choose how often you want to receive the emails. By default it will send one email out everyday in addition to one if the IP address changes. It’s probably easiest to just have it send an email if the IP changes, which is the only other option available.

Advanced: Here you can configure some of the advanced settings such as the site used to get the trace route, the hotkey used to show the console, and where it obtains the IP address from.

Whenever your IP address changes you should receive an email similar to this:

Message sent: 5/15/08 11:43:06 (universal time: 5/15/08 19:43:06)
Computer’s host name: John_Desktop
Logged in Windows account name: John

Found 2 network connection(S) on this computer (this list may be incomplete):
1 Name: MyISP Type: Dialup modem Phone number: (555) 555-4321 User name: JSmith
2 Name: BigCo Type: PPPoE Service name: MySvc User name: (empty)

Computer’s web IP address reported by ip.locatepc.com: 216.239.142.3
To learn more about this IP address, use the IP tests at www.dnsstuff.com.

Computer’s local IP address(es):
Adapter 1 101.151.8.92

Computer’s MAC address(es):
Adapter 1 (ZX-11 Ethernet): 00-21-54-17-64-26

Trace route to www.locatepc.com:
Hop Name/IP Addr
1 Router [101.151.2.1]
2 101.151.8.92
3 cust-quik.pdx.or.uspops.net [216.239.161.82]
4 fe1-1-300.gw0.pdx.or.uspops.net [216.239.161.81]
5 206-169-234-45.gen.twtelecom.net [206.169.234.45]
6 core-02-ge-3-1-0-508.ptld.twtelecom.net [66.192.248.108]

Identifying information (owner name/address, computer model/serial number):
This computer is the property of:
John Smith
123 Elm Street
Anyville, NY 12345

Computer brand: ABC
Computer model: Megazoom 10000

Source: Locate PC and Cyberetnews

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