Computer rapaired by an engineer

[dx1xa]

If somebody has been repairing/updating your home computer and has been into the bios etc and knows your computer I.P. address ie for connecting to internet thro broadband. Is it then possible for him/her to later log onto your system and look at your folder/files remotely from his/her on computer. If that is possible then is there a way to change the information about your computer to stop this happening?

[Ralph]

Usually the IP address you use to connect to the internet through your modem is dynamically assigned by your ISP when the modem logs on. If you restart your modem, it will be given an IP from a pool of spares that the ISP has, and while it might be the same as the old one, it's unlikely. To find out what your public IP address is, use www.whatismyip.com.

You can specifically prevent remote access to your computer by right-clicking the My Computer icon on the desktop (or in Windows Explorer) and choose Properties. On the Remote tab, make sure the two boxes are unchecked.

This should be the best and easiest precautions. You can and probably should do a full scan for spyware. This stuff should prevent what you're worried about in 99.999% of cases. If they still get access after this, they should be working as a professional hacker/cracker making loads of money and evading the law rather than repairing/upgrading home computers!

[Daave]

if you are really worried,

hopefully you uprgraded to windows xp (is that actually classed as an upgrade?) if you have a firewall, then windows will not let remote access through the firewall..

you could also change your administrator password, as then i believe they couldnt log into windows and would have to have another operating system running alongside to be able to see any files, and you'd know it was doing that because the computer would tell you!