I'll be moving in with my Girlfriend next month. She has her computer, I have mine. I am running Windows XP Pro.
 
I installed a game on her computer and one day her daughter started playing and my saved games are gone. I was much farther back than where I was, so I uninstalled it and quit playing. That incident got me thinking.
 
I've told them they are not touch my computer, but just incase they do, what can I use to protect my stuff while I am not home? I don't want them going through my things and looking at my stuff.
 
I have a bunch of music, some of it is demo songs from a friends band. I am not supposed to give them out to anyone. Not only that I have poems and songs I've written, pictures taken with my camera, etc.
 
Should I be looking at a hardware solution or is there some software I should get and install on my machine?
 
If someone could recommend me a good product that isn't too expensive that would be great.

How about simply password protecting it?

(Agrees with above poster)  
 
Easiest solution.  
 

Can't you just boot into safe mode and view my files?
 
That doesn't seem very secure. I'd rather have something so incase someone ever pulls out my hard drive and puts it into a new system they will have to figure it out how to view my contents also.

BIOS Password.

 
What Dave said. Go into your BIOS and enable a power-on password. If you like to leave your computer running 24/7, just set your screen saver to automatically lock it and have a Windows password on your account in case someone gets smart and restarts the computer to login with another account.

Bios password can be easily reset. Hard drive Password is the best thing out there. If you forget your Hard drive password your screwed.
 
I would, Bios password, HDD password, and windows logon password.
 
You could of found your game saves quite easily also.

I think the game saves are indeed gone. The problem came because I think the game was older, American McGee's Alice. I installed it on administrator and someone on another user played it. I couldn't find the save games in the folder anymore somehow.

what about creating user profiles??,that way you can restrict what others see/do with your baby.there are both commercial and free proggies for such an occasion..

passwords+HDD encryption is what hes looking for.

You just need to set the Admin password and nobody can boot in to safe-mode without it.  Likewise, any password-protected profile will not be accessible even if the HDD is removed and accessed through another PC.  It's best to keep your profiles, including Administrator, password protected.

What the heck, do her girls go to a tech school.. Seems a bit overkill to me, it makes me think ye have something to hide from the girlfriend also : )

Just use the BIOS pass and the screensaver lock as mentioned above. Everything else is overkill and too much work.

Setting the PW for your Administrator account and your own personal profiles isn't "overkill" and certainly isn't too much work.  Not sure where you learned how to set profile settings in XP but it's really not that hard.  For any sort of security, BIOS password can be reset by simply removing the battery from the motherboard.  Passwords in XP aren't reset so easily

Ok first of all you will need to build a new pc with a case that has a lock on it slave your old hd to your new one unplug the old one when your not home and lock down the case.
 
Chain hungry pit bulls to your desk  
O and the password bleh bleh stuff as well

Passwords in XP aren't much help if you can just go into safe mode or another user account and view the files.

Just create a user account with only you as the user.  Slap a password on it and that should be all you need to do.  They are little girls and they aren't going to know how to hack into a computer.

Use NTFS file/folder permissions to protect the folders and files you need to protect (give your user account full access to the folder, remove access from everyone else).
 
Then make sure you have a password on your user account that only you know.
 
Done.  This fully protects your files from any user, even if the computer is started up in safe mode.  The only way around NTFS permissions is to start up on a different installation of Windows (e.g. remove the hard drive and put it in another computer).
 
If you use Vista Ultimate or Enterprise, you can use Bitlocker full drive encryption on top of the NTFS permissions and then no one can get to the files no matter what.

Run a search for your saved games and if they dont turn up try Undelete software or something similar. If she did delete them they would of went to recycle bin unless she held down shift key "highly unlikely"
 
Bios and windows admin passwords are both easy to get into. Only real security is HDD lock. I reset bios and admin passwords all of the time.

Use a program called "Magic Folders":
 
http://www.pc-magic.com/
 
It will hide specific folders that you select from everyone including yourself until Magic Folders launch and the password (you create) is entered.

Ok...if you really are hardcore about protecting your data, you can use TrueCrypt - it's easy, and fast, but is probably over the top.
 
I agree with user accounts, passowords, and permissions.
 
If you are looking for deleted files, try undelete plus, and I think the program eraser (which is great for permanently deleting files) also has a recovery section.