laptop file protection

[Gatineau1961]

can anyone please tell me how to password protect an individual file on my laptop?

[poinsy]

In XP Pro, you can encrypt folders so that other users cannot view the contents when they login.

However, if you simply want to password protect a file so that you and anybody else is required to enter it to open/execute it, then there are a few options:

1) You could compress the file using Windows compression (or WinRAR or others) and add a password to the compressed file within the compression utility.

2) You could try http://www.axantum.com/AxCrypt/ I have not tried it myself but have seen recommendations.