Lassi*aL - Guides - win_xp_guru

Things that a sophisticated Windows users does after Win XP installation

Steps in the preferred order of execution.

Note: Before the installation the guru ensures that the network cable is unplugged and the hard disk partitions are initialized as wanted. If you are unsure how you would like arrange your partitions, create a Dynamic disk that allows you to re-arrange partitions later on (similar to LVM in Linux)

Be prepared to the fact that getting Windows running with 10-20 additional software packages and tools will take at least one working day.
Install the latest service pack. If it is known to be incompatible with a software you are using, you must rely on individual patches, which is a really bad option
Ensure your network security. Install a firewall or a more comprehensive security package and setup it up. A decent firewall, such as ZoneAlarm protects both incoming and outgoing traffic and alerst you when programs behave badly. Now you can completely disable Windows security center.
Set the keyboard and mouse settings to your liking
Set your user account password. Especially if you are willing to use a weak password, don't give administrator privileges to the account you primarily use even though it would seem like a good idea (this is a good policy independent of your password strenght). You will also want to disable the Fast user switching.
Switch the desktop and the Start menu and Taskbar options to whatever you please. I recommend using Classic Windows Start menu and setting the Advanced start menu options to your liking. For improving usability, I suggest turning off Personalized menus, which hide seldom used items and create a 'discontinuum' to spatial layout.
Run Windows Explorer and setup Folder options from the Tools menu. I prefer Windows Classic folder. Set Advanced settings on the view tab to show all required file, not to hide system files and not to remember settings for each folder. Simple sharing sounds nice but doesn't really work, so disable it.
AND ONLY NOW you can Connect to the network. Enable network icon in the Network connection Properties.
Run Windows Update. Ensure that you get all the critical updates including the latest service pack if not already installed. SP3 was released in 2008, but maybe sometimes problematic to install. If you have problems installing XP SP3, read these posts. The problem arises when the setup tries to backup Beethov9.wma but is actualy related to missing file permissions for All users user account, at least system access is required.
Next you should install a decent file archive extractor program, such as WinRAR or FilZip. The next additional tool is an alternative for the Windows explorer, like xplorer². These programs allow you to effeciently complete following steps, that is update your drivers, install new software etc.
Install an IE replacement, Opera or FireFox and make it your default browser. It also makes your live a lot easier. (Note. To get Java Run-time Environment to work with the current Opera 8.53, you must install JRE before installing Opera.)
Install Windows XP Powertoys and customize your Windows using TweakUI. The most helpful settings are, Explorer - Use Classic Search setting, Common Dialog - Places Bar shortucs and My Computer - Autoplay. Toggle autoplay off for all drives to increase your security. If you use WLAN connectivity, uncheck Taskbar and Start menu - Enable Balloon tips. Powertoys download page contains several utilities that might we worth the try
Update your hardware drivers. Get the latest drivers from the third-party of manufactorer sites. Once you've found a working driver, you'll likely want to stick to it. Continuous updates are bound to make your system unstable, so I suggest adhering to the principle, 'if it ain't broken, why fix it'.
If the system has a limited number of users and you do not want to store user settings on the system partition under Documents and Settings (normally in C:) move each user directory to new location, e.g. D:\JohnDoe\. This will make many things easier later on. This can be changed from My Documents properties menu.
Install printers with appropriate drivers
Install the software you are using (Open Office, audio and video codecs, multimediaplayers, games). If you install software that share functionalities, make sure you set the associations correctly. For instance, Winamp can playback videos, but if you'd like to use VLC instead, install former first and override settings with latter.
Import your settings from a previous installation (if any). This must be unfortunately done individually for each program and no general procedure exists. If software versions match, you can often copy the application data directories or profiles. With Mozilla products, you need to copy profile directories and use profilemanager to import them (see MozillaZine guide)
Setup screen saver and Power saving options. It is hardly ever necessary to use a screen saver, use monitor shutdown instead. Enable Hibernation, which is be default inactive
Setup your System properties (press Win + Pause). You may want to change your TEMP path settings and disable Remote Assistance as well maximize the computer performance
Organize your Start menu and Quick launch bar. For some reason, Quick launch is hidden by default, I always display it.
Use TweakUI to clean up Templates
Use Autoruns from SysInternals Suite to check which programs are automatically started in Windows startup. Depending on your installation, you can usually find several applications that are unnecessary, starting from KernelFaultCheck (dumprep.exe) which provides the useles report to be send for Microsoft after a program has crashed.
Disable unnecessary Windows Services. For instance Run --> services.msc to see all current services and consult an additional source of information on necessary services (e.g. Beemerworld's tips and Jasonn's list).
Among usually unnecessary services resides Universal Plug and Play. While you can usually disable it (required only in systems where you are streaming media out of your PC to a network player or such) you should also uninstall it from network components using Control panel -> Add or remove programs -> Add/Remove Windows components -> Networkin services -> UPnP User Interface
There are also some unnecessary and even annoying features also also disable. To disable error reporting after a program crash, use System properties -> Advanced (tab) ->Error reporting and the desktop cleaning wizard goes back to Hogwart when you choose Display properties -> Desktop (tab) -> Customize desktop -> Desktop cleanup and uncheck the run box.
I am not fancy of seeing thumbnails in the file browser when I've not explicitly asked for them. Howerver, I've found that the only way to get completely rid off thumbnails, which tend turn up in some applications no matter how you try to avoid them, is to disable the component services that generates them. This can also be done with AutoRuns, look for shimgvw.dll and disable it. Alternatively, this can be done by running command regsvr32 /u shimgvw.dll. If you them back, run regsvr32 shimgvw.dll
If you use USB flash drives, I suggest you disable write-back caching, so you can always quickly and safely detach them from a computer. To do that, plugin in a USB device, select drive properties from My computer and then Device tab, click to select your USB drive and Properties, from the opening dialogue Policies -> Quick removal .
Ensure all installed software is working
See if the partition where you installed the programs requires defragmenting
Back up your system and store the back up somewhere safe. The backup utility bundled with XP can't store your files directly to an optical drive (DVD) so create the backup on to a place on your harddrive which you are not backing up at the moment and then burn it to a disc.

Notes

I've not emphasized virus, trojan and other malware protection. However, they can be a serious problem if the computer is used by incompetent users unaware of the risks and without an interveningn hardware firewall. In these cases, necessary measures should be taken. One option is the use the hosts file in Windows, which provides extra security by disabling access to certain websites (see BleepingComputer's article on increased security with hosts). The idea is to first disable DNS caching (service), so applications must always do requests themselves and create a static DNS record which effectively bans known unsafe or suspicious.

I use Winkey to create global shortcuts using the Windows key. There are plenty of nice shortcuts you can set for Windows (see Lockergnome shortcuts list), starting from Network connections and such.

Searching stuff from your computer can be organized in several ways. Some people use the Google desktop, but Windows' Indexing service can be useful as well.

I still use Windows Briefcase to synchronize files between several computers. However, there's a strange feature in Briefcase with a new system. The windows does not the Update all context menu option for a briefcase unless you have created a briefcase on the newly installed Windows. For instance, you might like to update USB flash disk Briefcase from a network server, but you can't do this before you create at least one Briefcase locally.

After all these tweaks, there are still few things that don't work like I would like them to. These include the fact the Places bar can be replaced by programs own selection, e.g. file dialogs in Office and the default view in the Open... dialogs is Thumbnails even though I've tried to force it to be details.

References

Recently, there has been an unofficial release of Windows XP called XP performance Edition SP3, which implements many of these features out-of-the-box. See, http://party-down.blogspot.com/2008/11/windows-xp-performance-edition-sp3.html

Other interesting options can be found with keywords TinyXP and nLite

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Frontpage > guides > windows > Win xp guru installation

Things that a sophisticated Windows users does after Win XP installation

Notes

References