PC Magazine has posted a Windows XP guide designed to walk non-experts through some of the alternate settings and add-ons that make XP work better. It has compiled various tips from its past issues into one guide for easy reference. Even Windows power-users may find something of interest.
I guess this would help a beginner, but unfortunately the best tip was reinstall Windows XP (which sadly, is the only way to clean up your system for a couple of weeks)
For ~ 50 bucks you can pick up a copy of Norton Ghost, which is useful for making a drive image that you store on another partition or physical drive. When you do a fresh install and get all your apps and settings just right, you take an image. If something gets borked or just bogged down, it is trivial to restore the image and have everything like new.
I tend to agree. I always keep a ghost image of Windows 2000 workstation with my customized programs in case my system flops out.
I haven’t ever used Norton Ghost so I can’t say anything useful about it, but I can say that dd does a fine job of making backup disk images. Sure it’s not as featureful as Ghost from what I’ve read, but it’s never yet failed.
*chokes out loud* 50 bucks?????!!!!!!!! Do you know what I could do with 50 bucks?
Very funny. It sounds like a strange tale of doom 🙂
“The problem creeps up slowly, until one day you realize your speed demon is now the PC equivalent of a slug.”
“Over time, more and more programs automatically launch on system boot.”
“After this, you need to defragment the hard drive.”
“If you regularly install, play with, and remove programs, you’ve probably left behind entries in an unnecessarily large Registry, and you’re probably taking up disk space with leftover files. ”
“Sometimes, the easiest way to slim down a bloated Registry and clear out rogue applications is to start over from scratch.”
“As you use your system, new applications and data clutter up your hard drive, and the Registry balloons out of control. You can spend days tuning up your system, but if you want to see the most dramatic improvement in system performance and stability, starting with a fresh installation of Windows XP is the best bet.”
“Manage start-up and recovery. For maximum uptime, tune your PC to restart rapidly after a crash.”
And finally this absolutely hillarious little gem:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!
“The fact is, the more you use your computer the slower it gets.”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!
ROTFLAM
I’d be quite upset if my computer got slower the more I used it. That would make me consider using a different operating system. Thankfully it’s neved done that since the days of Windows 98, when I decided to try something different. I’d quite like to see an article similar to this one, but aimed at a Windows newbie instead of a computer newbie. I’m in the IT industry, so all the basic computer knowledge that’s in the article isn’t much use for me – I don’t want to know how to free up space on my hard disk, and I don’t install crap that has spyware and adverts. I’d be more interested in how to secure my computer so that evil userland apps like IE and Outlook aren’t able to run scripts that can mess with important system files and applications. I’d like to see info about getting Windows to integrate with other systems that I use (e.g. displaying X clients on it), how to get new UI themes and how to make it faster than it was on day zero when I got the system, since XP so far hasn’t impressed me with speed. I’d also love to get some way of integrating remote file system browsing through SSH with Windows just like KDE does.
~~~*chokes out loud* 50 bucks?????!!!!!!!! Do you know what I could do with 50 bucks?~~~~~
Pay you broadband bill and download it for free from Kazaa?
Far be it from me to condone piracy!
“For ~ 50 bucks you can pick up a copy of Norton Ghost”
Because I didn’t want to spend that amount of money, I picked partimage on linux. It works kind of the same way, it handles ntfs. If I take care not to split images, it works quite good.
It is more handy than dd ( works on a network, some compression “in the fly”, ssl encryption if you are paranoiac, etc.. )
I use Ghost as well, but only to make an image of my Windows install BARE without any apps or drivers installed. Since it’s normally at least 8-9 months before my Windows install even starts to break down, by the time I get around to ‘re-ghosting’ the image, the apps I was using the very first time I ghosted all have newer versions now, so making an image with apps means I’d just have to re-install everything
Umm, have a good night out on the town drinking?
Seriously, $50 is not a lot of money. It amazes me that people are don’t even think of spending $50 when going out for a single evening but complain like mad if they have to pay this much for software.
Don’t think $50 is what you’d spend on a night out? How about this:
Movie: $14
Good dinner: $30
Some drinks: $15
Parking/transit in a big city: $5 – $20
Tada. Lot’s of other examples.
Ooops, what terrible english:
“It amazes me that people are don’t even think of spending $50 when going out for a single evening..”
I meant: It amazes me that people think nothing of spending $50 when going …..
Personally, I’ve been using the new PowerQuest Drive Image 7, and loving it. It requires .NET 1.1, which annoyed me at first, but after using it, it’s a far better imaging solution than Drive Image 6 and Norton Ghost.
Oh, and I agree with Darius. I create an image of Windows 2000 bare install configured to my liking, only with drivers installed, no applications, (except for Drive Image of course). Though I also create a secondary image when I get all the necessary applications installed (like firewall, Norton SystemWorks, etc.), and keep that as a spare in case something catastrophic happens but I only have to rollback a month or two, (i.e. when no new versions of my software have come out yet).
c:> format c:
Wow, brilliant …
ROTFLAM
Rolling on the floor laughing at myself?
Is there any program out there that does what Ghost does as well as Ghost does it, but also supports ReiserFS? I notice that when I make an image of a Reiser partition, it seems to do a ‘raw’ sector-by-sectory sort of thing, which is both slow and a waste of space.
I am typing this on a notebook with 512 Megs of Ram. So lets see what memory I am using, after leaving it on for the last week…..oh I am using 112Megs. Well thats Linux for ya, (Suse) although Redhat used it all, but was forgiving, let me say that.
At my new job I have windows 2000 and 1 gig of ram on a 2.8 P4. The official policy (I kid you not) is to restart the computer at noon. Everyday I must reboot Windows at noon. OK I dont mind, its a little break for me, but why is my little laptop so good at memory management, but windows still doesnt get it? I know its 2000 and not XP, but my experience with XP (which this laptop can dual boot to) is horrible.
The best survival guide to windows, is not use it at all!
Come on guys,
I though you were supposedly tech sauvy. Why the need for imaging your Windows installations. I believe there are freely available tools out there in net land which will help keep your Windows installations fine.
Try G-lock Temp cleaner as one, also RegCleaner is another and then coupled with a decent defragmentation tool (personally I use Speed Disk) you’ll keep your Windows installations of any flavour humming at speed for years. This “oh no somethings wrong, quick re-install everything!” approach is pathetic.
I like Acronis Trueimage for imaging my win2k setup. I keep an fresh install image and a few rolling images so I can restore the system to any point in time.
I wonder what I’m doing wrong, I ran XP for a year, no blue screens no crashes, installed TONNES of software, beta programs, beta drivers, you name it, used it constantly, didn’t slow down, or have any other bad effects. Left it running for weeks, only turned it off to save energy when not downloading stuff.. So how do I make my system need a reboot everyday and slowdown after using it a little while, I hope one of the l33t nix users can help me out here, I feel I’m missing out on something.
Who needs drive imaging you ask? How about anyone who runs a lab of the same model of machines. Set one machine up. Create an image as a seed…use Norton Ghost Server and push it to all the machines on the network. If you do your homework, you should be able to just boot up and it will run through a wizrd to input CD codes etc.
Using stuff like registry cleaners is fine up to a point. The reality is that those tools only patch the problem…how complete of a job they do is uncertain. Plus a lot of those tools get lost with certain apps which can lead to inadvertant breaking of apps. Plus, what do you do if you are hit with a nasty virus and you can’t be certain it is safely removed?
I’d say we are tech savy. We know enough that taking an image is a great way to have system backup in the event something goes wrong (say an HD crash). It doesn’t hurt anything to do it and if you have a bad problem that you either can’t fix or don’t feel like fixing…just push an image. No hastle…no fuss…its just done. Go ahead Mr. Savy, screw with your freeware regeditors…they are probably spyware anyway.
Try running a lab at a college. People do really dumb things to computers…particularly when they don’t own them. Hence why things like drive imaging are great. And if you have imaging software at home, great…instant backup in the event of an HD failure or virus.
Okay, now this is always a bad sign:
“back in 2001, many users eagerly upgraded, charmed by the attractive interface”
Attractive interface?? Is it just me, or does the Luna interface makes everyone gag?? I know it makes me sick!
“combined with Windows 98 and Me’s compatibility with software and legacy devices.”
Huh?? Compatibility with software and legacy devices??
I have more than a couple games that refuse to run or crash under XP!!! And legacy devices?? um… What about those perfectly good parallel port zip drives that won’t work with XP because the only devices XP supports on the parallel port are printers?? It also doesn’t support ISA cards unless they’re plug & pray. But oddly enough, the drivers from Windows 2000 seem to work fine with non PnP ethernet cards?
In some cases Win2k has more hardware support than XP!!!
So those comments really ruined the article for me. But then what can we expect from PC Magazine, they’re in bed with Microsoft. By saying all these wonderful things about XP, they’re trying to make their readers feel better about it. Readers don’t want to hear their OS has “problems” nor that it’s imperfect.
Just my two cents…
oh, and btw, I run XP. lol
Windows XP supports more than just printers on the parallel port. Tape drives and scanners work fine too.
“Attractive interface?? Is it just me, or does the Luna interface makes everyone gag?? I know it makes me sick!”
Come now, surely you must realize that yours is not the only opinion!
“because the only devices XP supports on the parallel port are printers”
That is not my experience…
“It also doesn’t support ISA cards unless they’re plug & pray”
Correction, it doesn’t support ISA cards unless it has drivers for them, same as with any OS.
“In some cases Win2k has more hardware support than XP”
Same goes for any OS, including XP.
“But then what can we expect from PC Magazine, they’re in bed with Microsoft”
Maybe, but I have read some very anti-Microsoft things from them before.
“By saying all these wonderful things about XP, they’re trying to make their readers feel better about it.”
Advocacy is a bitch ain’t it?
“Readers don’t want to hear their OS has “problems” nor that it’s imperfect. ”
Some posters don’t want to hear that their comments are silly.
“Just my two cents… ”
You can keep em, cause we’ve got enough loonies as it is.
Seems to me that most of the suggestions in this article involved spending anything between $50 and $500 on many items of software ! Isn’t there any freeware on Win XP that can do some or all of this stuff ?
As for re-installing XP, I’ve done that a couple of times in the past week or two and a few comments about the installation process:
* Doesn’t acknowledge any non-MS filing system on your partitions – it will list the partitions, but not tell you if it’s ext2, ext3 etc. etc.
* Wipes the MBR and doesn’t provide any sort of boot menu, instead *only* booting into the OS you’ve just installed.
* Asks you for the activation code *after* you’ve destroyed a partition – that should be asked for up front, before any formatting is done.
* Doesn’t ask its questions up front in one batch – i.e. the installation is *not* hands-free (apart from any media changes if your OS comes on multi-CDs).
* When it says it’s about to reboot, it tells you to remove any floppy drive from drive A:, which is ridiculous because XP install is done with a bootable CD – you actually have to remove the CD, change the BIOS to non-booting-from-CD on that first reboot (so that second/third/fourth reboots don’t try to boot from the install CD) and put the CD back in during the reboot process.
* Yes, it does indeed reboot multiple times during the install process – it’s very poor that Microsoft can’t arrange the install to only reboot once (at the end) like most other OS installs I’ve seen.
* When it does finally finish the install, you’re left with a fairly garishly-coloured desktop complete with a Teletubbies background and very little software apart from a few simple games, Notepad, Windows Media player (already out of date – it’s 8.0 with XP), a few gadgets like a calculator and, of course, IE. Most other OS’es I’ve seen come with at least 10 times the number of applications.
Now begins your Windows adventure – install XP Service Pack 1a, a shedload of fixes from Windows Update, Ad-aware, Zone Alarm, Mozilla, Open Office, maybe Opera, DirectX 9.0b, Windows Media Player 9 and – collapsing exhausted from several hours of downloading, you might just about have a usable “free” (apart from the cost of XP, which was probably shipped with your PC anyway) setup.
However, you might have to do further downloads – many of which cost – such as a DVD player (there are free ones if you look around hard enough).
A 30-minute install of any recent Linux distro provides you with all that the above does and about 500 more apps – all for free. I know which one I’ll be spending my time in…
you got two choices, linux, or buy a Mac. everything else is just “creeping doom” (just quoting the article!)
what a joke…..
Easy solution… buy a mac.
“you got two choices, linux, or buy a Mac.”
Ahem. there are other choices. BSD for example.
* When it says it’s about to reboot, it tells you to remove any floppy drive from drive A:, which is ridiculous because XP install is done with a bootable CD – you actually have to remove the CD, change the BIOS to non-booting-from-CD on that first reboot (so that second/third/fourth reboots don’t try to boot from the install CD) and put the CD back in during the reboot process.
Ah yes. I think surely because of this flaw, and this flaw alone, that Windows sucks. I CAN”T LIVE MY LIFE WITH MISTEAKS LIKE THIS!!!!21!11 LoLeRZ!!
* When it says it’s about to reboot, it tells you to remove any floppy drive from drive A:, which is ridiculous because XP install is done with a bootable CD – you actually have to remove the CD, change the BIOS to non-booting-from-CD on that first reboot (so that second/third/fourth reboots don’t try to boot from the install CD) and put the CD back in during the reboot process.
you are kinda wrong here. the reason because windows setup asks you to remove floppy is because most of people still boot with floppy & select boot from cd rom & install XP however as for XP bootable it says to you press any button to boot from cd & after some time if you don’t press any key it boots from your hard disk.
so basically no bug, no error. nothing just lack of thinking ha ha
When it says it’s about to reboot, it tells you to remove any floppy drive from drive A:, which is ridiculous because XP install is done with a bootable CD – you actually have to remove the CD, change the BIOS to non-booting-from-CD on that first reboot (so that second/third/fourth reboots don’t try to boot from the install CD) and put the CD back in during the reboot process.
——-
It asks you to remove the floppy as a basic (perhaps dated, but still used) precaution, since installs can still be done with boot floppies, and boot floppies might still be in the drive booting first. Also, you don’t have to remove the CD at all. If you don’t press a key when the prompt comes up as it reboots it will ignore booting from the CD, and go straight to your next boot device (usually your HD).
Aditya, you bet me to it.
someone posted the best wa to deal with windows is:
c:> format c:
Just to be nit-picky you can;t do that in XP. Unlike 95/98 XP isn;t launched form DOS. the DOS shell in XP is pseudo emulated and won;t let you delete protected files yadda yadda yadda. And ther’s no boot to DOs mode for reasons described above to over ride that.
however an fdisk utility or a boot disk with NTFS4DOs … and a good linux distro CD
thanx joe
Recently ,some wiz kid has been able to reduce Windows 95 to 10 megs, there should be a registry utility developed to reduce all the bloat in XP to speed it up and kill all the needless bells and whistles, services background tasks , restor points,that slow down XP.Several options may offer different setups to suite every taste.There is a company which has done something similar to this by changing the registry of Windows to switch between the Pro and Home edition of XP.