Windows XP cleanup

[Squawk]

So I've bitten the bullet and done a clean install of Windows XP, much against my better judgement. The last time I did this it hosed my hard drive, so I've been running it in a virtual machine under debian. However, the need for resources is upon me (photo editing), so windows once again has full reign over my hardware.

I took precautions of course. Disconnected the drive for my main OS and installed it on a smaller HD. A good move as it turned out, since hte blasted thing again decided to corrupt the disk to such a large extent that it couldn't actually format it itself (fortunately debian could see it and format it).

Anyhoo, top and bottom of it, I now have a fully updated version of XP on my system. But here's the rub. I reckon that between the clean install and now I've probably gotten in excess of 150 updates, not to mention SP3. This has to have left some serious clutter lying around, and I'm looking into ways of cleaning things up. Hoping people have recommendations for software that will strip out the crap and leave me with a clean streamlined system. I'm already familiar with the likes of ccleaner, but if anyone can gimme recomendations I'd be very happy

Thanks all

 

[Dustnite]

So why no Windows 7?...

Best way to streamline XP tends to be cleaning up the startup and service list in msconfig as well as uninstalling Windows features you won't use like Windows Media Player, Windows Movie Maker, etc. Turn off all animations when opening programs and windows and make sure you make set the paging memory to a static value instead of letting Windows choose the value for you.

Are you doing this for just Photoshop or is there some type of photo editing software that your using that requires XP?

 

[Case]

Unless he has way more than 2GB of RAM (well, considering he's planning to PS he should...) he shouldn't switch to W7.
I love W7, but I feel 4GB is bare minimum to run programs smoothly, because 2GB are routinely hogged by the system.

That aside, 'clutter' from updates will only affect HDD speed (at worst). System speed indeed depends on the state of your autostart (or more generally - the 'tonic' level / number of services/processes running without any real user interaction, like virus scanners, firewalls, etc.). Even a fucked up registry would only slow down startup, not online speed.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Unfortunatly I have to agree, upgrading to W7 is a more apropriate option, not only it will be more easy on the update thing but also because it give suport to the latest technology (something that Win XP doesn't have anymore).
However if for some reason you can't (and there are computers which you can't) then what I have to say is bite the bullet, it isn't going to be 150 upgrades but it will take a while to upgrade, dedicate a day to it and when it is done it is done, no magic software is going to help you on that one.

 

[Squawk]

Hehe, suppose I should have said more.

I'm going with XP rather than a downgrade to windows 7 for the simple reason that I bought a legit copy of windows XP a couple of years back and it's sufficient for purpose. Windows will not be my primary OS, I'll boot to windows for photo editing or for playing poker.

The 150 updates was not speculation, it happened. After a clean install windows update gave me 73 vital updates. A reboot, and next in line was SP3. After SP3 installed I got another set of 52 updates. I then installed .net framework 2.0, and another 15 or so updates arrived. A few more random ones and the total was in and around the 150 mark, all now on the system and running nicely.

My system has 4gb of RAM, dual core proc (Atholon AM2), plenty powerful enough to power out windows 7 etc. But, I don't need it. I just want to run lightroom, ps, and poker.

I have very little in my startup, haven't really installed anything (firefox, couple of bits from adobe, anti virus etc). I just want to clean the system up as much as possible.

 

[scalyblue]

So why no Windows 7?...

Best way to streamline XP tends to be cleaning up the startup and service list in msconfig as well as uninstalling Windows features you won't use like Windows Media Player, Windows Movie Maker, etc. Turn off all animations when opening programs and windows and make sure you make set the paging memory to a static value instead of letting Windows choose the value for you.

Are you doing this for just Photoshop or is there some type of photo editing software that your using that requires XP?

never use msconfig to disable services.

Hehe, suppose I should have said more.

I'm going with XP rather than a downgrade to windows 7 for the simple reason that I bought a legit copy of windows XP a couple of years back and it's sufficient for purpose. Windows will not be my primary OS, I'll boot to windows for photo editing or for playing poker.

The 150 updates was not speculation, it happened. After a clean install windows update gave me 73 vital updates. A reboot, and next in line was SP3. After SP3 installed I got another set of 52 updates. I then installed .net framework 2.0, and another 15 or so updates arrived. A few more random ones and the total was in and around the 150 mark, all now on the system and running nicely.

My system has 4gb of RAM, dual core proc (Atholon AM2), plenty powerful enough to power out windows 7 etc. But, I don't need it. I just want to run lightroom, ps, and poker.

I have very little in my startup, haven't really installed anything (firefox, couple of bits from adobe, anti virus etc). I just want to clean the system up as much as possible.

A downgrade to windows 7? Your fanboyism is quaint, however misplaced. I can think of very few ways that XP is superior to vista, especially in the context of photo editing.

That being said, all of the updates you received for Windows XP prior to installing SP3 were obviated by your installation of SP3; next time just install SP3 from the NIS before running windows update You will save a good amount of time.

Clarify what you mean by clutter, If it's a fresh install with only windows updates it doesn't get much cleaner than that, unless you want to get pedantic about a few hundred megs of disk space. If you think you can start disabling services you don't think you need for the sake of increasing your performance in lightroom, you may as well just be using windows 7.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

In that case I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to run your programs on a virtual machine.
Anywho, and the reason why you got that massive amount of updates is because you didn't installed SP3 from the start as it was also sugested (so it probably applyed several version of a certain component instead of just aplying the latest one, which was totaly unecessary).
Do not worry about the fact that it was 150 or 2 million updates, generaly it is the same components that are being constantly replaced by subsequent updates, most of the items replaces those you already have for nicer versions of it and very few actually add to your machine, of those I wouldn't worry since most of them are never run anyway.
I don't know what exactly you need help on.

 

[Squawk]

Actually, I did jump ahead to SP3. When I did SP3 hung during install. I fixed that, and then the next wave of updates hosed the system (corrupted pci.sys). I managed to fix that after much pain with recovery console, sorta got it half working, and then the blasted thing managed to completely corrupt my boot sector (for the second time in a year as it happens). Solution was to reformat the disk using linux, at which time I decided to do the install fresh and then let auto-update do its thing.

So, my faith in winblows is minimal.

For what it's worth the winblows 7 downgrade was tongue in cheek, I bought winblows 7 for my parents and it's sitting happily on their computer and tbh I quite like it.

But on this machine XP absolutely flies. I have no need for any of the features windows brings with it, so I'll save my money and stick with XP.

Regarding the virtual machine, photo editing isn't up to much in a VM, not enough access to system resources.

 

[scalyblue]

Actually, I did jump ahead to SP3. When I did SP3 hung during install. I fixed that, and then the next wave of updates hosed the system (corrupted pci.sys). I managed to fix that after much pain with recovery console, sorta got it half working, and then the blasted thing managed to completely corrupt my boot sector (for the second time in a year as it happens). Solution was to reformat the disk using linux, at which time I decided to do the install fresh and then let auto-update do its thing.

So, my faith in winblows is minimal.

For what it's worth the winblows 7 downgrade was tongue in cheek, I bought winblows 7 for my parents and it's sitting happily on their computer and tbh I quite like it.

But on this machine XP absolutely flies. I have no need for any of the features windows brings with it, so I'll save my money and stick with XP.

Regarding the virtual machine, photo editing isn't up to much in a VM, not enough access to system resources.

Depends on the virtual machine, and the resources you devote to it. ^.x

If you tried to use the network install of sp3 on a clean system and it hung, then there is a hardware issue. It might be as benign as an incompatible or unloaded driver, or as severe as a failure (unlikely, as linux seems to be working fine) The way WinXP and Win7 handle resources, especially memory and drivers, is vastly different in several aspects.

The scope of kernel mode drivers is completely different, for one example, and if you have, say, the wrong drivers loaded for your hard drive controller and your drive has a very large LBA, xp might screw up.

Another thing are in-built limitations to things like filesystem allocation issues; take into consideration that pre service pack 2, winxp could only allocate 137 gigs or so.. A GM winxp partition can't be much bigger than 120 GB NTFS4 without some sort of corruption being invited. It also doesn't like if the partition starts outside of the first couple million sectors or so.

I also believe that multicore CPUs are very buggy and low performing on XP without very specific tweaks from the chipset vendors in question.

That's what it boils down to, the main advantages of win7 are its ability to actually work with the scope of hardware that wasn't even conceived of when winxp reached EOL, multicore CPUs, PCI X buses, Wireless N, large chunk memory allocation, etc etc.

Since you have so little faith in windows, I invite you to build a linux distro whilst substituting a ten year old kernel ( try 2.0.3X ) and see how well stuff works ^.^

 

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

I'm not sure about your HD configuration array, but you could have just put XP on a Slave HD and Debian as the Master HD (which may have been what you've done anyhow, I'm not sure with your wording). Then you can share files back and forth from HD to HD under different OS layouts if you used Synergy.

>.>

Synergy is some fucking Voodoo, man. I swear.
I will never question how it works - I will just praise the almighty digital ethergod that has made a program capable of actively running sidelong two different OS modules and being able to drag a program to the next OS on a different screen, and it still functionally run in a different OS.
And cross-OS filesharing.

EDIT:
After further review, I think that he scripted something himself - because Synergy simply shares the mouse and Keyboard across OS processes...
Something is seriously wrong here.

 

[Snufkin]

I use CCleaner for cleaning up my Windows installs.

 

[Squawk]

Thats exactly what I have done Hytegia. My primary OS resides on a 500GB disk, debian linux, on which I used to run a virtual machine of winXP in virtualbox (it was given half the CPU and half the RAM). Big downside, no support for graphics hardware, everything had to go through the proc.

I've now taken an old 80GB hd and installed XP on that. As it happens as of right now that's all I'm running, for the simple reason that I am yet to re-attach the primary HD. Been away for a couple of days, got back and playing poker

 

[Prolescum]

Don't know if this is any good for you, Squawk. It's a lightroom-style program for Linux. Never used either, so don't know how they compare. Thought it might be of use.

 

[Squawk]

Prole, that look brilliant. The only alternative to lightroom I'd seen before that runs on linux was bibble, but that was paid for. I had a go with the trial and thought lightroom was a nats superior. However, it would appear darktable is gpl, and will be going onto my system very shortly for experimentation

 

[Prolescum]

Let me know what you think so I can recommend it again should the need arise.

Hytegia, synergy only allows you to share input devices to my knowledge. I use it on my computers. It is excellent, though.

 

[Dustnite]

So why no Windows 7?...

Best way to streamline XP tends to be cleaning up the startup and service list in msconfig as well as uninstalling Windows features you won't use like Windows Media Player, Windows Movie Maker, etc. Turn off all animations when opening programs and windows and make sure you make set the paging memory to a static value instead of letting Windows choose the value for you.

Are you doing this for just Photoshop or is there some type of photo editing software that your using that requires XP?

never use msconfig to disable services.

Why, because Microsoft tells you not to? Squawk knows what he's doing and some programming experience if I remember right.

 

[Squawk]

Heh, yeah, far from a computer noob, just not exactly hot on admining XP since most of my knowledge is linux based.

 

[scalyblue]

never use msconfig to disable services.

Why, because Microsoft tells you not to? Squawk knows what he's doing and some programming experience if I remember right.

:facepalm:

Unchecking a service in msconfig flips it to disabled, and there is no cross checking or dependency checking to ensure that you aren't shutting off any services that happen to be essential to, say, booting windows.

It also stops the service from loading even if it is a dependency of another service, because the service is being flagged as disabled as opposed to being flagged for manual start. Flip off the wrong service and you can cause a dependency chain reaction that can create a no-boot scenario.

Let's presume that one knew every service by heart and which ones to never disable, it's still a text list with checkboxes. What happens if you accidentally uncheck something like the DCOM services manager or the RPC host?

The proper way to prevent the load of services you don't want starting is to use the service management snapin in the microsoft management console to set the service to "Manual" instead of "Automatic". If the service is already set at "Manual" and it is starting, that is because another service holds it as a dependency.

So, I reiterate: Never disable services from msconfig.
Ever.

Furthermore, I'm sure that if Squawk knew what he was doing, he wouldn't be on a message board asking for advice from other people. Not knowing what you are doing is nothing to be ashamed of, if you can admit it and learn.

Since the slight implication that squawk doesn't' know what he's doing seems to trigger your defensive mechanisms, how am I supposed to react considering that you are right out saying that *I* don't know what I'm talking about?

 

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

never use msconfig to disable services.

Why, because Microsoft tells you not to? Squawk knows what he's doing and some programming experience if I remember right.

:facepalm:

Unchecking a service in msconfig flips it to disabled, and there is no cross checking or dependency checking to ensure that you aren't shutting off any services that happen to be essential to, say, booting windows.

It also stops the service from loading even if it is a dependency of another service, because the service is being flagged as disabled as opposed to being flagged for manual start. Flip off the wrong service and you can cause a dependency chain reaction that can create a no-boot scenario.

Let's presume that one knew every service by heart and which ones to never disable, it's still a text list with checkboxes. What happens if you accidentally uncheck something like the DCOM services manager or the RPC host?

The proper way to prevent the load of services you don't want starting is to use the service management snapin in the microsoft management console to set the service to "Manual" instead of "Automatic". If the service is already set at "Manual" and it is starting, that is because another service holds it as a dependency.

So, I reiterate: Never disable services from msconfig.
Ever.

Furthermore, I'm sure that if Squawk knew what he was doing, he wouldn't be on a message board asking for advice from other people. Not knowing what you are doing is nothing to be ashamed of, if you can admit it and learn.

Since the slight implication that squawk doesn't' know what he's doing seems to trigger your defensive mechanisms, how am I supposed to react considering that you are right out saying that *I* don't know what I'm talking about?

I have a better idea that suits all of this -
NEVER disable anything from msconfig unless you'rewell-aquainted with the processes required to run and maintain the Windows environment.

But, that's just typical warnings that should be stapled to anything you do when it comes to digital environmental services. For example, I highly doubt anyone should even be right-clicking the system32 folder without proper knowlegde of basic computer operations - but it's always wonderful to tell internet dipshits asking simple questions to just delete system32.
If all else fails, gentlemen, we must cite the maxim of every IT in the world:

RTFM

 

[Dustnite]

Scaly, no need to get defensive. You had a one word response to my post when you could have very easily have added your explanation to why you wrote your statement:

"The proper way to prevent the load of services you don't want starting is to use the service management snapin in the microsoft management console to set the service to "Manual" instead of "Automatic". If the service is already set at "Manual" and it is starting, that is because another service holds it as a dependency."

Since the slight implication that squawk doesn't' know what he's doing seems to trigger your defensive mechanisms, how am I supposed to react considering that you are right out saying that *I* don't know what I'm talking about?

I don't even know how you read this from my earlier post, but to be honest I just don't like people "laying down the law" so to speak for something so simple as turning off a couple useless Windows services you won't even use ESPECIALLY when you take into account he's dual booting Windows and only using it for Lightroom and Poker. Frankly I was only miffed that you decided that not elaborating is somehow constructive to the discussion.

However, I will reiterate your earlier points that it is not a good idea to go into msconfig without the proper knowledge of how to configure Windows.

[sarcasm] Also, if you delete your system32 folder your computer will run faster [/sarcasm]