Zxian

I think I'll be a third person to say nLite your XP install and throw it on there. Once you get the XP system up and running, you'll never look at ME again.

I'd like to consider myself a "power" user, since I make use of my laptop for several hours a day and I know most of the ins and outs of Windows... but I don't rely on standalones to do most of my stuff. Most programs that are standalone are more specifically tailored to a specific task than their full-registry/everything counterparts. For example, there are many alternative e-mail programs out there to replace Outlook, but none of them support calendars, notes, and tasks like Outlook does, or allows you to sync that information with your PDA. Also, for most "work" based applications, you can't find a reasonable standalone version to replace them. If you can find a good small standalone replacement for Mathematica, please tell me... And as for the Office replacement software that's out there, they may do the trick for the common user, but when you start using all the useful tools within Word and Excel, the formatting turns to garbage when you try to open the files in OpenOffice (for example).

Lots and lots of electronica (Trance, Techno, D&B, chill-out). Throw in a bit of rock, alternative, and some pop, and you've got my collection. Oh, and throw in those un-categorize-able artists like Delirium and Enigma.

Dude! That thing should be in the next Fast and Furious movie! They could have someone screaming down a highway in a modded car and have another person hack into the CIA with that computer! Then... they'd both his the NOS at the same time!!! It would be insane!!!!

Oh Wow! That's just insane... I would hope that people who have the money to spend on expensive video cards would know better than that... although there are some pretty stupid people in this world...

That's just rediculous... what a scam for money...

It all depends on what AV/Firewall programs you have running. Add on top of that any background apps that you might have (for themes and such). If you want to look into your services (the things that use svchost.exe) have a look at www.blackviper.com. There's some good info on what services you need and which ones you don't. At boot, I've got 18 on my laptop, and 17 on my desktop, but I use some apps that I don't really need (WindowBlinds, AveDesk, etc). If you wanted to go absolute bare-bones, I think you can get that number down to 11 or 12. But then you'd be at absolute minimum Windows: no AV or firewall. Your choice. Long story short, 30 isn't bad (don't listen to the people who tell you otherwise, they're just crazy about nLite...). If it doesn't bother you that much, then leave it as is.

You can find the WindowBlinds theme on WinCustomize. It's called Cyrix. As for the wallpaper, I can't remember where I found it, but I can upload it if you want.

Wow... I'm one of the "small" people here. I've got an 80GB drive in my laptop, a 40GB backup drive that I'll probably end up putting in my desktop, and a 40GB system drive in my desktop. Current working total is 120GB. I'm probably gonna get two 80GB drives for my desktop system (in RAID) and a 200GB drive for storage this coming summer. The 200GB drive will be for backing up all of my stuff, including my system drive on my laptop. And yes, I'll agree with un4given1, the amount of space that some people have is sickening... Edit: Oh... and add a 256MB flash drive and a 40GB external drive as well... so maybe it should read 160GB. I'm probably gonna get me a Neuros MP3 player this summer as well, 40GB should do me well for a few years (I've already got 15GB of music, all perfectly legal).

Ahh the joys of C++... I've taken two courses in C++ and one course in C so far. Once you've learned how programming works in general, most of the skills are transferrable to other languages. All you need to learn is the syntax. I was able to pick up on Fortran77 easily enough with my knowledge of C++... man is Fortran horrible (in comparison). But to get back on topic, I also think a Malware section would be benficial to members. It would help get some of the posts away from the WindowsXP thread and let people know a little more specifically what they're going to help out with.

I just got my desktop hooked up to the internet again... Here's what I was able to throw together in about 15 mins... So pretty... EDIT: w00t! Post #300!

Ultimately, your WindowsXP CD is your own. What you do with it (nLite, silent installers, etc) is up to you. I've tried out nLite, but I ran into some troubles with my video drivers (of all things) for my laptop, so on my laptop, I run a full XP with all the bells and whistles. On my desktop, however, I've got an nLited CD that I was able to cut down to about 250MB while still keeping all the networking and printing support that I needed. Like I said before, it's all what you want to do.

Yes, A slipstreamed disk will work. It's probably better in the end to use the slipstreamed disk, since it will have the updated files available. If you aren't hurting on space, I wouldn't clear out this folder just yet. I'd save that step as a last resort. Another great tool that you can use is CleanIt. It will empty out your TEMP folders on startup and then close. I've used this on some systems and recovered a stupidly large amount of space. I agree with the general comments about System Restore being somewhat weak. If you don't have the money to spend on a proper backup program, then use it. Just limit the size allocated to System Restore to a minimum (400 MB should be more than enough). I agree that Acronis True Image is probably one of the best out there. Many many programs write to the system drive. Any application data is stored in C:\Documents and Settings\[uSERNAME]\Application Data\. Don't delete anything in this directory. You'll just end up screwing up your programs. The way that I have my system set up is: System: 10GB Music: 20GB Stuff: 20GB School: 1.5GB Installers: 6GB VMWare: 12GB My Documents: 1GB Acronis Backup: 4.5GB I've got the My Documents partition set up so that the "My Documents" folder points to this partition. That way, in case of a screwup, the stuff that's in My Documents from programs and such isn't lost. I'll agree with Seapagan on the point about rediculously small system drives. I've got my 10GB system drive, and I'm only using 5.3GB of that, including a 1.25GB hibernation file (it's a laptop) and a 1GB pagefile. That includes all of Windows, Office 2003, Acrobat, MathCad, and all the other programs that I use.

If you've tried using Partition Magic to create the partition, you need to make sure that the partition is a Primary partition, or that you have free space that isn't in the Extended partition (where logical partitions lie). Try going back to PM and find out if this is the case.

Do you mean the balloons that pop up for wireless connections n stuff?

Check the entire post for the Command propt desklet. There should be alternate mirrors there.

Nope, you should be able to do this. All you should need is a VGA port on your laptop (they're the blue ones with 15 pins) and you should be set. Plug in the monitor and press the hotkey to activate the external monitor (it's usually a Fn+[something] combination on your keyboard). Then, through the standard Windows display settings you should be able to set up the monitor to use as an extended desktop (it's an option in the display settings). Then you can just drag any window over to the other screen and place it there. When you maximize it, it'll maximize to that screen. Hope this helps!

Yes, as Jeremy said, everyone has their preferences... I think that's what makes this a good place to come to to ask questions about software. There are a lot of people who can help out. When I decided to give Opera a try, there were a couple of very small things that I wanted to know about, and several people helped me out. I've been using Opera 8 beta for a while now, and it's my favorite so far. I showed Maxthon (what I was using before I switched to Opera) to my parents, and they absolutely loved it. Nothing radically different, and a few nice features added. When I showed them Opera, they looked at me in disgust (well, not really, but you get what I mean). I think I'll give Firefox another try on my desktop next weekend when I get it hooked up to the internet. We'll see how things go...

What program are you using for the sidebar? is it Sidebar? I haven't touched that program in a while, so I'm not sure what improvements they've made.

I'm just wondering if anyone has previously heard of or is using Bullguard. I was referred to it as a "great" suite, but when I installed the trial version on my VMWare machine, and headed over to Shields Up... 1 port open, 3 stealthed, the rest closed. When I looked in the configuration menu, there was no notion of an AV or firewall... just an update engine... :S

Either register, or you can use one of the mirrors that are on the thread. Does it really take that long to sign up for an account...

Hey there, Yes, AveDesk is the program that I use to get the desklet on the desktop. You can find more information on it here. The desklet itself is an alpha (version 0.1) and it's named virtual console. Cheers!

Use nLite! That'll "OC" any computer... I've set up my parent's work laptop (P-III 750, 128MB RAM) on their island with an nLited XP CD, and the thing just screams! (at least for what they need... e-mail, internet). Used nLite and disabled prefetching (they don't care about boot times...). Edit: If you're using 512MB + 64MB of RAM, I'd say just ditch the 64MB chip. I've found that computers don't really like dealing with different RAM chips that are very different in size. My desktop wasn't really happy with 512+128, but it was fine with either. I've seen this kind of behaviour in other computers as well. I'd say chips that are double the size of each other is the limit (i.e. 128 +256 or 256+512, etc).

Hey everyone, I'm just wondering if there's an easy way to start a program from any location in a command line. I know that if you create a shortcut to the program and put it in the %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\ folder, you can start it by using the "start" command, but I'm trying to find a way to not need this. Is it possible or am I trying to skate uphill? Thanks! P.S. As to why I want to do this, have a look at my latest screenshot in the Desktop Screenshots section for the command line desklet that I have.

God (or whatever almighty being suits you) is looking down on Earth and realizes that John has been a very good man his entire life. He therefore decides to grant John one wish. God appears infront of John and says: "John, I am God. You have been a good man, and as a reward, I will grant you one wish." John thinks about his wish for a while and says: "I'd like to have a bridge from Los Angeles to Hawaii." To which God replies: "But John, a bridge is such a worldly thing. Can't you think of a better wish?" John thinks some more, and finally says: "I'd like to be able to understand women." God replies: "Would you like that bridge with two lanes or four?"