Zxian

Not really... that's the whole point about I-FAAST. It orders the files that WILL be accessed in sequence together. When you analyze the drive with I-FAAST, and then such a defragmentation pass occurs, the primary and secondary defrag methods will respect the relative placement of the files. Take the following example - you've got a 100GB drive. 60GB of it is filled with your system and files. Scenario A You defrag the drive using PerfectDisk's SmartPlacement, so that all the system files are at the front, and then your data files (since chances are your data files were put on the disk after your system). Now you go to Windows Update and install the patches for Patch Tuesday. The new files, as per SmartPlacement, would be put at the END of the drive, since they are relatively new, and would be tagged as "frequently modified" (times modified/time). So now, to load Windows, your system needs to read most of the files from the beginning of the drive, and then those few updated files at the end of the drive, and then probably go back to the beginning for more files there. Scenario B You let Diskeeper defrag the drive using I-FAAST. It places all the system files together in one region of the disk, and then the other files in another region. You go and update Windows as before. Two things are different than in (A). First, I-FAAST defragmentation will still recognize that those updated files still belong close to the other system files, and it will place the updates closer to the rest of the system. Secondly, chances are there's enough space for the updates to simply be moved there without the need for the defragger to move other files out of the way. Your system isn't going to need to access shell32.dll, and then an MP3 file one right after the other all that often now is it? Explorer.exe and shell32.dll - those two should to be close together though. PefectDisk doesn't ensure this while Diskeeper will.

How often do you make a new image? Is that something that you have to do manually? If not, Acronis needs it's own scheduler running in the background (which eats up more resources than the System Restore service).System Restore will automatically create a new restore point every day, and whenever you add or remove programs. I've got an 8GB system partition, so restoring it with Acronis would take about 8-10 mins to restore the drive itself. System restore adds another 45 seconds to the reboot cycle, so in my case (and most other peoples'), System Restore is faster. Not everyone has a crazy-nLited system like you do. System Restore only restores malware if you get malware in the first place. If you have been infected, clean your system and then clear all existing restore points to completely remove the infectious files. If you keep your system clean, it can be a godsend. Oh... and the recovery CD for Acronis takes at least 30 seconds alone to load on my system (P-M 1.86GHz, 1GB DDR2-533). I've used Sygate and Kerio (both apps based) without any noticable slowdowns at all. I was running Sygate primarily on my laptop for a long long time until it got bought out by Symantec, and performance was great.Your thinking is a little off though.... for a rules based firewall, the list of rules would have be larger than a list of applications, because for each application, there is now a list of rules associated with that process. By your reasoning, wouldn't that make the rules based slower than the apps based? Do you have any facts to back up the statement about apps based firewalls slowing down with a larger applications base? I don't take it personally, since I've only had one potential infection that came from my own mistake, but NOD32 picked that one up. Humans are people, and people are stupid (that includes me). We all make mistakes at some point or another. Good practice goes a long way, but that one night when you're really tired and aren't really thinking about what you're doing - that's when a good background AV program can help. You still haven't come up with a list of what you consider "unneeded" or "risky" services. It'd be interesting to see your reasoning on why you disable so many services. The DNS cache isn't a vulnerable service, and yet that 1-2MB of RAM can help you surf the web quite a bit faster. @TheTOM_SK - How does your network setup work? It'd have to be static IP assignment, since your DHCP Client service is off, but isn't the Network Connections service needed? You've got a pretty slimmed down system...

No system restore - system restore can be useful at times. You changed a setting that you didn't like then? Just system restore it. It's much faster than loading an Acronis True Image CD and restoring the drive.Themes - on a system like his, he probably won't notice the difference between themes on and off. Displaying a couple of simple BMPs here and there isn't going to bog down his system. A PIII or lower - fine, but that system, not a big deal. What do you think "unneeded" services are? The services that I have set to automatic are listed: Ati HotKey Poller Automatic Updates Computer Browser Cryptographic Services DCOM Server Process Launcher DHCP Client DirectUpdate engine Diskeeper Distributed Link Tracking Client DNS Client Error Reporting Service Event Log Hamachi Service Help and Support Logical Disk Manager Network Connections Network Location Awareness (NLA) Notebook Hardware Control Service Plug and Play Print Spooler Protected Storage Remote Access Connection Manager Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Security Accounts Manager Server Shell Hardware Detection System Restore Service Task Scheduler Telephony Themes Windows Audio Windows Management Instrumentation Windows Time Wireless Zero Configuration WorkstationAll of these are "needed" by me, but might be unneeded by you. It's pretty hard to tell someone what services they need and don't need unless you know exactly how they use their computer. I'm also guessing that you don't have the DNS cache service running. Unless Black Ice does that for you (which I don't think it does), you're slowing down your internet browsing. Services don't do anything unless they're working. Windows Time just sits there and checks the servers every once in a while (is it once a day, or every three days...?). If the time is off, it fixes it. No anti-virus - if you trust yourself and your system to not require an anti-virus, running without an anti-virus can help with some resources. On the other hand, an anti-virus like Avast or NOD32 doesn't use that much RAM and can help you stay out of sticky situations. Unless you're willing to take the fall and risk your system, I wouldn't run without an anti-virus. Rule-based firewalls actually use more resources than application-based firewalls. Simple Application-based firewall actions: Simple Rules-based firewall actions: There's more checking for a rules based firewall to do than an apps based firewall. The screenshot is showing memory usage - not virtual memory usage. This has been discussed many, many times. You need to show the virtual memory usage to see how much actual memory each process uses. (Look at several of DigeratiPrime's posts for this) The best guide I can think of is guess-and-check. There is some information in the nLite forum on "what not to remove for ProgramX", but general system performance and various dependencies are really for you to find. If you want to find the "perfect install" using nLite, you're probably going to be spending a lot of time testing.

Fruityloops is a music making program - you can create full songs with it. The developer also made another program called Buzz Tracker, which I found much easier to use.

SDRAM prices have gone up significantly over the past couple of years. I remember trying to find 128MB of PC133 RAM, and the lowest price I could find for a new stick was $30 CAD.

Indeed - speed is good. It just requires not being silly when it comes to browsing the internet.

Sorry - the Logical Disk Manager service. Start->Run->services.msc. I've got Daemon Tools 3.47 installed, and I haven't had the problems you describe. I'm not really sure what's up, but I wouldn't point the finger at them quite yet.

I've been running my desktop on Server 2003 for a good 2 years now without any slowdowns. I also had XP installed on my old desktop without any slowdowns either. I went from XP Gold to SP1 as well without any performance hit. There isn't any proof that XP itself "just slows down" The key thing to do - DEFRAG! It makes such a huge difference. coyoterw has the right idea with his post. Follow those instructions and you'll be in good shape. nLiteing is only good if you want to spend the time finding the "perfect" setup for you. XPero, nuhi, Jeremy, and I all have different system requirements than you do, so our configurations will require different "nlitings" of XP. With a system like yours, you really shouldn't be complaining about system performance from XP. Most regtweaks don't help that much, or are outdated from the Win9x days.

I'd say move the drive as puntoMX said. Sure, you might raise the temperature of the incoming air by... 0.5C, maybe 1C, but that's not going to kill the rest of your system. On the other hand, it will help your hard drive.

Make sure the Logical Disk Manager is set to Manual or Automatic (Auto is better). Without it, new drives won't be assigned a drive letter, and therefore won't show up in My Computer. Also, another thing to try. Go to Device Manager and scroll down to the Universal Serial Bus controllers section. Uninstall ALL entries under this section (remove any USB devices first). Then reboot. Windows should reinstall your USB drivers. Hope this helps.

Cerebrus is another good free FTP server software. I remember a long while back I had troubles getting it to run as a service, but that was about 1 year ago.

The minimum resource requirements are still the same as before. 233MHz Processor or higher, and 64MB of RAM. There really isn't that much more resource wise between SP1 and SP2. If you disable the security center service, you won't have that eating things up. In the end though - I'd suggest getting more RAM. PC100 and PC133 RAM might be hard to find retail, but there's TONS of it floating around on various buy'n'sell sites. I recently bought 2 sticks of 128MB and 1 stick of 512MB (all PC133) for $15 USD. When I upgraded my girlfriend's parents computer from 128MB to 256MB, the difference was quite noticable. Sure the computer doesn't fly now (PIII 700), but there's no more waiting for XP to write pages to disk. Just search on eBay for what you need (I'm guessing it's SDRAM. You'll find plenty of cheap stuff there.

The number of messages that you get? That will settle down once Outpost gets to "know" your system. Performance - there really isn't much that you can do in this department. On the other hand, I've never really noticed any performance hit when running Outpost. Silent installs - I think there is. Check the Application Installs forum for more information.

I'm not suggesting that people follow my lead and toss their anti-virus and firewalls out the window - I'm just telling people what I've done. Security software is really only needed if you think that you're going to make a mistake while on the internet. I've had NOD32 running on my system for a good 2 years now, and it only had to stop one virus - one that was entirely my fault. As for the firewall - I've never really seen Outpost or Sygate block anything deadly serious. The primary use of them was to stop anything from connecting to other computers in the event that my computer was infected, which hasn't been the case. If you're confident that you have safe internet techniques, then and only then, can you take the risk of running without security software.

Glad to hear your friends are alright. I hope that nothing like that happens at my school...

I used Outpost for a while - if you're overly paranoid about security - then it's good. I started having troubles with my university's network though - I wasn't able to resolve an IP, it would kick me from the VPN servers, from the WPA-RADIUS servers, etc etc etc. I think it's fine for a desktop system that doesn't change IP's much. For laptops on various networks, it might be a bit problematic.

That's not true at all... DeepFreeze just restores the file contents - not the file locations. You still need to defrag when you're using DeepFreeze.

SequoiaView is a great program to find out what space has gone where. It gives a graphical view of the files (bigger blocks = bigger files), and when you hover over the blocks, it'll tell you what file is what. Very very good program.

I've just moved to the security-less suite. No firewall, no AV. I've been running this way for a week now without problems. Outpost started giving me problems when I tried to connect to my university servers, so I went to nothing.

It's extra stress if you run continuous large defragmentation passes like PerfectDisk seems to do. Keep things tidy and you won't need to run things for long periods of time. And with 16kb clusters, you end up wasting more space for those small files...

whoa...

What instructions are you talking about? AFAIK, there aren't any instructions for permanently downloading the hotfixes. If you want the hotfixes themselves (the .exe files), the easiest way of downloading them all is to use jcarle's Windows Updates Downloader - http://wud.jcarle.com Otherwise, you'd have to write down a list of all the hotfixes you want and search www.microsoft.com for them.

@Jeremy - The only problem with your method is that files that would be fragmented before the imaging won't necessarily be fragmented after the image. You'd be better off taking a set of files and copying them to a "dummy partition" and then running the test from there. Once you've done your analysis with PerfectDisk, then format the drive, copy the same files over, and re-run your tests with DisKeeper.

PerfectDisk doesn't make it very easy to make a "good" schedule for when to defrag your drives. With PD's scheduling methods, if you set it to defrag every tuesday, it'll run a full defrag pass every tuesday - even if no files have been changed! Diskeeper's Set-It-and-Forget-It feature is still unmatched...

Good lord... Memory usage this, memory usage that... Why do people with 2GB of RAM complain when a program uses 50MB? If you're sitting at the computer, browsing the web, chatting on MSN, who cares if your browser stores some old pages in RAM? Unused RAM is wasted RAM. I think my main problem with FF is the fact that extensions are not easy for the average user to learn about and use. When a user asks you "How do I do *this*?", which is easier for them? Tell them to install an extension (which might bring up the question "what is an extension?"), and then configure the options? It's not a very easy thing for most people to pick up. Once you do learn how they work, they're great, and you can customize your settings and preferences to your heart's delight - there's just a relatively steep learning curve to get to know how to use them.