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MaximRecoil

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About MaximRecoil

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    XP Pro x86

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  1. Duffy98, you can find WMP 6.4 in the Program Files\Windows Media Player directory. Its filename is "mplayer2.exe". If you install FFDShow it will work with many common video formats. However, if you like WMP 6.4, you should definitely look into Media Player Classic (freeware), which looks nearly identical to WMP 6.4 (it even has a similar icon), but will open pretty much anything (including .MP4, .MKV., .FLV, and so on) and has far more "tweaking" type features. I haven't found a browser I really like. I use IE8 and Firefox, but I miss the days of IE6 when it was new, had ~90% or whatever market share, and pretty much all sites were compatible with it. It was basic and fast. Yes, it had security issues, but that could have been fixed under the hood while keeping it the same from the user's perspective. IE8 is getting harder and harder to use these days though, and I was never particularly fond of it even when it was new. Luna is XP's default theme package, so you have it. The blue task bar, green curvy Start button; that's all Luna (and it can be switched to different color schemes). That's correct. I always switch to "Windows Classic style", first thing after canceling out the "Tour Windows XP" thing. I forgot to mention it. I do this as well. I normally do the "Change the way Security Center alerts me" thing (uncheck all of them), which means you never see a Security Center alert again. Disabling the service would be even better, assuming there are no unwanted side effects. This is included as part of disabling the Visual Effects. I do this as well. This is another XP thing that I actually like, so I keep it.
  2. The first thing I do is disable the "themes" service, which completely prevents Luna from ever rearing its ugly head, even during startup/shutdown. This alone makes XP resemble 2K at a glance. Additionally, I disable "Fast User Switching" and "Use the Welcome Screen", which gives you a real 2K-style logon box during startup. Doing this also gives you the "Windows Security" box (which has 5 useful options, including "Lock Computer") when you press Ctrl+Alt+Del (just as 2K does by default) rather than merely bringing up the Task Manager (like XP does by default). Also, I disable "Use simple file sharing (Recommended)" in "Folder Options", while gives you a "Security" tab in folder and file properties dialog boxes, just as 2K has by default. I disable all of the "Visual Effects" in "Performance Options", aside from "Show windows contents while dragging" (which was an available option in 2K and earlier versions of Windows as well). I use TweakUI to get the 2K-style search back (exorcising that Microsoft Bob dog in the process). I use "list" for my default folder view, which gets rid of those massive "tiles" that were introduced in XP, and are used as its default view. I ignore the fluffy/bloated Windows Media Player that is included with XP (though I update it to the latest version just for the codecs), and use either Windows Media Player 6.4 (which is also included in XP, but its presence is in no way advertised) or Media Player Classic, which is modeled after WMP 6.4, but is far more functional / up-to-date. However, I do keep the XP start menu rather than switching to the classic start menu; I just like it better than the 2K and earlier style start menus.
  3. The first thing I do after installing XP is to disable the fluff, making it much more like 2K. Also, I'd be perfectly happy to use 2K these days if it was still well-supported.
  4. I got my first PC in July of 2001, when new PCs were still coming with Windows Me. I didn't know the first thing about PCs at the time. I had been using the internet at the local library to play chess online, and I wanted to be able to do that at home. So I went to Best Buy and bought the cheapest thing I could find, which was an eMachines with a 733 MHz Celeron, 64 MB of PC100 RAM, and a 20 GB, 5400 RPM, Seagate HDD. It worked for the most part. I assumed that having to reboot a couple of times per hour because of freezes and other malfunctions was just the way things were in the Windows world, and I was just happy to be online in my own living room. A friend (Sam) that I went to school with (who was always "into" computers, to the point of spending $800 for 8 MB of RAM in the early '90s), was working in the IT department at the place I was working at the time, so I headed over to his house to see what I could learn. He was running Windows 2000, had 512 MB of RAM, and had a 1 GHz Athlon Thunderbird. He didn't have any stability problems. He was a self-confessed "Microsoft fanboy", so he wouldn't say anything bad about Windows Me, but he also made it clear that it was no accident that he was running Windows 2K. A couple of months later I discovered MAME (which was awesome, because I loved playing arcade games when I was a kid). Some of the newer games like Mortal Kombat II would work, but they were slow/choppy. I'd heard a lot about RAM, and figured that maybe I needed more of that stuff (in reality, the slow CPU was to blame, not the low amount of RAM). I asked Sam if he would help me get more RAM. So he came over and determined what type of RAM I needed, and how much of it was supported (it turned out that my cheap PC maxed out at 256 MB [128 x 2]), but that was still 4 times what I had. So we went to Best Buy and picked up two 128 MB sticks of RAM (about $20 each if I remember right), and Sam installed them in my machine (I noticed how easy it was when I watched him do it). This improved things a bit, but had no effect on MAME. In the winter of 2002 I decided to try XP. By that time I'd learned quite a bit about computers, and felt comfortable installing it myself, but I had Sam on the phone while doing it just to make sure. After getting it installed, I was skeptical of the Yoshi's Island-looking GUI, but I gave it a chance. After using it all day and not having to reboot even once, nor having any other issues whatsoever, I was sold. After disabling the themes service (along with some other services I didn't need), and turning off most of the "Visual Effects" under "Performance Options", XP actually ran fine on that weak hardware; I had no complaints at all. In the summer of 2002 I was taking an A+ and MCSE course, and I decided to build a PC. I went to Best Buy and bought a large Antec SX830 case, and then I ordered the guts online (Athlon XP 1800+, 512 MB PC2100 DDR, ATI AIW 7500 video card, 80 GB Maxor 7200 RPM HDD [which I still have in use by the way, along with a 120 GB Maxtor that I bought a couple of months later; over 10 years of near constant use and they are both still going strong]. XP ran beautifully on that system, and I used it until I built a new system in the spring of 2006 (Athlon 64 3700+ single core). I'm still using that system today and it is still running XP. I've used Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8, and I don't like them at all (though I like 7 much better than Vista, and Windows 8 is a complete joke). As far as I'm concerned, XP was the peak for Windows, and it has been all downhill from there (and I doubt there will ever be another version of Windows that I like in the future).
  5. I hate them all. Firefox is slow, and as far as I know, you can't get rid of tabs (I hate "tabbed browsing" with a passion). Chrome is fast, but ugly (no option to just use a normal Windows skin on it), and it natively lacks simple history and favorites/bookmarks dropdown menus. This is a deal killer for me, and I don't think you can exorcise tabs in it either. I don't like Opera either, it just isn't what I want. What I want is IE6 (or 5.5, or 5, or 4); fix/update it under the hood but give me the same interface. I reluctantly get by these days with IE8, and Firefox for the ever-increasing amount of sites that IE8 chokes on (which is why I now hate IE8 rather than just sort of disliking it like I used to; I just hate it a little less than the other options). With IE8 I can at least disable tabs, making the "tab" portion of the GUI completely disappear, and a registry edit puts the menu bar back on top where it belongs. I'd still rather have the IE6 GUI though. Using a PC and the internet 10 years ago was a better experience than it is now, in my opinion. Win2K wasn't bloated relative to the mid-level hardware of the day, and XP could easily be configured to run as light as 2K. IE6 was fairly new, it was a basic and fast web browser, and due to its ~90% or so market share at the time, pretty much all sites were compatible with it. Everything now is a pie-sliced-too-many-ways mess, and bloat (in both websites and locally-installed software) has gotten out of control.
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