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Not necessarily. Ever tried to uninstall Outlook Express from Windows XP without following specific directions?
http://www.tweakxp.com/article37318.aspx
If you don't follow them, and just delete the files, they reappear after you reboot (if I remember right).

TweakXP should do that for ya. Buy a new copy and key the serial number you get over the old one. Unless, of course, your parents have a volume license copy right now, and they buy a home version. Then you have to do a repair install.

http://www.tweakxp.com/tweakutility/

If you're having problems removing Windows Messenger, try this. Works for me every time. You'll probably also want to remove the /Program Files/Messenger directory afterwards as well.

Here you go..you're welcome.

http://www.tweakxp.com/Article37934.aspx

or here -
http://www.tech-recipes.com/windows_tips250.html

or for the extremely lazy -

Who knows why, but XP first checks for scheduled tasks on a target machine before it will list the files and folders for that target machine.

In regedit navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\ Explorer\Remote Computer\NameSpace

And delete the following key:
{D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}

Close regedit and reboot.

This should turn off the check for scheduled tasks before browsing... and get rid of that blasted delay.

If by "astounding" you mean "subjectively faster with more frequent crashes and other unpredictable consequences"... then yeah, astounding.

Everything from device drivers to anti-virus software assumes there's a paging file out there somewhere. There are Windows-tweaking tools which will let you page out to disk less frequently, like TweakXP or CacheMan. But why risk your system stability with funky settings when RAM is relatively cheap?

-Don

PS - to the RAID 0 suggestion - seriously? How often do you want to rebuild your machine because one of your hard drives crashed? You're better off with a single fast SATA drive, or separate disks for apps and swapfile, than any kind of striping without mirroring. RAID 0 (without RAID 1 mirroring) is just asking for trouble.

The following registry tweaks should be used with caution:
IoPageLockLimit: increases the amount of pages that can be locked into memory. Changing this setting can improve performance although there is some controversy over this setting's effectiveness. Make sure that you have at least 256MB of RAM. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CONTROL\CURRENTCONTROLSE T\CONTROL\Session Manager\Memory Management\IoPageLockLimit. If it is no there you can create it. This is DWORD value. For systems with at least 256MB of RAM, 8000 hex (32768 decimal) or 10000 hex (64536 decimal). You can use 20000 hex (131072 decimal) on systems with 512MB+ of RAM. Warning: this setting may not be compatible with some drivers; especially video drivers. Enabling this option could cause critical processes and services to fail. You might not be able to log in.

LargeSystemCache: This setting is primarily used for servers but can help improve performance. Again, it's effectiveness may be controversial. It is located at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CONTROL\CURRENTCONTROLSE T\CONTROL\Session Manager\Memory Management\LargeSystemCache. If the key is not there, you can create it. This is a DWORD value. 0 for disabled. 1 for enabled.

DisablePageExecutive: Again this is a controversial setting. You may or may not notice a difference in performance and it is driver sensitive so be forewarned about using it. It too has the potential to cause crashes after being enabled. This setting prevents kernel memory from being paged. It is located at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CONTROL\CURRENTCONTROLSE T\CONTROL\Session Manager\Memory Management\DisablePagingExecutive. This is a DWORD value. 0 for disabled. 1 for enabled.
Note: Any problems encountered from changing these settings will be noticed on next boot. They are a "either it's fine or it isn't" settings.

To reduce boot time, you can disable autodetection of devices on IDE controllers that have no devices connected to them. This can be done from the device manager. Also, adjust Windows for best performance and turn off the themes service.

Lastly, there's XPlite which can help cut down on some of the fat. Also, be sure to check out TweakXP.com for more XP performance tweaks. And there's nLite. Unlike XPlite, nLite allows you to remove Windows components before installation. It also has service pack integration.

Another of those important innovations that Microsoft has pioneered...

Windows-XP has a "feature" (???) with which it is possible to manually crash a system by simply holding the right CTRL key and pressing the "Scroll Lock" key twice. This feature can be turned on by the following steps:

1. Start regedit. (If you are unfamiliar with regedit, please refer to this FAQ)
2. Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\S ervic es\i8042prt\Parameters
3. Create a new DWORD value and name it CrashOnCtrlScroll
4. Right-click on this newly created value and click on Modify
5. Enter 1 in the Value data field and click on OK.
6. Close regedit and reboot your system.
7. Now you can blue screen (crash) your system by holding the right CTRL key and pressing "Scroll Lock" twice.

Note:

Your system may reboot or show a blue screen whenever this crash is initiated. If your system reboots after initiating the crash, and you want to see the blue screen, follow these steps:

1. Go to Control Panel > System
2. Click on the Advanced tab
3. Under Startup and Recovery, click the Settings button.
4. Under System failure, uncheck the option Automatically restart.

Happy crashing...

cudos to http://www.tweakxp.com/article140073.aspx

Then compare what you'd get on a well-made restore CD from a Windows vendor.

Isn't using a distro the equivalent of someone else setting it up for you, just not actually taking the last step of installing it?

... What? This whole damn conversation has been about 'ease of installation'! The "just not actually taking the last step of installing it" is exactly the part we're talking about! All of the software is already set up for your machine. That's why you only have to pop in a disk or 'apt-get install' stuff... it's *all* already set up to work with your crap but not installed.

I don't know where you're getting your restore disks but the ones I've seen haven't installed crap. The dozen Dells we got here at work only included original media... a disk for Windows XP SP2, a disk for NAV, a disk for MyDVD, a disk for PowerDVD, and a disk for MS Office SB. Not even disks for spyware, graphics editing, anything development, etc. My friend's Dell? Same story, original media. The Sony desktop system my wife's uncle bought ~1 year ago came with a restore disk that reinstalled the OS but came with seperate disks for NAV and WordPerfect. Methinks the Sony DVD player crap might've been in the restore though. Point is, no one gives out a 'customized WinXP distro' *at best* they give you a fairly vanilla XP restore with drivers and some disks.

On a seperate note, NO, it's not valid to compare a vendor supplied restore disk to a Linux distro first and foremost because it's locked to that hardware. Try running the restore disk after you've upgraded the hard drive? Oops, must've forgot about the secret 'restore partition'. Changed the CD-ROM, doh! Must be installed on factory CD-ROM. I can't think of a single tech that would say 'good thing they gave us a restore disk instead of the orginal media or this might've sucked'.

Viruses in Linux are rare, but shouldn't you still install a virus checker, like f-prot?

... riiight. Then let's go through the steps to uninstall Outlook Express to eliminate arbitrarly insignifigant threat X.

But the point is that you can't bypass it.

Hmmm...what's this then? Or this? Or maybe even this?

Aw gosh, I've gone and broke your argument. Hope you kept the receipt.

Many child posters noted this is possible and tolerable with tweaking.

see TweakXP on how to do this.

What was the incentive to upgrade from Windows 2000 to XP*. Let's see, we had:
- Rearranged control panel
- A new theme
- Ummm...the search puppy?

The die-hard fans will upgrade because it's the latest and greatest, everyone else will get it with their next computer, and the corporate world will wait 3 years and then take the plunge.

This is still a blow to Microsoft, but not a major one. Maybe another baby step away from the OS monoculture.

*I know there was more incentive to upgrade from Windows ME, but I'm sure many a 2000 user switched over as well.

Actually you can remove it:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=312451
http://www.litepc.com/ieradicator.html
http://www.tweakxp.com/tweak1241.aspx

...for a start.

Or you can do what we do here: Install Firefox as the default browser, bury or remove IE icons, and change the start page of IE to an internal page which explains why IE is so bad.

As for companies only suing if there is money loss, that simple isn't so. Several companies, like Microsoft, are building huge patent portfolios to simply lock in the market by fear of lawsuits, and then proceed to feed lawyers loads of cash to simply sue anyone who tries to take a cut.

Specially in the Free Software arena, who can stand going to court and fight being sued by Microsoft? For example, should somebody develop a HD-DVD player for Linux, even though no other would exist on the market and Microsoft was not obviously expecting to make one, so "no money was lost by Microsoft", you can bet your socks he would be sued for doing it on patent infringement and the DMCA.

In the case of DVD Jon, you are correct. As I state in my post, CSS is not patented, it's a trade secret. DRM patents are public and enforcible by patent law, and given it is a protection/encryption algorithm, also by the DMCA. Trade secrets, should they gets to the public, are their owner's problem.

As for not being in the US, check out this guy. The problem, although distinct, was also being prosecuted according to the DMCA. This time he was lucky. Perhaps somebody else in the future is not so. Trade agreements can be nasty, you know...

As for loss of profits for reverse engineering a protocol, go ask Microsoft how much they are losing in Windows licenses with Samba...

Take for instance my school. We have, for trials, migrated 2 workstations over from NT4 to WinXP in our CISCO lab. It comes with .NET Messenger (MSN Messenger), we cannot work out any way to remove this, and every day, we find some shmuck trying to use it. Why is it that we are unable to remove it? Is it a crucial part of the NT5 kernel??? Would XP cease to work without it??? NO! It is just bloat and pointless waste of space, and time.

Take a look at Tweakxp, they have a lot of good advice on xp-installations, among them how to remove MSN Messenger.