Slashdot Mirror

It's the best Windows Tweaker around. And you can go into 'record' mode and save your tweaks as a .REG file. Then when you re-install or move into a new computer at work, you just doubleclick the REG file to install your options.
(I do this from command-line actually.)

Anyway, my point is that one of the options is "Click here to 'register' your windows". You click there and afterwards you can do windows update all you want.

Posted anon due to DMCA.

Ha, ive had W2K BS a few times this week, and my XP box *loves* to spontaniously reboot.

That's the 2000/XP BSOD. Miscrosoft was getting upset how BSOD was quickly becomming part of the technology lexicon. Their solution was to automatically reboot after a BSOD. Usually, it reboots faster than the monitor can draw the entire screen. The option can be removed so that the system freezes (req. hard reset) after a BSOD. I can't remember the exact registry setting, but one program I use is X-Setup. It's a freeware app that puts the TweakUI powertoy to shame.

• KDE has hotkeys up the ass. All over the place, I mean. I'm told GNOME does, too, but who cares.

• but, ummm. . . . the hotkeys for KDE are documented

• and* easily changeable in the system settings.

• In Windows 2000, when I click the "look-in" bar to display my drives, my system pauses and lags while the I/O works on spinning up my CD-ROM drive.

• I use Win2K. It's fairly stable, and I can use it, but the interface isn't really usable unless you're migrating from an identical interface (eg, Windows 9x).

Without a doubt, for an office suite, use OpenOffice.org

To be honest when it come to web browsing, email and news, I am happy with the Internet Explorer suite

I am also happy with Media Player as well

For a popup blocker, I use PopupPopper

For a download manager, I use LeechGet 2003

All over system tweaking, X-teq X Setup

For graphics manipulation, go forGIMP for Win32

Unfortunatelty the GIMP is not viewer friendly, so as a viewer (even though it is nagware), I like Poylview

Page defrag I automatically starts up each reboot

For compression decompression, use UltimateZip

Despite Microsoft's press releases to the contrary, Windows machines are not secure and need decent firewall and antivirus software. I see others have already mentioned the Kerio firewall, so I'll just add that it can be easily extended with Sponge's excellent, freely available filters. (I'm using set 2, but there are versions that are both more or less rigorous). I've also AVG Antivirus installed it seems to work well enough.

Some other useful free utilities:

Tclockex
A small utility that greatly increases the usefullness of the system tray clock. You can have the date as well as the time, as well as a resource monitor that lets you know at a glance how the system is doing.

AboutTime"
A little applet that sets the system clock from a list of time servers. Works well and unobtrusively.

7-zip
An easy to use explorer plug-in that understands most kinds of compressed files.

CDex
A great tool for ripping / converting CDs and mp3s.

X-teq>
A very powerful utility that lets you change pretty much everything that's changeable in Windows. Allows you to set Windows update registration done, which would only be useful to pirates and won't be mentioned here.

The Proxomitron
A web proxy that strips out ads, pop-ups and other garbage.

I'm more familiar with Redhat, but I have no doubt Mandrake will come out of the box with programs that are functionally equivalent to the ones listed here.

UDMA/66 is disabled out of the box, you can turn it on with a registry tweak or using 3rd party stuff like XSetup

Jaysyn

REGISTRY... yes... that's an easy way to do this... an easier way is a little thing called Policy Objects. If you are running enough XP systems that it warrants the horrible tradeoffs of having an active directory network, GPO's are an easy way to do this (albeit managing them, and making sure the GPO changes propogate on a network can be a pain in the butt.)

You could also script a global USERS registry change and push it out to a buncha systems... XTEQ X-setup can do this for you, if you aren't adverse to hacking your registries

Or, quite simply, you could log in as the USER you want to change the options for, (in a limited environment this might be easy enough.)

/sarcasm

Seriously folks, I don't know what kind of information is collected by MS, but I know that there's an option in a system configuration utility called X-Setup which allows one to anonymously connect to the Windows Update site. Does it actually work? I don't know, but on the upside it prevents the "customize Windows Update" feature from saving your settings, which seems promising.

• Windows is not very changeable partly because the standard windows user will learn to use the interface given to him/her.

Just one more reason why I use mozilla religiously and disable activeX downloads in MSIE by using X-Setup.

Seriously, gator has gotten to epidemic levels. I'm a university student (in Canada) and I've gotten to the point where whenever I log onto a machine, I automatically fire up Ad-Aware and scrup the machine for spyware. (Every engineering student gets 500 mb to store/install whatever.) 60%+ of the time gator is running, plus there's a bunch of bonzibuddy shite. The really bad ones have cnsmin installed which is much harder to get rid of. (Ad-aware can't do it on its own.)

The point I'm trying to make here is that it's gotten to the stage where it's "everyone for themselves." The web is the wild wild west and only those gunslingers who are the fastest and smartest remain at the top of the food chain.

Maybe it just checks the registry for the product key and then locks you out if it finds a pirated match. Pirates can just get X-Setup and change the key stored in the registry. This would probably get them home free.

Of course I don't run XP so I have not tried this idea and I don't know if it works.

But I *can* tell you that in the WPA for office2k, if you delete the key from the registry and then run the SP1 update, the product activation will be activated without actually doing the activation. I discovered this by accident. The cool part is that you're not doing any hex editing or reverse engineering or anything ... just using MS tools (regedit and sp1 patch) on you machines. Probably something similarly simple exists for Winxp.

As a long time computer user, starting from a C64/Floppy/300 baud modems to DualP3s/Terrabyte storage/DSL I have migrated and changed the way I interact with GUI's and store my files many times over the years.

Mark Hursts ideas are almost like mine. I will break it down a little as to HD layout then OS.
I have normally have 2 HDs in my system, HDA for my OS's and HDB for my Games and Work. HDA I break down into 4 Paritions.
HDA1 for Win98,
HDA2 for Win2K,
HDA3 for either a Linux dristro or WinXP beta
HDA4 for the swap if im using linux.
HDB1 is 1 parition, normally 3 folders, Games, Work and Emulators. (Im a UAE and Mame freak.)

I dont normally use boot loaders other than Win2k's, If i boot linux i use loadlin, it seems easier for me to maintain. (C:\linux)

Im a big fan of Norton Ghost, using ghost on the paritions, I can restore quickly. As I like to play around with drivers and migrate my HD's to more space. I also burn the .gho files on CDs. If the files are larger than 700 megs, I rar the ghost images and make it self extractable. So I can boot a fresh HD from floppy. I also copy the CD images to the HD, unrar, and ghost from the whole image.

I'm a little more in depth on my HDA1 drive, I use directory names, Apps, GFX, Net, Sound, Utils, Work. I also have the normal windows directories, My Documents, Windows and Temp. Under My Documents I put My Pictures, My Music and Favorites. I then use M$ Tweak UI to point all windows versions on my HD to c:\My documents, C:\My Documents\favorites, etc.. This keeps all my files at hand if im either Win98, Win2K or linux. It makes it easier to keep every file in the same place under ever os. (Example, IE for Win2K and Win98 point to the same favorites, so my bookmarks are the same.)

After I get the basic windows installed (doesnt matter what version). I upgrade the entire installation with the newest patches and drivers. Then register file types for my apps, not windows defaults. Apps include textpad, winzip,winrar,cdrwin,nero,acdsee,winamp,proxomitro n. Windows modifications as x-teq and m$ powertoys.

Now that windows is installed, and apps, I keep a shortcut to a folder NET in c:\net\net on my desktop. This folder c:\net\net keeps shortcuts for all my programs. Even if I reinstall windows, my c:\net\net folder stays. I put a shortcut of my NET folder in my tooltray. I can either alt-tab or click on the tooltray icon (in case my apps are maximized) to have access to my favorite apps. I really dont use the start menu, as it takes longer to get to my commonly used applications.

Microsoft has weened us off Dual pane file managers.(I miss fileman!) This was (IMHO) the hardest thing to get used to in win95 and new versions of windows. Trying to copy files from a file viewed pane, then select the destination folder is slower and has more steps involved. M$ introduced powertoys that included "Copy To and Move To" extensions to windows, that at least helped. I do keep a copy of 2xExplorer for when I need to handle large ammount of files.

The part that actually increased my productivity was the toolbar. Being able to have access to my running applications, instead of alt-tabbing was a nice changed. It also provides a quick visual que on what programs im running. The tooltray also speeds up access to my c:\net\net quick launch folder full of shortcuts.

Drag and Drop, right mouse menus have become standard. I have found that I now drag mp3's onto winamp, and right mouse clicking and enqueing them. My older habit was using playlists for everything. IE didnt have the best right mouse menus, but with IE6, they have the most common menus again. (Using proxomitron and enabling all right mouse clicks also helps)

Now as my Linux GUI, I really use Windows as workstation, and unix as a server and display X back to my windows box. (X-win32 is far the best for this.) But when Im using a unix workstation, I normally install IceWM. IceWM is small, fast and has a toolbar and tooltray. It is highly customizable and can add those extra buttons that come in handy. The windowshade mode which rolls up the window to a bar is very handy. Comes in handy when I need to view multiple load balanced servers at the same time. Also for quick eye-candy, I like the network and cpu meters on the toolbar, dont really need it, but nice to see.

Started to use WinXP beta, and I'm pretty impressed with its Font Smoothing features. Check out some screenshots I made for friends here and here.. The font smoothing works all throught the GUI, notice how the menus are changed.

I spend too much time playing around with new utilities and GUI's for windows. If your interested in modifing your windows GUI, check out Shell City, WindowBlinds, and Litestep.

Have fun!
-Brook

The bizarre thing about that joke is that you can already do that in Win9x (either by Registry hacking, or with X-Setup by XTeq <http://www.xteq.com>). You're stuck with the standard 16-colour palette though.

As a former BBC Micro user, I switched to a retro green-on-black screen of death as soon as I found this out :-)

Also, there's stuff in place now to disable various M$ shenanigans in older OSes. X-Setup, the open-source tweaking program for various flavors of Win, has an option to already "register" copies of Win for Windows Update use. Of course, it's at http://www.xteq.com

X-Teq X-Setup lets you change the colors of BSODs.
:)

I like to keep utilities like TweakUI and X-Setup around, too.

Actually, it can take me hours to do all the other things necessary to make Windows 2000 bearable and comfortable for me, but then it really is a mostly okay environment. Another minor-but-nice feature is the ability to auto-expand Control Panel on the Start menu, so I don't have to be opening and closing that folder all the time.

http://www.xteq.com/main.html

The program is called x-setup... you can find links to more plugins on the page.