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First Ten Programs on New Install?
reddigitaldragon asks: "Some people re-install once a year, but if you're anything like me your machine is formatted at least once a month. After the OS is in, then come the favorite/must have/most used programs to install. My first installations for Windows (I use it; get over it): Trillian, Winrar, Firefox, Winamp, SmartFTP, Azureus, NMap, GKrellM, PowerDVD. What are your First 10 installed programs?" What are the first 10 programs you would install on a Windows machine? How about for a Unix machine?
TweakUI is the first thing I install. I can't stand the default Windows Explorer setup.
I _race_ furiously to download and get a firewall installed, then do the windows updates. I've had machines be comprimised while downloading the firewall for the first time, damn those subnet scanning kids move fast :)
Why are you reinstalling your machine every month? I've reinstalled once in about 3 years and that was because I put in a new motherboard and upgraded from Windows 2000 to Windows XP Pro and didn't want crufty driver issues popping up down the road. What the heck are you doing to your system that you need to reinstall it so often? Regular spyware scans and a good antivirus program has kept my machine running like a top. Sometimes I really wonder why people bitch about Windows since it's been running great for me on my hardware.
viml pheed
openssh
lftp
zsh
nethack
fortune-mod
sy
mplayer
rhythmbox
openbox
I didn't do this, now did I?
Game Machine:
1) Motherboard Drivers from CD
2) Updated mobo drivers from web once NIC is working
3) Critical / Security patches (winUpdate)
4) Mozilla / Firefox
5) Latest DirectX
6) Video drivers of choice
7) Latest usable FRAPS
8) Battlefield: Vietnam to test (/cough)
What comes next depends on why I reinstalled. A development machine is similar, except:
7) Java/whatever SDK
8) Eclipse/IDE of choice
9) WinAmp
0) OpenOffice
-lw
Mods: Disagreeing with me != my post Offtopic / Flamebait.
World without hate or war, invaded. Tragic?
the Cygwin installer.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
After a base my Slackware Current Install:
(1) FireFox
(2) Mplayer
(3) Xmame
(4) XMMS
(5) Ethereal
(6) Blender
(7) OpenOffice.org
(8) XCDroast
(9) Audacity
(10) THe newest version of GIMP!
I realize this is directed as windows / unix, but i'm throwing out my 2 cents for the mac.
BBedit, transmit, cssedit, mysql, php, ircle, AIM, photoshop, dreamweaver, ms office
http://www.rustyrazorblade.com
Don't forget cygwin, so you can actually get some work done.
Firefox
Java SDK
Eclipse
quicktime
realplayer
Civilization II
civilization III
Alpha Centuri
Stars!
V for Victory!
Not going to make a top-10 list, but programs I always install are: PuTTY, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Mozilla, Eudora (I'm a registred user), Ad-Aware, Norton Anti-Virus (I have a 5 seat license) on my machines and AVG on machines I install for friends, OpenOffice, VLC for DVD playback, CDEx for ripping, Nero, WinAmp, GhostScript/GhostView and finally WinZip. If the station is for me I also add Eclipse and some games I own, and that's it.
This all on Windows 2000, because I'm completely lost in XP. My girlfriend runs XP (in german, irks!) and I usually have to look all over the place to find the most basic things. It *always* has at least one spyware or at least one virus hanging around. Probably her little brother surfing some special sites....
On the road I have my iBook and that one never gives problems either. Server is OpenBSD and I play around with Linux when I feel like it.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
This is too good to be true. Not only are we asked to not make fun of a windows user, but one who re-installs his OS every month!
What I want to know is *why* he reinstalls his OS every month. As much as I like to make fun of windows, there's no way it should degrade this fast (or at all with proper care and feeding).
So, fess up, what *are* you doing wrong?
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)
How is it possible to not have IrfanView in this list? It's always in my top three installs when I start using a computer or reinstall.
...
- MS SP & critical updates & TweakUI
- Proxomitron (this is old now, might look for sommat else?)
- Firefox, Thunderbird & Java runtime
- 7-Zip
- Daemon Tools
- foobar2000 and plugins (mmm sweet)
- Media Player Classic, and QuicktimeAlt and RealAlternative, ffdshow and ReClock (the video package)
- BitTornado, SoulSeek & eMule (the P2P package )
- IrFanView (mmm sweet)
- OpenOffice (pain to set up) & MS Office
I just had a primary hard drive die so I had to think about this todayThis is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
0. Install service packs, patches. .jpg viewer
:
:
1. Adobe Acrobat
2. Acdsee -
3. AdSubtract - popup stopper
4. Diskeeper - advanced defragger
5. WinZip
6. ZTree - www.ztree.com - CUI file manager that faithfully replicates XTree Gold 2.x
7. WS_FTP
On beefy machines I will be using for work or intense fun
8. MS Office
9. Visual Studio
10. VMware
If it has a burner
11. Nero
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
After installing all the appropriate device drivers, the first ten items on my list would be -
1. Symantec Drive Image 2. OpenOffice.org 3. Sygate Personal Firewall Pro 4. NOD32 Anti-Virus 5. PestPatrol 6. iolo System Mechanic 7. WinRAR 8. Mozilla Firefox 9. UltraEdit 10. Nero Burning ROM
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
Discluding Windows Update stuff, this is probably close to it:
.NET 2003
1. NVIDIA Apps for multiple desktop, etc.
2. Opera
3. Visual Studio
4. Office XP
5. MySQL
6. PHP
7. Kazaa
8. DAEMON Tools (lets you mount ISO, etc. as drive)
9. MSDE (always a pain to get isntalled for some reason)
10. WinRAR
Windows: Diskeeper, McAfee VirusScan, WinSCP, PuTTY, WS_FTP LE, Winzip, VNC, Ad-aware, google toolbar, either MS Office or OOo depending if it's a home or work PC. Linux: expect, McAfee VirusScan, chkrootkit, (and if it is a Desktop) VNC, OOo, Mozilla, conntrack, firestarter, macromedia Plugin (for Mozilla), and j2sdk or j2re (j2re if just for Mozilla, j2sdk if I'll be programming for my classes)... That said, expect, OOo, VNC, and Mozilla all come straight of my distro these days; so really I don't even install those... As for a server; the less the better; the way less the way better...
If you've installed IDEA, why do you need NetBeans? And, has NetBeans gotten any faster in the past year? Last time I tried NetBeans was in the spring of 2003 and it was just big and slow. I was instantly sold on IDEA after that.
Oh, go on, check out my job.
If you haven't played Half-Life yet, it's a great way to try it out (especially since stores still seem to be selling it for $30).
If you are into the online games, that means you can also play Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress Classic, or, my personal favorite, Natural Selection.
I haven't tried it, but you can also try installing steam under Linux, using WineX
I install the following first upon building / rebuilding a machine:
.app folder. Very few conflicts or issues.
Any MacOS X updates & application patches
Any required hardware drivers not in the OS (Kensington mouse, scanners, printers, etc)
Palm desktop & synchronization software (I don't use the Palm provided stuff, but you've got to have it to use iSync on top of it)
PGP or GPG & my keyrings and Mail.app plug-ins
Flash / RealPlayer / any other generally useful browser plug-ins
Usenet news reader (Hogwasher for me)
Roxio Toast (more full-featured CD / DVD burning)
MS Office OSX (not my favorite, but more-or-less necessary since a non-X11 version of OpenOffice isn't really ready for prime-time on OSX IMHO)
Konfabulator and favorite widgets (gotta have some nice desktop widgets!)
Gimp, Photoshop, or any other necessary photo-editing software
That's it for 99% of my usual daily work (and my wife's as well).
You can get an OSX box running amazingly quickly and painlessly for two reasons IMHO (compared to my (continuing at work) years of Windows and Linux use):
1) Installs are usually very straight-foward drag-and-drop affairs. Libraries and any bits usually included in the
2) Lots of useful stuff is already built-in (iTunes, Safari, etc). Not much need to install replacements unless you don't like those or need something else.
0. All updates (including perl and the dev software) 1. Fink ('cuz you're not really a geek without it) 2. MS Office ('cuz you're not compatible without it) 3. Adobe CS Suite (yeah, yeah, more than one app) 4. VLC ('cuz DVDPlayer sucks) 5. Cyberduck ('cuz Apple still can't do FTP right) 6. iLife 4 (never spent a better $49) 7. Firefox (because gMail doesn't support Safari yet) 8. Fire (now 1.0! Woohoo!) 9. iJournal (offline LiveJournal app) 10. PandoCalendar (innocuous and functional calendar widget)
Or, just "cp /dev/hda /dev/hdc".
And yes, I have heard about 'dd'. cp works just fine
I'm coming close to perfecting the windows install. It's not perfect yet, but it's close. I believe it depends greatly on the order you install stuff, as almost everything you install will screw with your registry. This is a bit more than 10 programs, but will guide you to an extremely stable windows install.
.NET and updates
Here goes:
"The core"
1. Windows Updates, all the criticals, and most of the optionals
2. DX9 (if not one of the win updates) and update all drivers, esp vid card.
2. Visual Studio
3. Microsoft Office and updates
4. Tweak UI and/or reg hacks
5. Defrag 2x to consolidate all of these files together at the beginning of the HD
Those three are the most essential to do first. I'm almost certain Microsoft makes core changes in the operating system and adds many system files while doing so. As such, the rest of the programs don't matter nearly as much to core system stability.
"The services"
6. Apache/PHP/MySQL
7. FTP server (Filezilla)
8. Anti-virus (Symantc...anything but McAffee)
9. Ad-aware and/or Spybot S&D
10. Defrag 2x
"The essentials"
11. Alternative browser (Firefox)
12. Alternative mail (Thunderbird)
13. Archive program (7-zip)
14. Chat client (Gaim)
15. FTP client (Filezilla)
16. P2P apps (WinMX)
17. Bit torrent app (Azureus)
18. Media Player (Winamp 5.x)
19. CD ripper (CDDA Ripper XP)
20. Codec Pack (KL codec pack v 2.25f)
21. Adobe Acrobat Reader
22. Defrag 2x
23. Run BootVis.exe a few times to optimize boot time
That should give you an extremely stable Windows install. After you do this much, I would reccomend finding a way to image this, to make your future installs easier. After this, install all the other programs (games, tools, etc). Then run your virus scanner and adaware and you've got a stable windows machine for at least 4 months.
When I install OS X, it immediately gets:
- Developer Tools
- fink, and then:
- $ fink install nmap;
- $ fink install osxutils
- Next is Carbon Copy Cloner,
- Transmit or some other ftp file browser.
- Finally, to make it "home", I'll install Windowshade X and Xounds.
- Also will edit my
.bash_profile, naturally, and have been known to put a fnorder in the login script.
Everything else is default, cause why not? Can you beat Apple's own email, web browser, media player? Apple's own PDF viewer is better in some respects than Acrobat Reader.Oh, I did forget to give the beast it'd due, although really, the only thing I used Word for is to write up my resume and look at HR stuff.
--
$tar -xvf
The last would have to be opera... never got used to the 7.x versions, so I keep using 6, but the new 7.5 is superb... check it out.
Any linux distro comes with so much stuff, I don't think there are even 10 things that I install after I'm done the OS install...
I'll grab bittorrent (official client), firefox, thunderbird, and I think that's about it.
Heres an Os X user's list
That was actually hard. So much comes with Os X, that it REALLY is a great Os right out of the box. Anything else at the end of the list is just little apps that really aren't important. Also, i just don't format as much as i used to when i was on Windows, which was a little more conservative than the poster at about every 3 months.
ok, here goes. In no particular order:
1> Winamp 5
2> Python
3> AVG
4> AdAware
5> SpyBot S&D
6> Sygate Personal Firewall
7> Firefox
8> Trillian
9> Pyboticide
10> Irfanview
I'm surprised more people haven't mentioned Irfanview - it's free and it kicks ass.
** Chigusaaa!!! You're the coolest girl in the WORLD!!! **
My standard configuration has everything allowed to talk locally, Mozilla allowed to connect outward through my local proxy server (Privoxy) but not via 80, Pegasus allowed to connect out on POP3 and SMTP, Popfile allowed out on POP3, SecureCRT on 22, etc. A few applications (Privoxy, Media Player Classic, Sam Spade) are trusted to make any outbound connections they want, but most are defined with only specific ports allowed.
If I was setting it up for my father or someone I knew was prone to opening possibly-infected email, I'd set it up similarly but have it set to silently block outbound connections from any other applications.
fencepost
just a little off
well you're right, windows does require a lot of tweaking before I even get around to installing apps...
You do not exist. Go away.
My thinking exactly...why would anyone need to re-install their OS monthly???
I mean hell, even on the few MS boxes I have, I don't re-install the OS but every few years. Of course, I don't use them very often...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
* Drag Thing: A highly addictive replacement for OS X's Dock. Really improves productivity.
* MS Office: Open Office isn't ready for prime time on OS X. I'm not sure it will ever be ready for professionals who exchange complex documents, though it's great if you have a small shop and use OOo's default file format.
* Toast 6: The most convenient disk duplication suite I have ever used.
* Fink: There aren't many Linux programs I *must* have on OS X, but this will get 'em.
* Photoshop: I have an older iBook with a small drive that gets GIMP instead.
* Corel Graphics Suite: Gotta have it for layout. Now that Corel has abandoned Mac, however, I'll be moving to Adobe Creative Suite.
* Thunderbird: I'd probably use Thunderbird fulltime if the Mac version were to be integrated with the OS X addressbook. But it's pleasant to play around with.
* Mozilla Firefox: Safari is my default, but it's a very young browser. Firefox renders whatever Safari won't.
* Starry Night: An entertaining and useful program for backyard astronomers. You needn't own a telescope to appreciate SN. Explore the universe from your armchair.
* Updated iLife suite: I've become addicted to iTunes and use iPhoto to organize my personal snaps.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Sounds like you are a candidate for VMWare workstation or Microsoft Virtual PC. Maybe you could save yourself a reload or twelve by saving your disk image.
Have you Meta Moderated t
Why would anybody reinstall an OS at ALL? At work we have an old SparcStation 10 running a license server for a simulaton package our students use ... it's still running Solaris 2.5.1 ...
... mke2fs -S recomputed the superblocks, fsck -y cleaned everything up, tune2fs -j built new journals. All I had to do then was move the hopelessly lost and confounded stuff out of /lost+found back to where it belonged and everything just worked. Tedious, yes ... better than reinstalling? DEFINITELY!
Due to crappy power at my apartment, I had the root filesystem get completely fried on my Debian box at home (back before I bought a UPS)
utter rubbish
Good call on X. That belongs on both he MSwindows&linux side. It sucks using MSwindows without having Xwindows.
I guess for tcsh I was just thinking windows / solaris / etc.
You're totally right 10 is too small. I think the guy who said he does the whole cygwin package is on the right track.
Please explain how that's not a directory tree. /dev/hda [destination]" - not "/mnt".
"cp
It looks to me like it copies the disk image.
"And will it compress Win32 filesystems properly?"
I don't see why you're asking about filesystems, since he's operating on the raw device. If you wanted to compress.. "cat /dev/hda | bzip2 -c > [destination]" is what you want. It'll even work with NTFS filesystems. :-)
Firefoxi p
Java SDK
Eclipse
Quicktime
Realplayer
Winamp
Winz
Azureus
Nimo Codec Pack
Macromedia Flash
"Not sure, maybe the same person who ends up having to format and reinstall his OS at least once a month?"
My thinking exactly...why would anyone need to re-install their OS monthly???
Here's why. I don't want to spent $150 on a copy of windoze XP. But I prefer it over my copy of 95/98 because it's easy to install, it's stable, and has true multitasking capabilities. Windows is, has been, and probably always will be the PC gamers OS(As there is still no OS answer for DirectX on Linux).
Here's where the 1 month re-format comes in:
XP allows a 30-day "grace period" before you need to register online. So what I do is install my fathers copy of WinXP, use it for 30 days...then I have to go through my monthly ritual of completely reformatting the HD and then reinstalling XP. It sucks, but this is the world of the broke PC gamer today.
Now you know.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
LaunchBar
Surely you meant to say "QuickSilver", my good man.
Do like I do.
Stash all the documents on a seperate partition, therefore, reinstalling the software and OS has no effect on the data. then just make a daily backup that can inclute the system registry for good measure.
I first format and install Windows, Wait about 10 minutes for all the viruses/worms to come in so I can watch it die just for the hell of it and then install a real OS like linux.
Has anyone clocked how long it takes for a new install of xp to be infected with a virus? My latest install was 3 minutes
AcmeShells.com The cheapest Eggdrop
And the first 10 apps I install are:
a bulator
Butler
Vim (Cocoa)
Firefox
Fugu
GPG
GPG-Mail
Fink
Konf
X-Chat
Thunderbird (for newsgroups)
i usually do the reinstall dance every 3-6 months. the steps remain relatively constant, unless i find a new app to replace a former favorite.
on Windows:
1. Adaptec drivers to access installations kept on cd-rw media
2. Kerio Personal Firewall
3. AVG Anti-Virus
3. PowerArchiver
4. gVim
5. Firefox
6. AbiWord
7. Acrobat Reader
8. Python
9. JDK/WTK
10. The Sims
on Linux:
1. grub
2. blackbox
3. rxvt
4. gkrellm
5. Firefox
6. Thunderbird
7. Python
8. JDK/WTK
9. (rebuild stock kernel)
10. (build latest 2.6 series kernel)
on Mac:
1. Apple Developer Tools
2. X (Apple)
3. Firefox
4. Fink
5. blackbox
6. apache2/berkeley db/subversion
7. mysql
8. php
9. SubEthaEdit
10. ArgoUML
I keep a 250MB USB flash drive loaded with these installers for when I go to my friends and families' houses and have to fix their computers. This, plus a Bart's PE WinXP boot disk and a SP1-slipstreamed XP install disk pretty much can get me to the point of pulling down anything else I need from the Internet. Which ten are most important depends on the computer and the person I'm helping.
If I can get a bigger thumb drive, I would add PowerDVD, the XP SP1, all the hotfixes, Audiograbber, Mozilla Thunderbird, a VNC client and server, Retrospect Desktop and one game. I'd like to add Partition Magic and Ghost but can't figure out how to use it and stay legal under the licensing. I will also add an OpenOffice disk when I get a moment.
If I encounter Win9x I make them upgrade before I will help them (I'll perform the upgrade if they ask.) I make them pay for the licenses for anything I use though. I also make sure they have a backup protocol and run at least one backup so I don't have to repeat my work.
-- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD
I install grub... How else can I get work done after playing Counter-Strike?
This reminds me of a few weeks ago when we got our new computer from Dell. The first thing I did, while he was asleep, was gut the bastard of pretty much all of their "optional" software - I freed about 5GB total, not to mention countless hours of headaches. Then from there I had explicit instructions not to get online - but of course I had to, seeing as the shipped version of Norton was several updates behind. Of course all hellfire broke loose after he woke up and, god-forbid, found me online!
"Why the hell are you online! I haven't backed-up the system!"
"Back-up? It's a new computer! It came with the install disk! What would you have to back-up?"
"Really? Well, still, I don't want this thing to get any viruses!"
"I've only been downloading patches."
"Still!"
"Are you suggesting Norton Anti-Virus is going to infect us with a virus?"
"You never know!"
Needless to say, I try to keep away from him as much as possible. And if this is off-topic, may the mods strike me down fully.
PS: I didn't have the heart to tell him Windows XP auto-connected to the internet to register itself upon first boot.
In linux:
none, everything I need comes with Suse or Red Hat. Things I want: firebird, download and install.
In Windows:
1. F-Prot the best AV.
2. Norton Systemworks
3. Mozilla
4. Open Office
5. Battlefield 1942, R to R, SW
6. Battlefield Vietnam
7. Medal of Honor AA, S, B,
8. Harry Potter for the kids
9. Enigma Rising tide
10. other games
After all real work is done in a secure environment and games are played on toys.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
For a Windows machine:
(1) Patches. If I'm lucky, these complete before I've caught a virus.
(2) Mozilla. Never use IE again.
(3) PuTTY. Remote login to my unix machine.
Done!
For a Unix machine:
(1) joe
(2) LyX
(3) octave
(4) IceWM
Everything else I need is usually preinstalled.
A harddisk is a file, a partition is a file, a file in a filesystem is a file. Unix tools work with files. They read from files, they write to files. If you want a file in a filesystem, that's what cp / dd / dd_rescue will write to. If you want to copy a disk to a disk, they'll do that too. The only thing they will not do is read only the allocated blocks and treat the rest as empty. For that there is special software. However, compressing and splitting full images is not a problem at all, just pipe the datastream through a streamcompressor and a split tool.
There is an interesting "feature" of Windows 2000 that will not let you make a bootable image of the OS. To put it simply, when you make an image the OS doesn't give root access to the swapfile. So when it goes to startup it can't access the swapfile. The catch-22 is that with win2k you can't load the shell without a swapfile and you can't fix the swapfile without the shell.
The only fix is to either move to WinXP and turn off the swapfile or change a registry setting to delete the swapfile on shutdown and recreate on startup. And this problem happens with Partition Magic (my tool of choice), Drive Image, and Ghost.
"Trying is only the first step towards failure." - Homer
As for monthly reformats. Assuming you have a second drive or a second partition to keep stuff like documents and downloaded versions of your favorite programs, the whole process takes only a couple of hours(less if you set up the updates ahead of time, clears out all the junk on your system and gives you a more stable and efficient box).
Most of the time of course this isn't totally necessary(so long as you get your firewall and virus scanner up quickly enough), but especially if you're screwing around with lots of different new software and such it can sometimes become more necessary.
When did the origional poster say that he *Only* uses windows? He did mention that he *Does* use windows. Their is a large difference. I *DO* use windows, but I *Also* use linux.
I have to say, reformating to avoid paying for the OS it is the lamest thing I've heard all week.
Your time has GOT to be worth more than that to you. Get a job, maybe, or just stop using XP.
Be happy. Nothing else matters.
I'm probably naiive, but is there a major reason to disable the Drive Indexing Service?
Pretty similar except I install Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative which use Media Player Classic:
Firefox
Winamp
Real Alternative
Quicktime Alternative
Xvid and/or Divx codec
Proxomitron (ad and popup blocking proxy)
Nero
antivirus (no preference, I've used Norton, PC-Cillin, F-Prot, and Mcafee)
unzip program (no preference, either 7-zip, Powerarchiver, WinRAR or Winzip)
instant messengers (AIM and Yahoo; I know it's two apps but I'll count them on the same line)
2nd tier stuff (these just miss the first 10):
Bittorrent app (SimpleBT and G3Torrent are both good)
Flash, Shockwave, Java for Mozilla
Nero
Cdex
Thunderbird
if it's a friend's or parent's computer:
Spybot Search and Destroy
Spywareblaster
I don't know how many machines I've had to rebuild the stacks on because of shitty software-based firewalls for Windows.
I bet I do: None. Why would you have to rebuild a stack because of a firewall?
2. Mozilla Firefox(bird, marsupial, whatever) - Much nicer way of browsing... I also install several extensions but I won't count them here
3. Startup Control Panel - Makes managing what loads at boot from various sources simple to manage
4. UltraEdit - Makes editing configuration files/reading *nix formatted files much easier on the eyes.
5. ShellEnhancer - Allows me to more effectively manage my windows... toggle 'Always On Top' and make windows and/or menus semitransparent. Also replaces the Alt+Tab manager
6. Spybot - Search & Destroy - It's like Mr. Clean for your computer...
7. Binary News Reaper - Don't ask... don't tell
8. Gordian Knot codec pack - So I can view all the stuff I download with program #7 <whoops... forget I said that>
9. Media Player Classic - this is a kickass lightweight media player. It even works with tuner cards
10. Nero Burning Rom - So I can make cds/dvds
Also of note is that I install Windows Media Player 9 because there is no way to uninstall WMP 8, but there is an undocumented way to uninstall WMP 9.
I also tune the services on the computer to only what is needed... This includes disabling the System Restore service. The only time I've found that the restore service would have been useful is when the computer fails to boot into windows. Unfortunately MS didn't have the foresight to allow restore points to be used from the install cd so the feature is useless.
I set up Windows business systems _very_ often, and I have a set list of free software that goes onto each one.
service pack 4;
software drivers (video, etc.);
all relevant patches from MS (several re-boots);
winzip;
java runtime;
quicktime;
real 7;
mozilla;
acrobat reader;
openoffice;
winamp;
okay, so that's more than ten... sue me... it's also a complete system load.
+++++++
"Look, dear, it's a crazy hairy scary man!"
How did you manage to completely remove Internet Explorer from Windows? There are millions and millions of IT professionals who would love to know what you can do that they haven't figured out.
I can see why you would want to uninstall games from Windows, if you're not really interested in gaming. But seriously, the only reason I run Windows is because I need that DirectX for all the sweet sweet games!
The QOS packet scheduler service, much like MSIE, can't be removed, but it can (and should) be disabled on any network connections you have. Realistically it won't make a noticeable difference unless you intend to run your local network connection at 100% 24/7/365. What it does is reserve up to 20% of bandwidth (in reality never this much) for network monitoring and quality (error) control, basically prioritising traffic between Windows hosts to ensure smooth network management no matter what the network conditions are like.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
It's true. You can use dd to image a disk from a RAID set to another disk that isn't identical, and the controller will still believe it's part of the array and work. I know cause I had to do it once to recover 150GB of data. =)
Tried ghost, forget about it.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!