A few days ago, I’ve bought two DDR2@667Mhz 2GB memory modules from Kingston, that is 4GB. Note: I know that 32-bit systems cannot use 4GB of RAM, but we will speak about this later. Since I was about to do some hardware changes, I thought it also was a good time to get rid of Vista and install Windows XP. Both task are not related, but I am the kind of people who do those painful maintenance tasks in a row. And, for the record, I wanted to completely change my hard drive partition table (I am Kubuntu user at my free time).
Partitions
My primary reason to buy the laptop I am currently using was hard drive size. A 120GB SATA hard disk drive what was I needed to feel realized. However, I use a few operating systems and it takes some experience to decide how much amount of disk space are you giving to each one. I used to separate data from instructions too (<joke>like Pentium II L1 caches</joke>), therefore I do create an extra partition for each operating system. Then, this is what I finally did with my partition table:
- /dev/sda1 30GB, NTFS, Windows XP and software.
- /dev/sda2 10GB, NTFS, User data: documents and code.
- /dev/sda3 70GB, EXT3, Kubuntu 8.04 and software
- /dev/sda5 03GB, SWAP, Linux Swap*.
Although, I didn’t do this immediately. During Windows XP installation I defined the first partition, /dev/sda1 only. Why? Because sometimes something goes wrong and you get Windows installed in one partition and files necessary to boot in another. (this, at least, happened me when I installed Vista on my laptop).
Windows XP Professional SP3
Once I get Windows XP SP2 installed, I directly installed Windows XP SP3 from the SP3 CD I got. I did this without connecting to the Internet. As far as I know, there is not any risk involved in connecting your computer to the Internet after installing Windows XP SP2, but I supposed Windows would try to download a huge number of updates (this is the Windows default behavior).
Drivers
If I had to say something nice about Windows Vista, it would be I didn’t need to install any drivers because all my hardware was recognized and properly installed. It didn’t happen with Windows XP. So I had to download them and install everyone… real boring stuff.
More partitioning
As I pointed before, I just created a partition for Windows XP and software. To create a new partition in Windows XP, open Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management. There, you can create easily a new partition and map it as a new drive.
Disable Virtual Memory
Back in 1997, it was viable to enable Virtual Memory. SDRAM was very expensive. But now, I think it is almost a performance killer whether you have more than 1GB of RAM. I don’t believe in Virtual Memory, so I disabled it.
Temp Folder Location
Every time I want to check the contents of a zipped file or anything else that seems likely to be removed in a short period of time, I put it in the temp folder.
In unix-like system, this is /tmp, but in Microsoft Windows XP this is C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Temp. This is not acceptable by any means. So I created a folder called D:\Temp and changed some environment variables to point at it every time a process ask for Temp folder.
Folder Options
I have never used the Explorer Bar on the left side. It has shortcuts that might be useful, but it have been never to me. Aside from that, there are other Windows default configurations I don’t like and don’t consider them useful. I don’t like wasting window space with such things so I disable most of them.
In Folder Options > General tab, select Use Windows Classic Folders in Tasks. In View tab, I used to enable/disable thing things:
- Display file size information in folder tips: yes.
- Display simple folder view in Explorer’s Folder list: yes.
- Do not cache thumbnails: yes.
- Hidden files and folders: Show hidden files and folders.
- Hide extensions for known file types: no.
- Hide protected operating systems files: no.
- Remember each folder’s view settings: no.
- Show Control Panel in My Computer: yes.
- Use simple file sharing: no.
About those settings I didn’t write here, I’m using its default values.
Disable AutoPlay
Most of the time, I am connecting my external hard disk drive as well as pen drives or SD cards. Provided that the removable storage drives are being attach to other computers, I could get infected through one of those USB Bombs. Sometimes, Windows behaves unresponsive too when I attach the 250 GB drive.
To solve this issue, disabling AutoPlay is the best option. How can you do this? Well, there a few methods. If you want to completely disable AutoPlay like me, open Group Policy (Start > Run > GPEDIT.MSC) and enable Turn off Autoplay policy.
Administrator User
By default, the first time you run Microsoft Windows, it prompts you to specify a user name and it creates an Administrator account for you. That’s WRONG! This thing is what made Windows Vista sucks with UAC. Users shouldn’t work with admin account for daily use.
Since Windows create an Administrator user by default, I think it should be great to use it for administrative purposes. But by default too, this account is not shown in welcome screen. You have two choices:
- Logout from every account and press twice CTRL + ALT + SUPR. You will be prompt to write your username and your password.
- Enable Administrator account at welcome screen.
To enable Administrator account, I found this trick at IntelliAdmin:
The welcome screen displays all of the local users on the system, except the built-in administrator account that was created during setup. If we want to hide a specific user from the list, we need to create a special value under this registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList
Under this key you simply create a new DWORD value – the name matches the users name exactly, and the value is one of the following (Decimal format)
0 – Hides the user just from the welcome screen
1 – The user is shown
Administrator Theme
Well, you might be tempted to use administrator account for your daily work. That’s crazy! But it might happen… (you forgot to logout and keep working…). To avoid using it, I use some visual code I learnt from Mandrake: root account must be red.
I’ve changed Windows Classic Style scheme and replace every blue color with its red equivalent.
Your administrator account’s desktop should looks like this.
If you want to use the account picture and the desktop background pictures for your use, feel free to copy them:
Changing account type from administrator to limited
Finally, there is one more thing we should do: change the user we created in post-install account type to Limited, instead of Administrator.
Did you see that? Windows cannot let us change the user type… that’s weird, but I think this was done to prevent some people removing themselves their admin privileges… However, we had the Administrator account ready to rock and we don’t want our daily account to be admin… What can we do?
Well, you can run the old user accounts dialog with the following command:
control userpasswords2
And then changed the account to Restricted user.
