A few questions

I just don't understand XP. What's with the redundancy of linking folders? How many ways do I really need to get to My Documents? I'm only set for one user, why does it act as if there are more than one? In Defrag what's with the huge reserved system space? I had Win Me running Great, stable,fast, etc., and I knew what was going on. This Xp seems a bit ridiculous. I love the way it manages memory, but it seems to EAT Hard Drive space. Anyone out there willing to start a dialogue on this with me? Thanks, Neil Derisi

 

I can understand your bafflement about XP.
It's so completely different under the hood, that you're going to have to stop thinking like an ME user, and learn to be an XP user.
If you don't like something in ME, you live with it, or find a registry hack (same goes for Win9x).
If you dont' like something in XP, change it.
There's a properties screen, and an advanced button in most cases, that will allow you to tweak until you're old and grey, without once having to open regedit.
If you have specific tweaks you want done, post them.
If you have specific things you want to turn off, post them.
If you have specific things you want enabled, post them too.
Remember that all NT based stuff is security minded. 9x is wide open. Some stuff that you took for granted, will NOT work in XP, BUT it can be changed, turned off, or tweaked the way you want it. There's still the odd thing that I like to do in regedit, mostly because it's quicker than digging through the properties pages in gpedit, or sysedit.

To answer a bit:
XP always has at least 2 users. The Administrator, and a user. You can mess with anything you want, until your user account becomes useless, and still get into the Admin account. Remove the user, set up a new one, and start over again (to a point).
If you have XP Pro, it's designed for networking, where there is always more than one user. Try setting up two user accounts, one for gaming, tweaked to keep system resources available for the game, no internet access, no unneeded services, and another for internet. Just switch between the users, without having to reboot the computer.
The space you're seeing in defrag is the page file, in 9x/ME aka the swap file. It can be tweaked, without jumping through hoops.
Eating HD space. Probably System Restore. You had it on ME as well, you probably just didn't notice it, because it's hidden, in XP it's in front of you. If you dont' like it, turn it off, or change the settings.

 

You don't get MFT if you use fat32. I wondered the same thing when I had NTFS. Also you have a big chunk used if you have Hibernate turned on.

 

Thanks!

Thanks for all your thoughts. Yes I'm going to have to stop thinking as an Me user. I didn't know XP always had a 2 user setup, just something i'm going to have to live with and get used to. I must be a rare user that LIKED Me. I was able to get it exactly how I wanted, it ran fast and fairly stable. XP is different, I like the way it manages memory instead of just using it. I am NTFS so I guess it could be the MFT. In defrag it's the system reserved space, not the swap file I have that set, that is huge and appears to be growing. System Restore is off, it doesn't really work anyway, I learned that in Me, so why waste resources. Thanks again, and I appreciate any tips,tricks or tweaks you can recommend.


P.S. I built a nice PC for it

 

Actually the System restore in XP is far better than it was in ME, it actually works.
MFT is definitely the space you're seeing in defrag.

A few tips:

Faster. That's what everybody's system needs to be. I don't care what the benchmarks say: if it feels faster, then it must be faster. I don't need "useless" rogue background processes telling me that I only have 200, 80, or 50 megabytes free on my hard drive(s). So, I've turned off the Low Disk Space Notification in Windows XP. Navigate to HKCU \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer in your Registry. Add a new DWORD Value to the right-hand pane and label it "NoLowDiskSpaceChecks" (sans quotes). Set this entry to "1" (again, sans quotes). Now, let's say you're running either Windows XP or 2000. These OSes will track and attempt to automatically fix broken shortcut links. For most users, this feature is handy; for others, it's not. Stop the procedure by flailing to the aforementioned Registry location. This time, create a "NoResolveTrack" DWORD value and set it to "1" (sans quotes in each instance). To reverse either setting, change the "1" to a "0" - or delete the value(s) altogether.

Customizing IE, including the title bar and logo (Outlook too!):

First, go to Start > Run > and type in: gpedit.msc
Careful what you do in here, there are literally thousands of changes you can make, and some of them are totally undesireable, and could cause some serious crashes, among other things.

Navigate down to:
User config, windows settings, IE maintenance, browser user interface.
Right click on Browser Title, and select Properties.
You can now put a tick mark in the box: Customize title bars
Type anything you like in the title bar! Mine says: See Stuff on the 'Net
Click OK.
Next, right click on Custom Logo, select Properties.
Put a tick mark in the boxes: Customize the static logo bitmaps and the Customize animated logo bitmaps.
You can now choose any static or animated .gif (providing it's the right size) to display.
Click OK once you're done.
Next, right click on Browser toolbar customizations, select properties.
Click on the radio button: Customize background toolbar bitmap.
You can now select ANY .bmp file on your computer as the background to all the buttons and stuff in IE.
Carefull what you choose, as some dark .bmp's can cause the fonts to disappear.
Click OK.
Now open IE and enjoy your new eye candy!

Automatically defrag drives with a new context menu item!
Create a new Registry import file named context_defrag.inf in Notepad (be sure to save with it with the Save as type set to All Files and not Text Documents) and place the following text inside:

; context_defrag.INF

; Adds Defrag to the right click context menu in Windows XP

[version]
signature= "$CHICAGO$ "

[DefaultInstall]
AddReg=AddMe

[AddMe]

HKCR, "Drive\Shell\Defrag\command ",,, "DEFRAG.EXE %1 "

Then, right-click and choose Install. This will add a context menu to XP that allows you to automatically defrag drives, using the command line version of the built-in defragmentation utility. To use it, navigate to a drive in My Computer, right-click, and choose Defrag. A command line window will appear, and that drive will be defragged. When it's complete, the window just disappears.

Remove the Shared Documents folders from My Computer
One of the most annoying things about the new Windows XP user interface is that Microsoft saw fit to provide links to all of the Shared Documents folders on your system, right at the top of the My Computer window. I can't imagine why this would be the default, even in a shared PC environment at home, but what's even more annoying is that you cannot change this behavior through the shell: Those icons are stuck there and you have to live with it.

Until now, that is.

Simply fire up the Registry Editor and navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ My Computer \ NameSpace \ DelegateFolders

You'll see a sub-key named {59031a47-3f72-44a7-89c5-5595fe6b30ee}. If you delete this, all of the Shared Documents folders (which are normally under the group called "Other Files Stored on This Computer ") will be gone.

Ridding oneself of QOS
1.make sure your logged on as actually "Administrator ". do not log on with any account that just has administrator privileges.
to log in as an administrator:
click on start->logoff->logoff
in the logon screen hold Ctrl+Alt+Del.
in the user field type 'Administrator' <-case sensitive.
in the password field type the password for the administrator (if you dont have any leave blank. click ok.
2. start - run - type gpedit.msc
3. expand the "local computer policy" branch
4. expand the "administrative templates" branch
5. expand the "network branch"
6. Highlight the "QoS Packet Scheduler" in left window
7. in right window double click the "limit reservable bandwidth" setting
8. on setting tab check the "enabled" item
9. where it says "Bandwidth limit %" change it to read 0
10. go to your Network connections (start->connect to->show all connections). right click on your connection then under the General or the Networking tab (where it lists your protocols) make sure QoS packet scheduler is enabled.
11. reboot if you want to but not necessary on some systems your all done. Effect is immediate on some systems. some need re-boot.

You can disable XP's zip file support using regsvr32, a tool that allows you to register or un-register object linking and embedding (OLE) controls. Follow these steps to disable this feature:

Select Run from the Start Menu.
Type "regsvr32 /u %windir%\system32\zipfldr.dll" at the prompt.
Click OK.

The change will take effect immediately, but you may have to restart Windows for all traces of the built-in ZIP support to disappear. After restarting your system, your problem should be solved, but you may need to reassociate your unzipping program (WinZip, etc.) with the files before you can view and open them.

If you want to re-enable Windows XP's built-in ZIP support, just follow these steps:

Select Run from the Start Menu.
Type "regsvr32 %windir%\system32\zipfldr.dll" at the prompt.
Click OK.

Those should keep you busy for a couple of hours.

You do not need to reboot your system to see the change.

 

Thanks!

If you read my other post you'll see I've had problems, but I'm getting it. I found a site, you probably know about, www.winguides.com there is a section on windows registry that has some good tweaks. I guess I'm going to have to change my experience to "Beginner "! Thanks again, any other tips are GREATLY appreciated. Feel free to e-mail me with any suggestions. Neil

 

Nope, Neil D. I was and am a big fan of windows ME as well. (If I'm not mistaken, BillyBob's a HUGE fan as well. Sorry BB, couldn't resist. )

I took the leap on one of my machines and put XP pro on. (Fat 32) It's definately got a bit of a learning curve to it. Like you, I kept comparing it to Windows ME. Reboot gave you great advice:

It's exactly what I had to do. I find something new I like about it every day now.

But I STILL like Windows Me.

Daizy

 

I'm right there with you Daizy. Now that I've got my configuration sorted out, I'm coming around to XP. But I still like ME. I used to program in the mid '70s, (now I'm showing my age) and like to have the control that Me makes available. It's almost like XP assumes I don't know what I'm doing. I'm seeing that there is a tremendous amount of configurability in it, those options just have to be sought out. So once we get this os the way we like it, we'll have to learn a new one in 2 years!Oh well here's to a lifelong learning curve!

 

I guess that XP's forte is it's tweakability, or personalization ability, whatever you want to call it. It will run nice, right out of the box (for the n00b) or you can customize it to suit your learning curve. Like all MS OS's, it has it's good and bad sides, but overall, it's stability is far above anything so far (except maybe DOS)
As for learning a new OS in two years? Nope. The latest from Redmond (codename) Longhorn, is going to be a combination of XP Pro, XP Multimedia Edition, all based on the same kernel, but...and it's a BIG but...it's going to be a genuine 64 bit OS, for the home user. Intel and AMD have pretty much ended research on faster 32 bit processors, and are concentrating on 64 bit, perfecting the process, probably starting about .13 micron, possibly smaller! In effect, a 3ghz CPU at 64 bit, will be approximately 50% faster than a 3ghz 32 bit CPU. (It's not a linear process, just because it's double the width, it's not double the speed). What I'm getting at, is that Longhorn (or whatever it's going to be called) is XP, only with even more security, and more customizeability. (is that really a word?) The Alpha of Longhorn is as stable as XP Pro...not bad for an alpha release, not even into beta testing yet. Of course there are almost no hardware drivers, so one has to fudge the XP ones to work, but once finished, it's going to be a natural transition for most of us, already used to XP.

 

Reboot - certainly customizeability is a word.

And you can also speak of it's megacustomizableness.

 

Does anyone know how to turn off tool tips in XP?

 

This place.

 

Download Freeware called AntiSpy you dont need to install just run. Saves a lot of the registry hacks and gpedit stuff, you can remove annoying (to me anyway) MSN and you can remove other things like "Send Error Reports" it is really easy and has great features as well.