Hmm, well, since I've been _forced_ to use a Windows box for my job, I've decided to rediscover all the little tricks I used to know about getting Windows to do things the way I want.
Now, I'd like to share with you a few (and only a few!) of the "secrets" I know about...there's tons, but here's a few starters:
1. Have you ever noticed spurious network usage, or processor (and memory) usage? Solution:
- Go to administrative tools. Select "services"
- There are a TON of services that do NOT need to be running, but which Bill Gates thinks should be running. Two of them are MEGA resource hogs: the "indexing" service and the "system restore" service. The indexing service maintains hash tables of locations of files in your computer and it's not generally necessary. Disable the fucker. The "system restore" service is the one that lets you roll back your computer configuration to a previous state if you screwed things up. Generally, I don't find this useful. It would have been grrrreat in the win95 days, but now I tend to either do a fresh install, or "fix" the problem with a few simple driver updates.
- Some other services you can disable: "windows update", "messenger", "FTP Publishing", "remote assistance", "remote desktop sharing"...there's tons that I usually disable. This saves your resources from unnecessary Windoze abuse. You can find out more by searching the great google.
(One thing about services: this is the whole controversial "making applications an integrated service" feature that is pissing off so many other companies...Windows is trying to integrate their .NET technologies and other applications into the services that it provides with the operating system, thus intertwining it with other O/S features...it's a disgusting practice, IMO)
2. Bill Gates likes to hide things. One of the little "secrets" is located here: C:\windows\sysoc.inf
If you remove all the "hide" strings out of the file, you will now be able to uninstall things that you thought were permanent such as MSN messenger, explorer, etc. To be clear, here is an example of how to modify sysoc.inf:
The original line is:
NtComponents=ntoc.dll,NtOcSetupProc,hide,4
Should be changed to:
NtComponents=ntoc.dll,NtOcSetupProc,,4
If you're afraid to change the file, just make a backup copy. Once you've made the changes, you can now go to add/remove programs and remove some of those previously unremoveable programs.
3. Learn to use "msconfig". Especially the "startup" tab which will generally show you a lot of those sneaky little programs that try and start up when windows does. DO NOT modify the services through msconfig...use the services manager through the administrative tools that I talked about in point 1.
4. Create a static page file size, and then defrag your freakin hard drive, even if windows "thinks" you shouldn't. A dynamic page file is probably the primary source of fragmentation. Make it static, give it a reasonable size (say about twice the amount of RAM). You can do this through the control panel -> system -> advanced -> Performance settings -> advanced -> change.
That's all for now.
Now, I'd like to share with you a few (and only a few!) of the "secrets" I know about...there's tons, but here's a few starters:
1. Have you ever noticed spurious network usage, or processor (and memory) usage? Solution:
- Go to administrative tools. Select "services"
- There are a TON of services that do NOT need to be running, but which Bill Gates thinks should be running. Two of them are MEGA resource hogs: the "indexing" service and the "system restore" service. The indexing service maintains hash tables of locations of files in your computer and it's not generally necessary. Disable the fucker. The "system restore" service is the one that lets you roll back your computer configuration to a previous state if you screwed things up. Generally, I don't find this useful. It would have been grrrreat in the win95 days, but now I tend to either do a fresh install, or "fix" the problem with a few simple driver updates.
- Some other services you can disable: "windows update", "messenger", "FTP Publishing", "remote assistance", "remote desktop sharing"...there's tons that I usually disable. This saves your resources from unnecessary Windoze abuse. You can find out more by searching the great google.
(One thing about services: this is the whole controversial "making applications an integrated service" feature that is pissing off so many other companies...Windows is trying to integrate their .NET technologies and other applications into the services that it provides with the operating system, thus intertwining it with other O/S features...it's a disgusting practice, IMO)
2. Bill Gates likes to hide things. One of the little "secrets" is located here: C:\windows\sysoc.inf
If you remove all the "hide" strings out of the file, you will now be able to uninstall things that you thought were permanent such as MSN messenger, explorer, etc. To be clear, here is an example of how to modify sysoc.inf:
The original line is:
NtComponents=ntoc.dll,NtOcSetupProc,hide,4
Should be changed to:
NtComponents=ntoc.dll,NtOcSetupProc,,4
If you're afraid to change the file, just make a backup copy. Once you've made the changes, you can now go to add/remove programs and remove some of those previously unremoveable programs.
3. Learn to use "msconfig". Especially the "startup" tab which will generally show you a lot of those sneaky little programs that try and start up when windows does. DO NOT modify the services through msconfig...use the services manager through the administrative tools that I talked about in point 1.
4. Create a static page file size, and then defrag your freakin hard drive, even if windows "thinks" you shouldn't. A dynamic page file is probably the primary source of fragmentation. Make it static, give it a reasonable size (say about twice the amount of RAM). You can do this through the control panel -> system -> advanced -> Performance settings -> advanced -> change.
That's all for now.
