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I didnt know where to put this, but i know a lot of linux users keep xp for gaming and nothing else. that puts us at a distinct advantage cause we dont keen no GUI or fancy shmancy desktop icons. just barebones.
his is my miniguide for xp:
get rid of that pesky explorer. commandline all the way
stop using explorer ONLY AFTER DOING THE OTHER TWEAKS
once you do that, cmd.exe will be your new shell, not explorer. if you want to go back to explorer, jsut type in explorer.exe and voila, windows rears its ugly little head. getting rid of explorer is the single most important thing, and it saves TONS of memory and pf ussage.
Cut The Fat:
this one is kinda optional, but if you have "acces" to a program called xp-lite you can use it to remove unneeded components. you can pretty much remove everything listed if gaming is your only use for windows. this wont necessarily increase performance, but it will clean a bunch of useless crap from your xp install. then theres more space for linux
Stay Up To Date:
make sure you have the latest graphics card drivers from ati.com and nvidia.com and the latest version of directx. at this time, it is dx 9.0c. it is available at microsoft.com (yes, its spelled microsoft).
Get Rid of Useless Startup Items:
start - run - msconfig then go to startup and uncheck everything you odnt understand or need. this is where the cremedelacrap of all programs is, it eats up ram and slows down your bootup. if youre not sure about a startup item or two, feel free to post here and ill see what i can do. alternatively, download spybot search and destroy and in the tools section, there is a startup tab. this does the same thing htat msconfig does, except it gives you a summary of what its doing and whether you need it or not.
Get Rid of Useless Services:
a guy called dark viper wrote a bunch of registry entries to stop useless services from running in windows. id recommend you use the gamers ones, although you can try the others if need be.
here is a link to the downloads page, it explains exactly which services are turned off. BTW, to install a registry entry, just double click the icon
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm unfortunately this is down ATM. in my next post ill copy out the start and stop reg entries for windows xp home edition(and home edition only) for gaming tweakage. youll have to wait for the page to come bakc up again if you want to try other tweaks or have xp pro.
blackviper also has a supertweak guide for xp, however, most of these should be useless after performing the above tweaks. here is a link anyway
he dosent tell you how to get rid of explorer, or trim down the xp install. if you read it, you would have noticed that i even linked to his site for the services config, but thats as far as he goes.
Originally posted by nuka_t he dosent tell you how to get rid of explorer, or trim down the xp install. if you read it, you would have noticed that i even linked to his site for the services config, but thats as far as he goes.
Hmm, I'm afraid to try, but would it be possible to use firefox instead of explorer? It would definately be pretty cool! And do you know how to make it so MSN Messager doesn't keep on loading up? I try to close it, but it says it's being used by other programs, so the only way I can kill it is to do the 3-finger-salute and kill it through the program that pops up.
if you follow my guide, you will be using a commandline instead od explorer. the commands are the same as in linux for the most part.obviously, its nowhere near as advanced but all yo should be using it for is launching games from their directories.
yes, firefox can be used instead of explorer. its obviously not as fully featured, but you can navigate through folders and launch programs with it.just type in C:\ in the address bar and youre set.
Originally posted by nuka_t if you follow my guide, you will be using a commandline instead od explorer. the commands are the same as in linux for the most part.obviously, its nowhere near as advanced but all yo should be using it for is launching games from their directories.
yes, firefox can be used instead of explorer. its obviously not as fully featured, but you can navigate through folders and launch programs with it.just type in C:\ in the address bar and youre set.
Well, it's definately tempting.... Is the explorer replacement a system-wide change, or is it a user-based change, where if I change it for one account, the others won't be touched?
i dunno, but im pretty sure its system wide. just tell whoever else uses the computer thats its a security feature and that they have to type in explorer.exe to use the computer.
Well, I'm definately tempted to try the above, but it'll have to wait. The family flipped when I disabled the eyecandy services, so if I ended up replacing Explorer with Firefox or Mozilla, then I'd really be in for it.
they got mad at you for disabling luna? i would have given you a hug.
you can keep both firefox and explorer. just exit explorer from the task manager whenever you use hte computer, and keep a cmd.exe window open so that you can open explorer again when your done.
Originally posted by nuka_t they got mad at you for disabling luna? i would have given you a hug.
you can keep both firefox and explorer. just exit explorer from the task manager whenever you use hte computer, and keep a cmd.exe window open so that you can open explorer again when your done.
They got mad at me for disabling I believe it was utheme.dll or something like that. Oh well. What I was thinking for explorer was changing the interface from using explorer to using firefox, not from IE to Firefox, because that's already done
Do you think this would work on a second install of XP? I don't ant to frag my primary OS, so Could I dual boot XP (the answer to that is definately yes) So the wuestion is could I modify the second installation of XP.
Can't see why no, I will give this a try hen I get time, currently preparing to change jobs, still installing debian, am up to alpha labs stage 2 in Doom 3 and need to spend time with my wife,
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to a program called xp-lite you can use it to remove unneeded components. you can pretty much remove everything listed if gaming is your only use for windows. this wont necessarily increase performance, but it will clean a bunch of useless crap from your xp install. then theres more space for linux 
