Blazes review of xp blah

will whats the reson for this littile review?

well if any of you know me im a die hard sob algaints windows xp

mainly cause i knew the program way befor it was called xp and at the time the security holes in it made spaghitie strainer look more secure to hold watter lol.

will i decided to give xp another shot mainly (AKA after microsoft check cleared lol kiding )

well xp is eye candy but is it better?

will after 2 days of seriouse abuse and if you know me i can really abuse a pc lol my help me pleas some 1000 or more posts should give you a perty good ideal lol.

turns out xp can actually be beter but theres a big catch

if your on dial up its not worth upgradeing to xp lol

heres why
over like 70 critical updates
will it turns out to be that way after you get service pack 1 then you look at it and thers 4 more critical updates to dowenload

dowenoading so many critical updates is over kill

then you have the 18 or so recomended updates which actualy you should get just because software incompadiablity issues

think it ends there lol nope now you need driver updates lol

you have any old hardware you better go to themain company usealy the logo on the hardware like printers monitor and hard drive are the most common as well as parelal ports and look for xp drivers for your old hardware lol

now you would think the nightmare would end there

nope

if your a security buff or just a newbie who wants a secure xp

well now you have to msconfig it
turn off the pigy hogeing resorce things if you install microsoft office

turn off fire wall xp comes with inless your useing aol

install a real firewall like zone alarm pro or another well knowen one

norton is a must

thats a typical set up

a security buff adds tds-worm guard -boclean a back up like goback and has to get xp updates or missing drivers or make sure the software is xp compadiable which it useally is

is it worth upgradeing to windows xp hmmmmmmm

on the plus side xp is a cleaner faster system and i can see the difrence with my ram

xp is not worth it inless you can do the following

your on cable or dsl

you know how to msconfig

your willing to spend 70 bucks or so to get 512 ram sd or like 200 for a stick of 512 ddr depending on what ram you use

and finaly know something about security like fire wall

otherwise stick with what you got

i did find i have less puter crashes with xp then windows me

and when i close something it really closes

xp is also faster after a msconfig thers only 4 things on my start up way cool

so get it or hate it up to you

 

Long ago, I gave up arguing with people about the pros and cons of XP as indeed it is a love or hate relationship thing.

When I bought my Dell last month, it came with a 2.2 GHZ P IV, XP Home and 256 MEGS ram. I noticed it seemed to perform slower than my last Dell which had a P III 733MHZ, with 128 MEGS ram, and Win2K SP4. Same hard drive on both machines. Same programs more or less.

Since it seemed so doggy, I purchased another 512MEGS ram, but noticed no speed increase. I spent three days trying to secure XP, disabling services, tweaking, uninstalling fluff, etc. After my best efforts at securing XP, I still had six ports in the listening status, and was sorely dissappointed with the lack of increase in computing performance.

Time for format C: /s . After formatting and installing Win2K SP4 and the rest of my programs, I now have a lean mean fighting machine. Huge increase in speed and only one service listening, but blocked by my firewall. See picture.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

 

I have all the M$ OS..2000 is my favorite work horse. I am posting in here Blaze for you to consider asking a few gurus how to save those update you had to install to date in a way you will not have to go back on line to get them if you do have a crash since you are still on dial up. It can be done

Also if you ever get dsl or cable..think about the fact that OUT OF the BOX WINXP usually has a clean bill of health for about 20 seconds after your put the pedal to the metal ;-)

after that..and unsecured it is pot luck.

Glad you moved up..hope all is well with you.

Regards,
John

 

One thing about M$ OSs is that everyone seems to have different experiences, fer sure.
Hey LWM, got any idea why port 1025 tcp is always listening? I blocked it once with Outpost and 1026 started listening, Blocked that and 1027 started listening.
I can't figure out which service is opening 1025. I use Black Vipers list to secure my services and still 1025 and 445 listen.

 

I am not a flag waving proponent of m$ but I have tried eleven different versions of linux and four different versions of windows. I don't think linux will ever replace windows simply because it is not user friendly and if they changed it to be easier for a windows converts to learn then it wouldnt be any more secure than windows. Of all the m$ versions that I have tried only Win 2000 and xp preferably xp pro are able to use most software out there with the least amount of trouble. I know 98se users will argue the point but the truth is 98 and 98se are just minumally supported and will be less able to use new versions of software as time go on. Like some of the previous post stated, not all xp users have the same experience with xp or any os. I guess I am one of the lucky ones in that my xp runs trouble free boots very fast and does about anything I ask of it. I guess that is about all I can ask of an os.

 

FYI...
- Give Steve Gibson's "Port Authority" a try - for Port 1025:
http://grc.com/port_1025.htm
- He doesn't have all the answers, but he says so, and that one of the things I like about Steve.

(Thank You, Mr. Gibson!)

 

Thanks for the replies to both of you. I will investigate and if you don't see me around for a couple of days is is because I should have zigged when I zagged.

 

lol will its strange most of you guys got double what i got lol i updated an old celeron gate way essintial 700c pc which is basicly bottom of the barrel crap

but after msconfig and the fact i got an 80 gig fast performance hard drive its not only stable but fast.

yeah i would like to know how to back up those updates on cd so i never have to reinstall from microsoft website that really sucked.

but you guys are right it is hard for newbie like myself to secure an xp

thanks god i been here long enough

and it can be done just really time consumeing

 

Port 445 is history.

Unfortunately Gibson sheds no light on disabling port 1025. I found a registry hack for disabling Task manager, which is supposed to be the culprit, and may be on XP, but has no effect on Win2K SP4.

I am now on a madmans quest to close forever the last remaining listening port (1025) on my machine. The righteous shall prevail over the evil M$ empire and the devil Gates shall be vanquished forever to the gates of obvlivion.

 

I like XP for all it's foibles
On PC2 I am now running the Windows Server 2003 (6 month evaluation), MS have closed everything down, by default you have to open everthing including widows update, browsing, even media player does not work without the Admin taking specific action, So it looks like MS is moving in the right direction security wise

 

wow paul thats one sweet website have you been to black vipers website to

 

This one is very useful too IMO: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks2.htm

It took me a bit to find my way around, but well worth having a look.

Pieter

 

Hi Paul,

Number 9: http://webgear.datacreek.net/system/xptweaks.html

Not many secret tweak resources left now for me.

Ah well. This one is nice to use together with blackviper's site: http://www.overclockersclub.com/guides/windowsxpservices.php

And there is: http://www.tweakxp.com/

Gave away all my treasures now.

Regards,

Pieter

 

......and don't forget The Elder Geeks site on XP .

Regards,
Jade.

 

wow look at all the cyber candy

i want to try pauls tweak for the boost would be cool as its already fast

but is there a newbie easy way to back up the registry also

reg edit not my strong suit is there pics on step by step how to do that tweak?

 

Hi Blazey,

Here you go. Save the part printed in bold as Blazingboost.reg, doubleclick it and confirm you want to add it to the regsitry.
Best make a manual System Restore point first, so you have a registry backup automatically.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]
"DisablePagingExecutive"=dword:00000001
"LargeSystemCache"=dword:00000001


Regards,

Pieter

 

whole way cool

hmmm but the sytem restore part i dont use i have goback so i think systemrestore diabled not sure

is there a way to export the back up registry so its one of those blue wyrd cube things that look like a wyrd rubix cube

so when you click on it lol it add it back to the registry

lots of hackers and pirayers use these wyrd blue things to add registry entrys for evillpurposes but couldnt it be done to back up a registry entry for its default setting

whats the default entry for the xp befor you tweak it?

can it be backed up other then system restore

 

by the way thank you guys

 

Hi Blaze,

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q322756

This part:

To make a complete backup of your registry select MyComputer as the location to export.

Regards,

Pieter