Good XP Hardening Guide

I'm looking to squeeze out some extra performance, and possibly close some ports. Could any point me to a good XP service/hardening guide?

 

Possibily this tool here, hover your mouse over the settings tells you what it does/don't.
The tool does not require installation.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=93893

 

Also see:

http://www.dyingsun.net/hardening.htm

I use Harden-it and Windows Worms Doors Cleaner (WWDC).

 

Hi,

I use Advanced SystemCare 3 RC2, and Seconfig XP.

 

I use WWDC, SpywareBlaster, and MVPS custom HOSTS file

 

Black Viper's Windows Services configurations (under: Popular Content) is a must see if you are really serious about hardening this area of your O/S. It is the definitive Windows Services guide.

 

Go with the definitive bestest...

Bold_Fortune's Complete Guide To Slimming Down Windows XP

 

Rather than go down that road, which I believe will not yield much, you'd be better off just choosing your apps well, ones that are light and yet do the job well. If you pick the right ones, you will have optimal performance.

 

http://www.firewallleaktester.com/wwdc.htm
http://www.theeldergeek.com
http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/WindowsXP.htm
http://www.blackviper.com/
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/OptimizeXP.html

Please, before you do anything make an image of your system. It's also a very good idea to write everything down and only make one change at a time. Take your time with the changes and good luck.

 

I tweaked my services according to tweakhound's guide in march ths year. No problems yet. But, I must say, I doubt the performance increase is very noticeable. You'll be better of defraging, keeping you HDD from reaching the max capacity and buying more RAM.

 

Exactly.... I have "been there, done that" before and the end result is you gain a bit of ram if you're tight and in need, but virtually no visible performance gain.

But it IS fun messing with it all...

 

...and those messing guides are very instructive of all the OS' ins & outs.

 

Yep, it's a good educational experience.....

 

I neuter services more to just either stop actions that are really not needed or when xp first came out, posed a threat. The only performance increase I have ever noticed though is boot time. Less services generally equates to slightly faster boot times by a few seconds.

Sul.

 

Boot your computer, then run cmd prompt. Type in netstat -ano and see what is open. on a fresh boot, you should only see ports 137-139 open in you are using NetBIOS. All other ports should be closed. WWDC will close them for you generally. No performance increase here, but it does tell you what ports are open. If you see one, notice the PID. Then type in tasklist to see what owns them. Or you can also type in tasklist /svc to see what is being used by services. As an example using tasklist /svc shows PID 752 to belong to one instance of svchost.exe, which this then shows you that thread is responsible for audio,seclogin,themes, etc. There are nice front-ends that do the same thing, but it is alway nice to know how the old'fashioned way.

Sul.