Some where arround 2 hours it finally moved to 3 of 3. Which installed normally. The computer seems to work fine, but I don't know what it installed that took so long.

Welcome to operating systems from Microsoft: the people who brought the three keystroke solution to any software problem (Ctrl-Alt-Del); the people who brought you full backward compatibility for your new computer ("Yes, with the latest version of our new operating system, your brand new computer will run just as fast as your old one"); the people who brought you features you didn't even know you wanted (and probably still don't).

Personally, I don't run Internet Explorer and I don't download MS patches until they've been around for a few weeks. (I don't tend to need the emergency security patches anyway, because I don't use IE, but do use up-to-date non-Microsoft firewall and antivirus software.) Which reminds me, must be about time to check for updates again - Damn, now where did I put IE!

Not wanting detail - can IE be uninstalled?


Lord Abaddon of Wormwood

In a word...no.

In a word...bugger.



Lord Abaddon of Wormwood

I've never considered microsoft products to be the best on the market. However, I have limited computer knowledge and even less money to spend on computer stuff. So prebuilt pcs with windows are what I use.

I really didn't worry about updating stuff until I got a pc with xp. It caught some virus after like 2 weeks and as part of the stuff I did to fix it, its set to automatically get the critical updates.

Since I got my laptop I haven't used the pc in question. So I'm not personally concerned with what happens to it. But several of my family members use it and have games and stuff on it. And although I'm not using it I'm still the one expected to fix whatever goes wrong with it, usually some thing they've done to it. So I was kind of concerned that this might have been a serious enough error that I wouldn't be able to recover any files. Which some how would be my fault of course.

Although considering the amount of crap they've got on it, and some other problems it already has, it might have been better if I had had to reformate the whole thing.

If you need more space, I'd start with deleting/backing-up any videos, games or music you don't use anymore. Videos and games in particular can be real space hogs.

There's also cleaning up temporary files (follow <Disk Cleanup> under 'Properties' for the drive: in question) and clearing your browser cache (under Tools/Options/Privacy [Private Data] in Firefox).

And if you;re doing that, then a defrag on each disk is a good idea (it is anyway, but after a clear out is a great time).

Oh its not really about space (I'm runing with two three quarter full 300gb Hard Drives + a 80Gb external pocket drive). It the fact that the crap is there, sitting and eating my food, using my power.... you get the point.


Lord Abaddon of Wormwood

I know that one - chewing up my CPU cycles, hogging my bandwidth, etc.

A few years ago I went through XP and stripped out a whole lot of under the covers crap, my system has run pretty well ever since. The tweaking guide I used is out of date now, but a Google for "XP tweaking guide" turns up a couple that look like they're worth following; and there are even some out for Vista already. A bit out caution is obviously advised - but Windows has so much bloat that it is easy to strip things back a bit.

As for the state of your drives under windows (NB: the following assumes WinXP, I don't know squat about Vista)
1. Use your C: drive for the operating system and core apps only.
2. Keep everything else on other drives; even if they are only separate partitions on the same physical drive, it is still better than cluttering up the C: partition.
3. If you can, every couple of years reformat the C: drive and and reinstall the operating system and apps (I haven't done this, but I've kept my C: drive very clean over the years, so it's still performing OK)
4. Disable the index service (for fast indexing) on each drive - in most cases it slows things down rather than speeds them up
5. If you have multiple physical drives, try moving virtual memory to a different device to the C: drive - this can give a big improvement in overall performance.

As for clearing out the physical crap WinXP accumulates, I don't know where to go for that - but if you keep your C: drive clean this shoudln't be such an issue.