Sarasota PC Monitor
Practicing the Black Art (01/02)
XP Defaults
by Vinny La Bash, vlabash@home.com
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.Maybe you've been around computers long enough to remember when some version of DOS was the primary operating system for PCs. If so, you know what "default" settings mean. Those of you who came on the scene more recently may have no idea what I mean. Your system defaults are what you get when your system arrives fresh from the manufacturer and you turn it on for the very first time. Defaults determine such things as your screen resolution, the size of your icons on the desktop, the color scheme used, the sounds you hear, and the size and shape of the mouse pointer providing the general overall impression which forms your computing experience.
You can think of default settings as starting points to get you going. Defaults are a good thing because you can start using your system immediately, something like getting in your brand new car and simply driving away. Unfortunately, most manufacturers design their systems to work, but are not concerned with efficiency or performance. The good news is that you can do something about it.
Like previous versions of Windows, XP has a Resource Kit associated with it. This document describes many things you can do with XP to change the way it operates. The bad news is that this document is almost 1,700 pages long and most people are not going to wade through it. You will find thousands of ways to adjust your system's settings to enhance your productivity, but are you willing to tackle such a document to find the four or five settings that you need instead of what Microsoft thinks is best for you? Probably not.
This month we will examine a few of the many things that you can do to personalize your system. But first, if you like your XP system as it's currently working, you may want to leave things just as they are. The old rule "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," can make a lot of sense as some changes to your system could be difficult to reverse. Weigh the benefits of any changes you might make and don't change more than two things at a time. If things get messed up and you've made a bunch of changes without considering the consequences, you won't know what option, or combination of option changes, is giving you the headache. One way to avoid this is to do a backup of your system before doing anything. Perhaps even better is to use the XP Restore Point feature, which can roll back system changes without the necessity of restoring a backup. To engage this feature:
Click Control Panel/Performance and Maintenance/System Restore. Then select Create a restore point.
Do this immediately before you make any system changes, and you can use the System Restore feature to bring your machine back to its original condition if the changes you make give you unexpected problems, or if you have difficulty undoing them.
One of the things you can do, but probably shouldn't, is to activate XP's built-in desktop firewall. Fortunately, it's turned off by default. If you feel an overwhelming urge to turn it on, right click the My Network Places, and then left click on Properties. Follow the prompts. You should know that the built-in firewall is not very sophisticated and you'll be a lot better off installing Zone Alarm.
The Windows swap file has always been the one true Black Hole of the Black Art of computing. You still can't do anything with it except to relocate it to another drive, or partition, and set it for a fixed size, but you can find out what's in it. Select Help And Support from the Start menu, and do a search for "virtual memory." Don't overlook the "related topics" you get after the search. It has some surprising information.
If you right-click on Recycle Bin and then select Properties from the popup menu, you will discover that your garbage can thinks it can appropriate 10% of your hard drive without asking permission. Move the slider to an amount you're willing to set aside for trash collection.
Another item that thinks it can confiscate laughable amounts of disk space for its own amusement is Internet Explorer. From Explorer's Tool menu, select Internet Options. Look around until you find temporary Internet Files. Click the Settings button and make a selection. If you're on a broadband connection like DSL or cable, you won't need more than 10 megabytes. For those who have a dial-up connection, go for 25 to 30 megabytes.
In a misguided attempt to help the clueless, Microsoft has directed XP to automatically contact its servers and search for patches, downloads, and updates. It also wants to send Microsoft information about any application or system crashes. This can be a real pain if it interrupts you during a video session with your paramour. It's also a potential security issue because it can expose the contents of your memory to anyone who happens to be snooping around your area of the Internet at the time.
You can turn off both of these obnoxious behaviors by right clicking on My Computer, selecting Properties, and first choosing the Automatic Updates tab. Select either Turn Off or Notify me.
Now select the Advanced tab and click on Error Reporting. Check "Disable error reporting," but leave "notify me when critical errors occur" checked. That's the way things should be.
3D shadows, animated icons and dancing cursors can look great and be very entertaining. They can also be an enormous drain on your CPU resources. If your screen seems to refresh slowly, your color depth is probably set in excess of what you need. Get yourself to a good starting point by right clicking on a clean area of your desktop. Choose Properties/Settings from the popup menu and then set your Color Quality to Medium, which is 16-bit. If you don't use graphics intensive applications, higher settings will do nothing except slow down your system.
Let's finish by optimizing your desktop. Right click on My Computer and choose Properties/Advanced/Performance Settings. This brings up a list where you can choose to keep active or quiet down individual items. Experiment to find the combination most suitable for your needs and personal tastes.
Microsoft gives us all a starting reference point with its system defaults. Once you get going, why settle for Microsoft's idea of what is suitable for the "average user", someone who doesn't exist, never did, and never will. :
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Copyright 2002. This article is from the January 2002 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
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