Alex Nichol said:
In those recommendations, you should note that XP Antispy disables some
dlls needed in the course of license checking and activation, and may
prevent installation of a Service Pack.
I've ran XP AntiSpy on hundreds of PCs with no effect regarding
activation or installation of any Service Packs. The dlls it does
disable have no effect on activation. I'm sure most people concerned
with their privacy would agree that they want to send as little
information to Microsoft or anyone else for that matter as is
necessary. All settings are reversible.
Cacheman and its fellows are not good for the virtual memory handling of
XP, and are liable to achieve a purely cosmetic effect that may
marginally reduce performance, and also lead to a running away of the
page file. And the recommendation on Static page file size is
simplistic and wasteful. If the initial size of page file is correctly
set it will not need defragging, but the Max size needs to be a lot
larger. See my page on VM in XP at
www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm
Cacheman is not listed here to handle virtual memory. I explicitly
said to disable it from loading at startup. uncheck "Load Cacheman on
Windows Startup" Instead it offers numerous adjustments to various
Windows cache settings and tweaks that improve overall system
performance.
Running Page Defrag on most systems that have never been optimized
will show a fragmented page file. Leaving the page file in a dynamic
state allows for future fragmentation. By setting it first to a static
size and then defragmenting it, it will not be able to become
fragmented in the future which will overall improve performance. The
bottom line is most systems can benefit from adding more RAM then
anything else. Simplistic or not it works.
Killing the messenger service (while it is not a bad thing to do)
removes a warning that you have a gaping hole through which those
messages come. And that hole was also used by Blast and Sasser. Make
sure the firewall is in place and properly configured to block the
NETBIOS ports
Unless you are in a business environment that requires network
administration messages, this service is useless and only causes spam.
The guide starts off with running a virus scan followed by confirming
an antivirus program is installed. Then it directs you to install the
latest Microsoft Updates all of which will prevent Blast or Sassar
from infecting you in the first place. Every MSBlast and Sassar
infection I've cleaned were on systems without an updated AV program
and/or the latest security patches installed. The only true protection
from Virus infection is an updated AV program and it has nothing to do
with the messenger service running.
BootVis is only worth doing to get a rough start optimisation: This
will later be adjusted - and set up anyway - by the regular Prefetch
optimiser, which aims at a balance for loading regularly used
applications; probably more important because far more frequent than
boot is
BootVis forces the optimization process to happen whenever you want to
improve bootup time. Bootvis does reduce the time a PC turns on and
then is ready to use. People can use it for themselves and time their
PC on startup before and after optimizing to see for themselves.
