Now that I was ready to re-image the hard drive, I had a decision to make. The portable came with a restore CD with the original copy of XP Pro with SP 2, plus all the accompanying dreg-ware. During the previous couple of years, I had encountered a few driver issues (primarily from the built-in media reader), and with the release of XP Pro SP 3, I decided to roll the dice. I decided to do a clean, format-the-drive install of XP Pro SP 3 and not use the OEM disk that came with the system. Over time, my system had become slower, as all Windows sytems do. I attribute some of the cause to slowness to dreg-ware. Dreg-ware is a term I use to describe undesired OEM software installed on a system without your consent (not to be confused with actual virus/malware). Vendors typically load up the Windows system tray with auto-loading apps, slowing down boot time. Combine that with all of the extraneous registry entries, plus hotfixes, etc, and my system was more turtle than hare. So a clean XP Sp3 install would be my plan, with the OEM XP disk kept close in case I needed drivers that Windows didn't provide.
Disks in hand, here's the sequence of events:
- Install XP Pro, with a reformatted NTFS Partition. (Note: the DV1000 has a separate partition to hold the QuickPlay partition for playing DVD's and music CD's. Since I've used used it for that in past, I decided to only delete/create/format the primary partition.)
- After the install was complete, I recall having to use the OEM driver disk to provide one driver that XP couldn't find. For the life of me, I can recall what the driver was for. But the key point is that I ONLY used the disk to provide the driver and did not allow it to auto-install everything.
With the core OS components installed, it's time to turn the computer into something useful. That means I'm going to need to download some tools from the Internet. Since I hadn't yet installed an anti-virus or firewall, the Internet is a very dangerous place for a newly installed XP OS to be. XP comes with IE 6, which is known to be a highly targeted platform for viruses and malware. I greatly prefer Firefox over IE as a browser, I needed to get FF on my system as quickly as possible and not use IE if at all possible. So I pull a little trick out of my bag - I have a USB drive with a version of Firefox that runs without the need for a local install. By using this drive to immediately go to Firefox.com to download the full FF browser, I can get web access without ever having to expose IE 6 to the Internet.
- Use Firefox portable on a USB drive to navigate to www.firefox.com
- Download and install Firefox (latest version)
- Launch Firefox and select the option to make it the default browser and to check that status each time.
With a functioning non-IE browser now installed, it's time to get the mandatory system security components installed. My favorite source of information about tools and best practices for dealing with digital vermin is
GeeksToGo.com. The section addressing malware is located
here. I've tried lots of combinations of the listed tools, some of which have rendered my systems usable. The problem seems to be that since you're only supposed to run one product of each type, compatibilities can be a problem since many of the applications include "features" than can step on the other product types. For example, some of the anti-virus products offer the ability to enable "spyware" type malware. But how does one know if enabling the feature on the firewall product means you no longer need the anti-spyware suite? It's an very inexact science since the products evolve over time. But in my personal testing, I've struggled with combinations that include both AVG Anti-virus and Comodo Firewall, which seems to cause my systems problems . Since what works on any particular system is so highly dependent upon a myriad of factors, I won't even pretend to give an "authoritative" list of tools to use, but here's what works for me (all of which are free for personal use):
One thing to note is that both ThreatFire and Avast are self-described Anti-Virus tools, but they work very differently. Avast is uses pattern-file-based detection, whereas ThreatFire detects malware based upon identification of suspicious activities performed by processes running on the system. So while having both these tools running violates the "run only one Anti-virus" rule, the different approaches they take provides an additional layer of defense, so I choose to run them both.
With the above tools installed, there's one more component I install prior to doing general application installs:
WinPatrol.
WinPatrol is a free utility that provides a number of very useful capabilities. Most useful to me is the ability to completely control what startup applications are loaded for both system startup and browser startup. Keeping in line with my previously stated goal of keeping my reinstall running lean and mean, the use of
WinPatrol allows me to prevent system slowdown due to excessive loading of system tray apps and browser add-ins. With the installation of WinPatrol, I can now control the startup options for the applications I'll install, so it's time to move forward.......
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