Well I've finally got my new computer almost in the state I like it. It's one of those jobs I do about once every 4 or 5 years from scratch. The reason I upgraded this time was that my old machine was simply running out of space and memory. Too many photos and video clips for the old thing. When I bought that machine 5 years ago I thought 286MB RAM was ample and that a 20 gig hard drive would last a lifetime. Not so. It rapidly became inadequate for games (not that I play any), and in comparison to other machines it felt slow. Plus I had no space left to speak of.
Over the years the it was heavily customized, partly for practical reasons (speed it up). Various unnecessary Windows services were disabled and the majority of start-up applications were switched off (that cut the boot time in half). It was also nicely customized in a variant of the 'classic' windows look. I've always hated the XP visuals, but more on that later. And of course, there were oodles of software that had been through similar set-up processes to work the way I want them to. So upgrading is a major chore.
The new machine arrived a week ago. It's a Dell 9150 with 2048MB RAM and around 500 gig of hard drive. And it was Dell-ified to the max. Urgghhh. Putting it together was easy and it booted fine. First steps were to delete most of the rubbish they insist I want. That's what I really hate about new machines. I like Dells but they are packed with loads of software I'll never use, and everything defaults to these 'trial versions'. So it becomes a process of re-building. For once I was prepared and had a large amount of my preferred software on CD, and numerous settings files at the ready to speed things along. Preparation is everything.
The MacAfee security suite went first. Then I disabled the XP Firewall. Those steps allowed me to install the F-Secure internet suite which is my preferred firewall/anti-virus solution.
With that done, I could go on line. Downloaded the latest virus definitions as step 1. Ran Windows Update as step 2. Downloaded Opera as step 3 and copied all my settings over from the CD of software/settings I'd prepared earlier. Installed Notepad++ and changed the defaults in Windows so that text files open in it. Installed Mulberry (mail package), installed Agent (newsreader, but I stayed with the previous version), installed Pegasus (mail package, latest version), installed MailWasher (spam filter, and an ancient version which still works fine). Installed Microsoft Office (why do mid to upper end PCs come with "Works"?). Installed Filezilla. Installed Palm Desktop. Installed Meetingmaker. Synchronized my Palm pda. Yes! Everything working.
Next steps were to reset the Windows file associations so that clicking an image opens in in the Windows Picture Viewer (and not the trial version of Paint Shop Pro (to look at a picture?). Delete the Dell-ified album viewer. Switch off the sample version of Ghost (which is probably great but I'm certain I won't use). Install PhotoImpact (which I use all the time). Switch off most of the 'automatic' alerts and software update systems (except Windows Automatic Update… I leave that on but get it to tell me what it's doing before it does it).
Then it was simply a matter of getting the desktop right. I have an absolute hatred of the default XP theme (indeed the XP theme in most of its many guises). I downloaded my current wallpaper from this site. I removed unwanted 'Desktop' icons (IE, My Network). Put sensible icons on the 'My Computer' and 'My Documents' folders. Dragged most of my shortcuts to the quickstart toolbar. Re-created my screensaver. Switched from Windows XP style to 'classic', and created my preferred colour scheme (very simple and non-intrusive). I then saved all this as a new theme.
Except it didn't save it. Well it did save it, but every time I rebooted the damned Windows XP 'blue' hell theme appeared. I can sort of live with the toolbars, but I hate the giant red "x" at the top of each window, and the green Start button has to be the most over-sized and garish icon ever invented. You use it every day. It really doesn't need to stand out like a beacon. Anyway, I reset my style, and all looks fine again. Next steps are removing start-up items and services that I don't want. Reboot… and that damned Start button is back. And so it went for about 5 days. Every time I reset my classic theme, the XP default would re-emerge on boot. I did a registry clean-up, saved and re-saved the theme, but the result was always the same. This was getting frustrating. The PC is great. Nice and quick and able to handle large video files without a hitch. But the theme thing was beginning to drive me mad.
Until today. I finally resolved the problem this morning. It took a manual tweak to a registry key to do it. For some reason the registry wasn't holding the settings. Now this could be because of the bootup routine. I've no idea really though. But what it took was to change the setting in the Theme Manager registry key from 1 to 0.
HKEY_USERS.DEFAULTSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionThemeManager
And finally, after six days of frustration, my PC is more or less back to how I want it. I'm still running into forgotten bits of software that I need to transfer (and on the odd occasion may need to buy as I've no longer got the passwords), but basically it's back to normal with more speed and more space.
Sorted.
And as a treat here's a seven minute video that I put together on the new machine (it would have killed the old one, for sure).
Ramunas
21 Aug 2006Congrats, that's not a machine, that's a beast. 2 gigs of RAM, 500gigs of disk space, that's reall mad.
I'm still stuck with this 700mHz box, so photo editing really melts my CPU. I hope I'll somehow manage to buy a new one soon.
Words
22 Aug 2006Thanks! I kind of go for 'big leaps'. My first machine had 640kb RAM and a whacking 40MB hard drive (that's right, 40 "Mega"bytes) and that's still the most expensive machine I've ever bought. I published books on it and it could take an hour to print one page with graphics and that was with a special font cartridge plugged in to the printer to save time.
Ramunas
22 Aug 2006I still have and use an old printer that uses font and number cartridges to save time 😉
anonymous
22 Aug 2006SittingFox writes:
Congrats. I have a Dell with similar specs (but also duel Nvidia 6800 graphics cards and a Pentium 4 processor – 3.2ghz – which is just about sufficent to get Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 to behave itself 😉 ) and will confess that fears about fox photos clogging my disk space were a factor in my decision to upgrade. Little do they know how much they control human lives, eh 😉
anonymous
1 Oct 2006Anonymous writes:
Hi
your article is a treat, because I share the hate of Windows startup screens.
I have a thought for your video thou. Try to stay away from zoom ins/outs and instead of fades use seamless cuts – where one plane changes to another without an effect. Leave out ALL unnecessary parts (like where you seach the object with the camara and so on). And a good tip for me has always been to keep a clip/movie of one subject under 3 min. That is about the time a person can keep attention on subject.
Thanks!
anonymous
2 Oct 2006Anonymous writes:
You probably mean ThemeActive under that key.
anonymous
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anonymous
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