The New Users Guide to Windows XP
So, you've decided to buy a new computer running XP or buy an expensive upgrade to it. Good move! You will now be able to unlock features that have been avaliable in other OS's for a while now. But don't let that get you down, because you will have them now too!
So, you're sitting in front of a fresh XP installation. Time to start using it? Nope! You need to upgrade to SP2 immediately. If you've been able to obtain a CD with SP2 on it, you're lucky. If not, you'd better have broadband, because it's a 80 MB download. After that, it'll probably take an hour or so to install.
So, now you've installed SP2 and did a reboot. Now, more updates! Go to Windows Update and get all avaliable updates. Chances are, you'll need to go there at least three different times and reboot after each one. This process will probably take at least an hour, depending on how many bugs MS has decided to fix.
Go grab a cup of coffee, the fun has just begun.
So, now you have a fully patched system. Time to use it? Not quite. Now, you have to go out to the store and purchase Norton AntiVirus, which is around $50. Once you've bought it, drive back home and install it. 10 minutes and a reboot later, it should be installed.
So, now you have a patched system with AntiVirus. Nope, still not done yet. MS decided not to include any sort of protection against spyware in the OS, so you'll have to do that yourself. Go out and download Spybot, Ad-Aware, and MS AntiSpyware. It's best to have all three, because there's always something one has that the other two don't. To be safe, install and configure all three of them. Make sure at least one is always running in the background.
Once that's all done, go to the security center and make sure that automatic updates are enabled and a firewall is installed. The default XP firewall is pretty crappy, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a real one. ZoneAlarm offers a free firewall that works ok, so you can go with that. Install it and reboot. Otherwise, read on.
Now, at least four hours into this fiasco, you are finally ready to start using your system. In XP, there is very little software avaliable at first, and the applications that are there are of poor quality. So, go ahead and spend the rest of the day installing the rest of the applications that you need.
You have now wasted a day of your life.
But, the war's not over. There are periodic tasks that you must preform
So, you're sitting in front of a fresh XP installation. Time to start using it? Nope! You need to upgrade to SP2 immediately. If you've been able to obtain a CD with SP2 on it, you're lucky. If not, you'd better have broadband, because it's a 80 MB download. After that, it'll probably take an hour or so to install.
So, now you've installed SP2 and did a reboot. Now, more updates! Go to Windows Update and get all avaliable updates. Chances are, you'll need to go there at least three different times and reboot after each one. This process will probably take at least an hour, depending on how many bugs MS has decided to fix.
Go grab a cup of coffee, the fun has just begun.
So, now you have a fully patched system. Time to use it? Not quite. Now, you have to go out to the store and purchase Norton AntiVirus, which is around $50. Once you've bought it, drive back home and install it. 10 minutes and a reboot later, it should be installed.
So, now you have a patched system with AntiVirus. Nope, still not done yet. MS decided not to include any sort of protection against spyware in the OS, so you'll have to do that yourself. Go out and download Spybot, Ad-Aware, and MS AntiSpyware. It's best to have all three, because there's always something one has that the other two don't. To be safe, install and configure all three of them. Make sure at least one is always running in the background.
Once that's all done, go to the security center and make sure that automatic updates are enabled and a firewall is installed. The default XP firewall is pretty crappy, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a real one. ZoneAlarm offers a free firewall that works ok, so you can go with that. Install it and reboot. Otherwise, read on.
Now, at least four hours into this fiasco, you are finally ready to start using your system. In XP, there is very little software avaliable at first, and the applications that are there are of poor quality. So, go ahead and spend the rest of the day installing the rest of the applications that you need.
You have now wasted a day of your life.
But, the war's not over. There are periodic tasks that you must preform
- You need to make sure your AntiVirus and AntiSpyware apps are always up to date
- Every week, you need to analyze the hard drive and defragment it if necessary
- Every month or so, you need to run an AntiVirus scan
- Every month or so, you need to run a spyware scan
- Every month or so, you need to go to Windows update and get all avaliable updates
- Every six months or so, your Windows install will likely get screwed up and you need to repeat all of this over again
Written by Justin @ 11/08/2005 02:41:00 PM | Permalink
5 Comments:
At 11/08/2005 09:37:00 PM,
Justin said…
Even if you get it preinstalled, most things (like AV) are trials. On my computer, I got an outdated version of Norton AV on a... 2 month trial. There wasn't any AntiSpyware app on there.
And, sometimes preinstalls can cause even more work. You may not need to install as many apps, but there's bound to be a ton of crap on there that you don't want (HP has so much crap that I took off). So much crap, and yet I still didn't have everything I needed.
Linux... (almost) everything I need and not any crap.
And my preinstall was wicked slow on first boot. Fresh retail XP installations are faster. I had to defragment right away.
Isn't it ironic... now that I'm primarily using Linux, I haven't reset Windows once :)
At 11/09/2005 08:07:00 PM,
Anonymous said…
Wow, that all seems like a lot of work, and the updating sure seems confusing. I think I'll switch to Linux because then I'll never need to perform an update since the software is perfect out of the box and I can just run around with my eyes closed by not having an anti-virus installed becuase that really is the best security policy
At 11/09/2005 08:11:00 PM,
Justin said…
And if you ever need to update your software, at least on debian systems, a simple "apt-get upgrade" updates all the software on the system - not just security problems: Firefox, KDE, whatever.
Good move :)
At 11/09/2005 09:36:00 PM,
Anonymous said…
To me this means: Get Linux!
At 11/20/2005 06:05:00 PM,
elf's DH said…
Just a few comments/corrections:
1 -- You're missing the all-important "Windows activation" step, where you let Microsoft know that you're using their software. If you don't do it, Windows will stop working after 30 days.
2 -- You only need to manually defragment often if you use VFAT filesystem. NTFS (most installations) should not have to be manually defragmented.
3 -- If you're willing to part with your money online, all the major antivirus vendors will sell you licenses and allow you to download their proprietary software online. It'll save the hypothetical Windows user a trip to a computer store.
4 -- Windows XP SP2 will download (and even install!) updates automatically. But, the scheduler is completely idiotic, and will only schedule on reboots, or at some specific time. It is nowhere near as advanced as cron/anacron. So, if you never reboot your computer or your computer is never on at the default 3am, you need to change that setting.
5 -- It's a bad idea to recommend not installing security updates for a GNU/Linux computer. All complex software has bugs, some of which are exploitable. Why advise people to get caught by something that was fixed already? The ease-of-use is distribution-dependent. It takes two commands on Debian (apt-get update/apt-get upgrade), or use of a GUI (kpackage, synaptic, kynaptic, etc.).
6 -- You neglected to mention all the system knowledge you need in order to properly use an outbound-protecting firewall. (How many Windows users know that pressing OK to everything is as insecure as having no outbound firewall at all?) Outbound protection on Windows is just as or more important than inbound protection, because it protects you from and helps you identify spyware.
But, even so, I'm always entertained by people who think Windows systems are easier to administer than GNU/Linux. Yes, occasionally (rarely!?), with GNU/Linux, you may have to edit a file in /etc. At least all /etc files are text files, and most have comments. But, with Windows, occasionally you have to edit the registry, where you get to change settings with easy to read names like HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{0AAF602E-72A1-45FE-BAB1-06971E07EAA2}
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