Quote:
Originally Posted by jakob
Barry, I'm interested in your cleanup of the P4.
Do yo have a good tool for this that you could recommend?
Regards Jakob
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Format was not an option as I wanted to retain the Windows XP with service pack 2.
The main tool I used was patience! But some of the things I did were
Start Windows in safe mode and remove as many of the programs as possible. The first priority was Norton Anti Virus which caused most of the problems. Basically getting the computer to boot into a stable condition. Doing this was slow and tedious and required rebooting many times as I slowly got it out of the system. I also used a self booting CD I made that booted Dos 7.0 and had PCillan integrated into it. This did a virus check, there weren't any but it allowed me to erase lots of the garbage on the disk that was not integrated into the windows installation. This also was used to remove a large batch of temporary files from Windows including Windows internet tempory files and history. Some of these are difficult to remove completely using windows.
Next I ran a program called Registy Scrub that was a freeby from one of the computer magazines. This repaired hundreds of problems out of the registry.
After getting Norton out I was able to start the computer normally. I then continued to remove programs on the Windows list (add/remove programs). Most of these were programs to do with Ipod tunes, Internet games and other un-recognised software. I also got rid of all the cookies.
The 80 GB Hard disk started with about 60 GB of junk and I eventually got it down to about 3.5GB. With my basic suite of Nero, Office 2000, Photo Shop, The Gimp, Adobe Pro 6.0. partition magic, Drive image etc
I repeated the clean with Registry scrub and and Adware-se.
At this stage I had no virus program on it so I removed the hard disk and put it into my main computer that has PCillan on it and ran a full scan clean which removed a couple of trojans but found no other viruses.
The hard disk was then re-installed in its own computer. I partitioned it into two partitions C and D, I ran disk defragmentiser,then made an image of the clean operating system and stored it on Drive D. The computer now starts up very quickly and has no problems. It has no anti virus program at the moment but I only use it on the internet to collect source code for Stellarium which is connected via the router and it is only turned on when I need it.
Oh yes! I have now installed Tortoise SVN, Dev-Cpp, MinGW, Msys and a batch of dependancies for the compiler and regularly compile Stellarium on it. I also use it to cut data DVD's of Meccano manuals and magazines as it has a very good DVD burner.
Barry