On 27 Jan 2008 at 16:54, Darcy James Argue wrote: > Hey all, > > I finally obtained a copy of WinXP Pro and installed Boot Camp on my > MacBook Pro, so I could have a dual-boot machine for those rare > occasions when I need Windows. I had to defrag my main HD before > installing, but other than that everything went fine -- except that I > initially created a Windows partition that was *far* too small (the > minimum is 5 GB, and that's what I went with, but once you start > installing all the updates, Firefox, QuickTime, etc, you run out of > room almost instantly. So I had to start over. > > I went back and reapportioned my HD, this time giving the Windows > partition 20 GB. That gives me a little more breathing space, but all > the same, I am wondering: > > 1) What Windows components are safe to uninstall? For instance, I will > never need MSN, Outlook Express, Microsoft Messenger, etc. Anything > else I can safely ditch? I'd love to get rid of Internet Explorer, but > I think I need to keep that around for Windows Update, no?
While there's an uninstall option for Outlook Express and IE, it doesn't actually uninstall them. I've manually uninstalled OE on my desktop, and Outlook 2000 complains that OE is not installed (but it works just fine). IE is used by too many pieces of software and too many parts of the OS to be uninstallable. In terms of Windows components that you should be able to uninstall everything that you're allowed to uninstall in the Add/Remove Windows Components tool. Be warned, however, that this won't recover much space at all, because many of the uninstallers (IE and OE) simply remove the shortcuts and UI, but leave all the underlying files there. In short, you're not going to get more than a handful of MBs from this. > 2) Are there any issues with installing Windows programs on an > external FirewWire HD instead of the internal HD partition? I have a > FireWire drive which I've reformatted for FAT32, so that I can see it > when I'm booted into XP. So far so good. My thought was to install all > non-OS programs to the FireWire drive to conserve space on my internal > HD. But are there any issues with doing that that I should know about? > Do some Windows programs, components, etc. want/need to be on your > internal HD? I never install my programs on my C: partition. My desktop has a C: partition with the OS and nothing else, and a D: partition that has all the application files. The E: partition is my data drive and has the user profiles (what would normally be in C:\Documents and Settings), and my F: drive is my media drive (audio files, etc.). To make your D: drive (or any drive letter) your default location for installing applications, you want to look for C:\Program Files in the registry and replace it with the path where you want to install all your apps. Then you need to reinstall everything in the new location. A few applications still insist on putting things on the C: drive, but that's because they are really badly written -- they are supposed to get the installation location from the registry keys that define it. Moving C:\Documents and Settings is harder, but I did it successfully on one machine (the one I described above). The setup there works very well for backup because only the E: drive has data that needs to be backed up daily. > (I was disappointed to learn that Boot Camp requires you to dedicate > space on your internal HD -- I had originally intended to install > everything Windows-related on the FireWire HD alone, but that's > apparently not possible.) > > I still haven't installed Finale for Windows yet -- wondering if it > would be okay to put in on the FireWire drive? I don't see any reason why not. > 3) I installed the 90-day McAffee antivirus trial. Not sure if I > ultimately really need antivirus/anti-malware software. I believe > David Fenton gets by without? Any tips on how best to protect my XP > installation from all that crap out there? Make sure that if you work connected to the Internet while using Windows that you have a good software firewall. I wouldn't recommend relying entirely on the Windows Firewall *unless* you are behind a router that gives your Windows machine an unroutable IP address (i.e., a NAT router, with an IP address like 192.168.*.* or 10.0.*.*, for instance). The problem with the Windows firewall is that it only protects you from incoming connections, and doesn't monitor outgoing connections, which is one of the things you want to protect against if you have no AV software installed. On the other hand, if you're not reading email under Windows, you're not in much danger of infecting yourself with anything. If you don't use IE, either, then those two things will shield you from 99% of the vectors for nasties to get into a Windows installation. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
