Installing A Windows Desktop

Pre-Setup

Please read Drive Partitioning first as it contains a lot of good information.

You can run the Window Vista and 7 installer from a USB flash drive rather than the retail DVD-ROM. This should provide faster and quieter operation. Microsoft provides a tool to do this that can be run under Windows XP, Vista, or 7. XP users must install Microsoft .NET Framework v2 and Microsoft Image Mastering API v2 before using the Windows 7 USB DVD Tool

It's recommended to download the latest Service Pack, Internet Explorer, Video Driver, and Antivirus before installing Windows. This way you won't have to have a vulnerable system attached to the internet.

During Setup

There really aren't a whole lot of options. There are only three things to keep in mind.

1. Windows has had support for setting the BIOS clock to UTC since NT 4.0. However, this support was undocumented and forgotten about until XP. Fuller support is available in Vista and 7, but there are still two bugs as noted below. However, the trade-off may be worth it to you. Every other OS expects the clock to be set to UTC, so if you dual-boot between Mac and Windows or Windows and Linux, you can make things easier on yourself.
   1. Windows will not sync to time servers if told that the BIOS clock is UTC.
   2. Windows may hang if running during the switch to and away from DST if told that the BIOS clock is UTC.
2. Decide how you want to handle having an Administrator account.
   1. The default in XP is that everyone becomes part of the Administrators group. NO!
   2. The default in Vista and 7 is that the first user created is part of the Administrators group and subsequent accounts are Standard Users. Better, but most people only create one account (for themselves) and use that. NO!
   3. This wiki recommends you choose one of the following
      1. Create one account not named Administrator that will be part of the Administrators group and use that for administrative duties while creating Standard User accounts for daily use. This allows you to have laxer password complexity on the account that acts as an Administrator.
      2. Create an account for yourself that you will later drop to Standard User after re-enabling the Administrator account using net user administrator /active:yes. This route requires that you know full-well that people will try to attack the Administrator account but you feel confident in your password complexity.
3. Use a short name rather than a full name when creating user accounts in Windows XP onward. For example: john instead of John Smith. Windows XP an later hide a bit of the complexity in creating user account by setting the name/directory and the full name to whatever you type in for name. This way you get short names for directories.
   1. In XP, you can use CONTROL USERPASSWORDS2 to change full details.
   2. In XP, Vista, and 7, changes to the name in User Accounts only affect the full name.

Post Setup

Common Configuration Options

DPI settings

• XP: Control Panel → Appearance and Themes → Display → Settings → Advanced → General
• 7: Control Panel → Appearance and Personalization → Display → Set Custom text size (DPI)

If changing the DPI, you'll note that the login screen is not affected.
Note here that the dword value is hexadecimal, not decimal.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop]
"LogPixels"=dword:00000090

Enable ClearType in XP

• Control Panel → Appearance and Themes → Display → Appearance → Effects.
• Select Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts check box
• Select ClearType from the list.

Additional XP Themes

• Royale Royale Nior Zune Embedded
• Royale Noir is incomplete and cannot co-exist with Royale

Set Windows to use RTC in UTC

Only do this if your BIOS clock is set to UTC instead of local time!

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation]
"RealTimeIsUniversal"=dword:00000001

Essentials

• Install the latest Service Pack
  • XP 32-bit: SP3 and Windows Update Agent 3.0
  • Vista: SP2 32-bit 64-bit
  • Windows 7: SP1 32-bit x86 64-bit x86 64-bit IA64
• Install Latest Internet Explorer
  • Windows XP Home/Pro 32-bit: IE8
  • Windows Vista: IE9 32-bit 64-bit
  • Windows 7: IE9 32-bit 64-bit
• Install Latest Windows Media Player
  • Windows XP: WMP11
• Install Video Card Drivers
  • ATI or NVIDIA
• Install Anti-Virus
  • Microsoft Secuirty Essentials 32-bit or 64-bit
  • Avira Free Edition
• Download Updates from Windows Update

Tweaks

• Remove Outlook Express in Windows 2000 and XP.

REGEDIT4
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WAB]
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities]
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express]
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\WAB]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \Software\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\{44BBA840-CC51-11CF-AAFA-00AA00B6015C}]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \Software\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\{7790769C-0471-11D2-AF11-00C04FA35D02}]

rem @ECHO OFF

SET SPFILES=%WINDIR%\ServicePackFiles\i386
SET DLLCACHE=%WINDIR%\SYSTEM32\DLLCACHE
SET SYSTEM32=%WINDIR%\SYSTEM32
SET PFCOMSYS=%PROGRAMFILES%\Common Files\System
SET OUTLKEXP=%PROGRAMFILES%\Outlook Express
SET WINHELP=%WINDIR%\HELP
SET WININF=%WINDIR%\INF

FOR %%F IN (CSAPI3T1 MSOE MSOERES OEIMPORT OEMIGLIB WABFIND WABIMP) DO ^
FOR %%P IN ("%SPFILES%" "%DLLCACHE%" "%OUTLKEXP%") DO DEL %P\%F.DLL

FOR %%F IN (MSIMN OEMIG50 SETUP50 WAB WABMIG) DO ^
FOR %%P IN ("%SPFILES%" "%DLLCACHE%" "%OUTLKEXP%") DO DEL %P\%F.EXE 

DEL "%OUTLKEXP%\MSOE.TXT"

FOR %%F IN (DIRECTDB WAB32 WAB32RES) DO ^
FOR %%P IN ("%SPFILES%" "%DLLCACHE%" "%PFCOMSYS%") DO DEL %P\%F.DLL 

FOR %%F IN (INETCOMM MSOEACCT MSOERT2) DO ^
FOR %%P IN ("%SPFILES%" "%DLLCACHE%" "%SYSTEM32%") DO DEL %P\%F.DLL

FOR %%F IN (MSOE.CHM MSOE.HLP MSOEACCT.HLP WAB.CHM WAB.HLP) DO ^
FOR %%P IN ("%SPFILES%" "%WINHELP%") DO DEL %P\%F

FOR %%F IN (MSOE50 WAB50) DO ^
FOR %%P IN ("%SPFILES%" "%WININF%" "%SYSTEM32%") DO DEL %P\%F.?NF

• Disable Home Groups in Vista and 7

Other Programs

Recommended For All Setups

7-Zip Audacity AVIDemux CamStudio CCleaner CDBurnerXP Chromium Dia Exact Audio Copy FileHippo Update Firefox Flash Player GIMP Handbrake Inkscape InfranView JRE KeePass LADSPA LAME LibreOffice Lightscribe MediaMonkey Notepad++ Opera PDFCreator Pidgin Skype SumatraPDF Thunderbird TrueCrypt uTorrent VLC

Recommended For Advanced Users

Alcohol 52% CPU Burn-in CPU-Z HWiNFO HWMonitor HxD Joystick2Mouse MyDefrag PuTTY VNC VirtualBox (Extensions) WinDirStat

Limited-Use Programs

ASUS Update eBLU nLite U3Uninstall rt7lite