So far, Windows XP Professional is the best WINDOWS version available and I won’t waste time reiterating what others have already mentioned regarding performance.
My main focus is optimizing XP Pro performance
1) Always choose XP Pro over Home Ed
Home Ed is a an earlier rev of XP Pro with loose bits lying around the platform. There are subtle differences between Home and Professional -- the biggest being IIS and home networking tools are only present in Pro. However, IIS on XP Pro limits the number of clients to 5. The biggest benefit of XP Pro is the home networking feature which eliminates the need of a router if you want to setup a LAN (works for either wireless or RJ45 connectivity).
2) Don’t upgrade. Do a fresh install instead.
History teaches users to avoid upgrading when a fresh OS install is possible. Despite Microsoft claims, upgrading one OS version to the next rev leaves a lot of legacy issues.
For instance, for those of you with XP Pro, you can determine if you’ve got a true XP Pro Ed or an upgraded version by doing the following:
Go to My Documents --> Tools --> Folder Options --> View ’’Tab’’
Check ’’Show Hidden Files and Folders’’
Unckeck ’’Hide extensions...’’
Uncheck ’’Hide protected operating system files’’
Confirm and Click ’’OK’’
After unhiding all files and folders, those of you with upgraded systems will see files on your desktop that shouldn’t be there, such as ’’desktop.ini, ’’ a legacy file from Home edition.
There are a slew of other legacy folders and files that aren’t removed after upgrading because MS has determined that removing these files may cause issues even if there are no known dependencies.
3) How to do a fresh install of Windows XP Pro.
I’ve been hacking OS’s (modifying the kernel and basica instruction set through assembler, register transfer language) since pre-dawn DOS days to maximize functionality. If you have the OEM’s bootable XP Pro CD, doing a fresh install is easy -- just boot from the CD and follow the steps.
If you don’t have a bootable Windows XP Pro CD, you can always boot from floppies (there are 6 boot floppies which you can download from microsoft. com or bootdisk. com). The caveats for doing a fresh install are that you’ll need a bootable floppy drive and know how to configure the boot device sequence.
4) Maintain your OS.
XP archives revs of the OS whenever a change occurs, so you can restore to a known stable point after adding / removing Windows components or applications. Over time, the archives reduce system performance due to the accumulated volume of archives. On system drives (where the OS resides), clean them frequently and discard the restore points, but not immediately after changing/adding an application. Ensure that the OS is stable before doing so. You’ll find that you’ll save a gig or two afterwards. Also defrag if you haven’t done so in a while.
5) XP Pro and Hyperthreading
The combination of XP Pro and hyperthreading is great. I’ve got two systems, a dual CPU system and a single CPU w/ hyperthreading system, both running XP Pro and I can definitely say that the two are similar when running processor intensive applications such as 3DStudioMax. For larger files, the hyperthreading system becomes noticeably slower than the dual processor system over time. Still, it’s much faster than single CPU systems without hyperthreading (but that could be due to running a 3.5GHz compared to a 4.2GHz CPU).
6) XP Pro Security
XP comes with a firewall that you can activate. In addition to this, MS integrates upgrade notifications (I’m not sure if this is good since vulnerabilities warrant patches). Despite how ’’bullet-proof’’ a system may be, safe-computing practices will always reduce the potential of infection.
7) Additional Security precautions on all systems
Include a virus detection program such as Norton’s or McAfee’s Antivirus.
Use a trusted spyware detection application such as ’’Spybot Search & Destroy’’ https://safer-networking.org/ which comes with an immunization feature to lock down the hosts file to prevent browser hijacking.
8) Main Complaints with Windows XP Pro
Although XP Pro Ed is the best rev of Windows, there’s still some legacy issues stemming from the DOS file system design and the wierd drive nomenclature ’’C:\’’. The most problematic issue is seen when rearranging and renaming files and folders. Windows doesn’t automatically update the system registry when changes occur outside of application installation and their settings causing many orphaned files and shortcut references. Another major issue has to do with controlling file and folder privileges. If Windows sets ’’Read Only’’ to a file, most likely, a user even an administrator will not be able to change this setting.