Hodgkinson wrote:
Any tips of the trade for keeping XP going? (Eg, apart from AVscanning/Defrag/Scandisk)
To be honest, the detriment to your performance over time from the AV scanner will always dwarf that of the potential viruses out there. Especially if you have on-access scanning enabled. I don't run AV, I just browse safely (in Firefox) and don't download stupid stuff. Never had a virus.
Make sure you're formatted in NTFS and you really shouldn't have to run Scandisk. You'll see that all it performs is a basic validity check. DOS-based scanners will do a more low-level job, but of course you're basically looking for a hardware fault there, not really fixing the issues with Windows.
Your best bet is to start with a squeaky clean build:
Fresh install from original Windows media, or a slipstreamed SP3 disc.
Windows Update.
Download and extract the most recent drivers for your machine/mobo and components & store them somewhere for later reference/use.
Install your drivers using the device manager, rather than running the .exes.
Install the software, browser plugins, etc, that you need and update.
Install & Run CCleaner. (CCleaner is great, you have to look in the options and check that it will allow you to delete temp files newer than two weeks...)
Use regedit to check HKLM\Software\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run for any background process that come with some drivers/software. (This is handy for working installations too.)
Disable pointless services.
Use Ghost to image your drive. No need to defrag before this as Ghost handles that - it should also remove your pagefile, so that'll start back at a healthy size again.
Then you've got a base image to go back to should it really foul up again.
One last tip, don't run as an Administrator if you can help it. If you have programs that absolutely require administrator access (ie. can't be fixed with permissions, etc) try workarounds like runas, so that you're logged in as an admin as little as possible.