How to organise my system?

D

Digital

Disciple
Hi,

:S This could be weird thread to you all , kindly help me to organise my system! :huh: I'm not a good computer user!!

Next week i may be formatting my system.
Config p4/256mbRAM/40gbhdd/Winxp2

My question is

1. My HDD is 40gb. How to organise them. (I mean how many drives do i create?)

2. I have win xp and sp2 Cd and i will be installing these in my system. Do i need to install seperate firewall (zonealarm) since xp sp2 has firewall?

3. I have spybot & Microsoft antispyware. Do i need to install both or one of these?

4. Some time my system starts very slow. My friend says to disable some services. How to disable?

5. I'm using firefox as a browser. Problem is sometimes my browser says that java is not installed when iam opening some websites. What do you mean by this how to install and integrate them?. Also some plugins missing like flash. Which is latest version?

6. Which free download manager do you suggest is best?

7. I use adobephoto shop 6.0 for my needs. The problem is whenever i work with it , it will always encounter problem saying-
Do you want to send report to microsoft ?(send) (don't send).
I hate this message!! Why it happens?

Pls spend some time here to reply!
Thanks
 
Huh why is this in the open source section?

Anyway,

1. Hard disk partitioning is really dependant on your needs and the number of operating systems you want to use. Generally, creating atleast two partitions would be a good idea, keeping a small partition for your windows installation, and a larger one for the applications you use. If you are manually creating the partitions, remember to just create one primary partition, on which you install your windows system files, and a second extended partition, which you can divide into as many logical (sub) partitions as you want.

2. Third party firewall better choice.

3. Both is better, use Ad-aware SE too if possible.

4. http://dhost.info/kyeu/mirror/blackviper/WinXP/supertweaks.htm

5. http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/central.html#central-plugins

6. For windows, NetTransport and Free Download Manager are good options.
 
i suggest a 5 or 10 gig for OS and main stream apps ( assuming only one OS is being used) rest for other apps.
MS Antispyware is good Adware SE is better

For d/l managers i prefer leechget :)
 
1. On OS'es like Win2K, WinXP there's not much harm in creating 2 or more Primary partitions. I would say create 2 partitions. 1st partition for your OS, Pagefile, Apps (10GB should be a good size). 2nd Partition for all your other stuff like your music, movies, documents, even games. Just keep the crucial stuff on the 1st partition as that partition would be faster than your 2nd partition.

2. Is your WinXP CD slipstreamed with SP2 ? If not i would recommend slipstreaming it. Read more here : http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp2_cd.htm . A stand-alone firewall is always more powerful than SP2's inbuilt firewall. However the inbuilt firewall is quite decent as well.

3. I recommend Ad-Aware SE as well.

4. You could try upgrading your RAM as well. That would show a noticeable performance boost. WinXP thrives on plenty of RAM.

The rest has been well-answered by Ujjwal :)
About Photoshop 6.0 crashing frequently, it could be that your installation is corrupted. Hopefully after you re-format and re-install, your problems should go away.
 
None whatsoever. It was just a personal suggestion.

You can create upto 4 primary partitions on a single HDD, the advantage would be each primary partition could be made bootable in case you want to run multiple OS'es(barely the case). There are no downsides except the fact that you cannot go beyond 4 primary partitions. WinXP/2K is adept at handling multiple primary partitions as well (IIRC, Win98 wasnt as good at it)

With a single extended partition + logical drives, advantage would be you could create as many logical drives as you wanted within that extended partition, but none of them could be made bootable.

I personally feel for any normal usage scenario, 2 primary partitions on a disk is more than enough - one for the OS, one for personal Data. You could create 2 more if you feel you need a mirrored backup of all the data. If still there are reasons why you would want 100 partitions, then you should choose the extended partition option by all means :)

A small test why having fewer number of partitions helps in transferring data within your hard disk - try moving a large file from one partition to another on the SAME disk, it will take a while. Repeat the same test moving a file from one folder to another in the same partition on the same disk again, it will hardly take a few secs.
 
Thank you all!

Sorry for responding late!! Yesterday i had posted this thread in software section and today i was baffled some one removed my thread. Thank God A moderator helped me and i landed here! I'm a new in this forum.

Thanks for overwhelming replies guys!

Today i had formatted my system and installed winxp. I had Sp2 CD which i recieved from microsoft shipping! When i tried to install my sp2 , it gave me error saying can't install sp2. Please help. I used FCKGW... serial to install winxp.

:huh:
 
Thanks for the reply. I'm able to install sp2. One of my friend helped me to install.

Is java-plugins for firefox browser neccessary. Which part of download should i select for my system. What is the advantage of using it. There are two download part like offline download in java download page. Kindly help me! :S
 
Yes, java is quite essential as a lot of places on the web use java applets.

The two options on the java download page will be 1. web install, and 2. offline install.
- Web install , connects to the internet and downloads only the required setup files needed for your system and installs them. This process normally completes much faster than an offline install. However none of the setup files downloaded are saved. In case you need to re-install java in the future, you will have to connect to the internet and perform the whole web install process all over again.
- Offline install , downloads the entire setup file consisting of all the install files regardless of whether they are needed or not. The advantage this option has is, you have the entire setup file on your disk and hence if you need to re-install in the future you do not need to connect to the net. Just simply run the file off your hard disk and install java.
 
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