Think back to 2001, back then the majority of us were using slow dial-up connections. It was more common to have a computer with no Virus Protection (back then Virus Protection was encouraged but seemed to be more of an optional extra) and Spyware was a term that many of us had not heard yet.

Fast Forward to 2008, and now we have super fast cable and dsl connections. It is now pretty much unheard of to not have Virus Protection, a Firewall and Spyware Scanner/Blocker Software on each and every computer.

So if you are installing a fresh copy of Windows XP today. Once you have completed the install, the default settings will not be the optimal settings for 2008. Basically, once the install is complete, there are some additional changes that you will need to do. In this article I have listed what these changes are and why they should be changed.

The reason this setting was set so high was because back in the days of dial up it took so long to download images and webpages, that it was a time saver if those pages were cached to the hard drive.

This is default set to 20 days which is not necessary nowadays. Lower this to 5 or less (I have mine at zero).

With Simplified Sharing turned on, a file saved with your username can be accessed by any other user on your system. In my opinion having this on defeats the purpose of having a separate user, so from a Security Standpoint, disable this.

This setting, when left on, is a royal pain if you are dealing with a failing system. Turn it Off

System Restore is an awesome feature. The only problem is that by default, XP allocates to much space to it. So Reduce it (this is a personal preference but I typically put mine down to 4%-6%)

By Default, Clear Type is not turned on. This was because back when XP was released, CRT’s were in abundance. Nowadays, most of us have LCD’s which really need Clear Type on for optimal viewing

This may be redundant since we already turned off the indexing service

This change, I have to admit is personal preference, but I will say this. Whoever at Microsoft was responsible creating the new Control Panel, Category View, should be shot. To make things easier, change this to Classic View

This change, also can be considered optional and is merely a cosmetic change that prevents the highlighting of new programs.

Install all the updates via Windows Update

The Indexing Function is a prehistoric search function that was supposed to speed up the time it took to search for something on your computer, however it is not very efficient. It hogs a lot of resources.

I would recommend this change only for Home users. Unless you can think of a good reason why you would want more than one person logged into your computer at the same time, then disable this. (leave this enabled if your computer is part of a business network environment.)

Once Again, I would recommend this change only for Home users. Unless you can think of a good reason why you would want your registry to be accessible by another computer, then disable this. (leave this enabled if your computer is part of a business network environment.)

This service has nothing to do with Windows Messenger. It is responsible for pop up ads that appear. Disable it.