So I've decided to reinstall Windows...advice?

I've used Norton because it's what I've always used, and after downloading just about everything at one time or another on the internet I've yet to have any virus problems, ever. Norton 360 is having other issues, such as the inability to connect with the Update servers every now and then, and that's what's making me consider ditching it. Plus the backup is a bit dodgy. I'd rather use a different program for that. In the end I'll probably make the switch to something else but I still have 300 days left on my Norton subscription and I hate to waste it.

 

I have just started to use norton 360 and to be honest its not exactly going smoothly, i decided to try it out as my mcafee subscription ended and wanted to try something new. The update proccess for me takes far to long and trying to set-up a quick scan of one HDD is annoying but i don't mind the problems that much .

A fresh install of windows is always a good idea because what i find is that i download new programs that i will find useful or just like the look of and many will get uninstalled after 10-15 mins and my HDD tend to get clogged up and even with defrags and tuning/clean ups it still runs slow.

 

So far so good. I'm just sitting here restarting my computer and enjoying the fact that it can complete the cycle in less than a minute....

 

Everybody's recomending NOD32 but I only found a trial, is there some hidden free version?
Is there any other good a/v program out there? AVG is really bad :\

here's my list

Video Playback: MediaPlayerClassic + ffdshow and some components of CCCP pack for mkv files

Music: Winamp, the latest lite version

Browser: Firefox + image zoom + google browsersync plugins

Photo & Editing: Photoshop CS3

FTP: FireFTP plugin for Firefox, probably not the best out there but has suited all my needs so far

DVD Copying: I dont really copy DVD's but DVDShrink used to be the sh*t!

Video Editing: VirtualDub

Video Conversion: TMPEGenc

DVD Burning: NERO

HTML Editing: notepad/metapad ^^

Download: uTorrent, I seriously hate all the other torren clients out there

Tune-Up/Spyware: Spybot + my custom HOSTS file

Chat: MSN Messenger + MSN plus, GoogleTalk(because messengers file transfer sucks and hardly ever works)

Office Suite: I dont really need office suite programs, I just install Office XP when needed

Email: Gmail

Security: Spybot again, no AV, i never really needed it

Back-Up: copy/paste to another HDD on my LAN

OS: XP pro+XPize

Other: 7zip,WinRAR,Global IME (Japanese), AppLocale (japanese),EasyMD5/SFV creator,Synergy,TightVNC,CDisplay,DAEMON tools,DScaler,SoundForge,PrimoPDF

As for installation order I install Spybot first then my HOSTS list then firefox and everything else from there is random.

A good HOSTS list can do wonders!

 

NOD32 isn't free, but can be had cheap with an academic email address - just call them up and it's (i think) half price. I wouldn't use anything else for AV nowadays

 

Norton's been working a lot better with the new install. I read some articles about it before I bought and the reviewers mentioned that it's a lot less of a resource hog than previous Norton versions. Since my system was so slow before I think I just assumed that Norton was part of the problem. I bought a 5-license package and I used #4 on the windows reinstall so I'm just going to let that one stay, I think.

The only problem I'm having is that Norton appears to be blocking my home network, and the "rules" section is very difficult to understand since it uses a lot of terminology that I'm not familiar with (Allow inbound NetBIOS name, allow LLMNR, etc). I've change the rules to "allow" for anything that has "shared network" in the title but so far it's not working. The only time it works is when I disable Norton on all 3 PCs.

I've added just about everything back on and I can do a restart in just over a minute, down from the 5+ minutes before. So far so good. The problems have been pretty minor.

 

Cool little tool I found called SyncToy:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/synctoy.mspx

It's a bare bones sync program. You choose the files you want to sync and that's it. I have it set up to backup my files onto the external HDD.

And has anyone ever tried this? Virtual Disktop?

http://z-sys.org/vvdm.aspx

 

Most Linux desktop environments have multiple desktop functions built in. They're pretty neat...and are espcially so when combined with a 3D desktop switcher...but I don't really use them a ton.

I'm more of the sort that will generally close a window once I'm done with it...which means I normally don't get cluttered up with windows.