[LAU] [OT] need advice re: Windows registry cleaners (majorly OT)

[Arthur]

Myk wrote:
> On Fri, 02 May 2008 09:39:51 -0400
> Dave Phillips <dlphillips at woh.rr.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> Greetings,
>>
>> If any of you have experience in this direction, perhaps you could 
>> suggest what I should recommend to my better half (Ivy). Her Inspiron is 
>> showing the all-too-familiar signs of infestation, slowing down to a 
>> crawl and sometimes even stopping completely. She's not ready for Linux 
>> yet, so she has to resolve this problem with XP. She's looking at some 
>> free and some commercial programs that claim to clean and repair the 
>> registry, but neither of us know if there are any especially recommended 
>> programs or utilities for such a job.
>>
>> Any advice from the dual-booters out there in LAU land ?
>>     
>
> >From the woes I've heard from the Windows folk I know, reinstalling seems to be the way to go, and is generally accepted as routine system maintenance :o
>
> ++backup, after installing all the apps and updates.
>
> My XP install has ZoneAlarm, AdAware and Avira Antivir, and Firefox of course. This seems to have been enough to prevent any issues for at least a couple of years.
> - 
> Mike
>
>   
I would also recommend creating a partition for personal files (a D: 
drive), should it become necessary to restore the operating system this 
makes life much easier. The "my documents" default in windows is a bad 
idea. You can setup your drivers and install the programs you use then 
tweak things the way you like them and when you restore everything is in 
place.

Arthur