Tuesday, April 27, 2004

My Windows install: going, going Last week, my desktop's Windows install cracked up, and started pegging both CPUs when certain programs were launched. I tried a variety of things to fix it, including shutting down every service possible clearing out my start-up folder bleeding the cooling system, something that needed doing for about a month grrrr downloading Startup Control Panel - a utility that allows you to selectively disable programs that aren't services and aren't in your Start Up folder that manage to startup anyway. I disabled a lot of annoying programs with this. I booted up with Knoppix to make sure this wasn't a hardware issue, and then figured it was time to repave the hard drive. Just in case, I uninstalled a few of the VPN clients leftover from past engagements. I figured their security voodoo had the highest probablity of messing things up. and suddenly things were running fine. Actually, things were running noticeably faster. The systray junk which I seldom used bogged me down more than I realized. Morale of the story: I'm going to be dropping something in the Startup Control Panel's tip jar. Recommended. Knoppix Footnote: I discovered the toram Knoppix cheatcode, which loads the entire Knoppix CD into RAM at boot time. I'm used to Knoppix being slightly annoying as the CDROM whirs away when you launch an app. toram is also highly recommended if you're going to do real work with a livecd system, or when demoing for prospective Linux users. 5:59:29 PM      comment []  trackback []