Welcome to the New Future: Windows XP
I installed Windows XP early on Friday… and late on Friday… and early on Saturday. Here’s a list of tips for installing XP and Office.
- I tried (unsuccessfully) to use the Install from Scratch system on a computer that already had Win2K. I found myself in this awful state where nothing would run properly. (In all previous versions of windows, I’ve found it important to wipe your computer every year or two. Performance and compatibility karma come your way when you do). I eventually did an “upgrade” install. It seems to be working ok.
- If you threw away the envelope that your Windows XP CD came in (Doh!) XPKey.exe (a 48k download from The Blue List) did a fine job of finding my key. Curiously, it didn’t work on Office XP for me.
- I’ve got some terrible hesitation/hanging weirdness going on. From my web browsings, it looks like it’s related to Instant Messaging being built in to Office. Doing the following seems to have worked for me: Go to Microsoft Outlook | Tools | Options | Other and turn off “Enable Instant Messaging in Microsoft Outlook”. Also, it seems important that you don’t kill the stupid Windows Messenger system tray program. When I did, I started seeing stupid slugishnesses.
- Running sfc.exe from the command prompt seems to have helped the sluggishness