zemo.co.uk

Hey well, as most people know Windows 7 was release about two weeks ago now, I had the disk for it laying around the day after release so thought that it was about time that I installed it and checked it out! I have used Windows 7 before a bit so knew that it was good. I finally got around to installing it 2 days ago, I have the version ‘Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit’, I am finding it a lot more stable and a lot better than Vista. I have been using Vista Ultimate basically since release and I have had a few problems with it.

For Windows 7 there are a lot of tweaks that you can do on it, I know most people don’t bother with them but being a Computer nut since the age of 13 I have always loved to tweak windows. There are a number of optional security tweaks and service tweaks, the main tweaks that I like to use are:

1 Don't show Balloontips anymore (for me balloon tips are pointless and annoying!!)
2 Enable fast shutdown (self explanatory)
3 Clear pagefile at shutdown
4 Deactivate scripting host (this is a important tweak for me as a lot of malware and viruses use scripts which without this option can run)
5 Don't show last logged-on user name (this is a good tweak as on the logon screen nothing is shown, no users)
6 Don't autostart CD's (another thing that I personally hate is when CD's automatically play when your in the middle of doing something)
7 Do not generate Lan Manager Hashes (Lan Manager stores password hashes for backwards comparability with Windows 95/98, so if you don't have any Windows 95/98 computers in your Network it is advised to turn this off!)
8 Increase MaxConnectionsperServer to 10 (well this is another pretty major tweak)
9 Do Not autosuggest webforms and passwords anymore (this tweak is pretty good for security espcially if other people use your computer every so often, it also annoys me when webforms are autosuggested)
10 Disable ActiveX Controls (well as a developer I have to have ActiveX controls on for some of the things that I develop, but basically ActiveX is used by a lot of virus writers online, although you have to agree before ActiveX runs through Internet Explorer it can do anything; ActiveX is as powerful as a Computer Application and can do anything on your computer if allowed, that's why I see having ActiveX enabled as being a very bad security flaw - especially with new users).
12 Disable error-report service (pretty self explanatory)
13 Disable task-scheduler service (well as I don't have any scheduled events within Windows I disable to service for a bit of extra memory)
14 Disable ctfmon.exe (if you only plan to use one language setting then having ctfmon.exe running is pretty pointless!)
15 Disable UAC (UAC was added in Windows Vista - basically it's that annoying system box that comes up every time you try to do something - I find it extremely annoying - but it has it's good points if you have new users using your system)