It's that time again - System wipe
Sunday, January 09 2005 0 Comments
Like many computer power (read: nit-picky) users, I find the need to reformat my machine just about twice a year. This time around I have been lazy and it has been 9 months since my last reformat. This is mainly because I have been utterly dependent upon it as a server.
I have been developing applications in PHP that were being shown to different clients, and it seemed each time I was about to finish a project, another one came right along.
I also started a couple ASP.NET projects and was becoming very dependent upon my computer (well, a little more than usual).
To top it all off my computer serves media content to my xbox, whicch I also didn't want to interrupt.
I finally realized that I was NEVER going to get a break from being dependent upon my computer, so tonight I will reformat. After this install I plan to "ghost" my hard drives and make a set of restore cd's. I have heard this is a great tool for many people, but my computer is rarely in a position where I want a "snapshot" to always return to. This will be my opportunity to do that.
To make my restore state the most useful in the long run, I have written down all the software I want to have on it. Good god! No wonder my system is so damn slow! I hand-wrote an entire page of software titles that I will be installing.
I might as well list it out and explain why I like each piece of software... maybe someone will find it useful. Or maybe you can post a comment making fun of me. In any case, this is my blog NOT YOURS!
.....sorry, got a little carried away.Where were we?Ahh, yes.. the software list, complete with comments.
My OS is WinXP Pro, for reasons that are probably obvious. Pretty much the only things I do are play games, develop in .NET and mess with DirectX... enough said.
Security
(these days it is a must to install these programs first! Think how dangerous it could be to visit 1 site without anti-virus / anti-spy with a stock version of IE.... /shudder)
I use 2 because I have to develop for different target database servers.
Visual
I have been developing applications in PHP that were being shown to different clients, and it seemed each time I was about to finish a project, another one came right along.
I also started a couple ASP.NET projects and was becoming very dependent upon my computer (well, a little more than usual).
To top it all off my computer serves media content to my xbox, whicch I also didn't want to interrupt.
I finally realized that I was NEVER going to get a break from being dependent upon my computer, so tonight I will reformat. After this install I plan to "ghost" my hard drives and make a set of restore cd's. I have heard this is a great tool for many people, but my computer is rarely in a position where I want a "snapshot" to always return to. This will be my opportunity to do that.
To make my restore state the most useful in the long run, I have written down all the software I want to have on it. Good god! No wonder my system is so damn slow! I hand-wrote an entire page of software titles that I will be installing.
I might as well list it out and explain why I like each piece of software... maybe someone will find it useful. Or maybe you can post a comment making fun of me. In any case, this is my blog NOT YOURS!
.....sorry, got a little carried away.Where were we?Ahh, yes.. the software list, complete with comments.
My OS is WinXP Pro, for reasons that are probably obvious. Pretty much the only things I do are play games, develop in .NET and mess with DirectX... enough said.
Security
(these days it is a must to install these programs first! Think how dangerous it could be to visit 1 site without anti-virus / anti-spy with a stock version of IE.... /shudder)
- McAfee Enterprise 7 - far better than Norton imho...
- SpyBot - It's free and catches more than Ad-aware
- Ad-aware - well, Spybot isn't perfect....any suggestions on replacing these 2 with one all mighty Anti-Spy solution?
- DirectX 9.0c SDK - For my ventures in game programming with the awe-inspiring Managed DirectX
- .NET 1.1 - For my managed development
- PHP - cuz a little side money from Rent-a-coder never hurts.
- IIS - for asp.net and php
I use 2 because I have to develop for different target database servers.
- SQL Server 2000 (for asp.net stuff)
- MySQL (for php)
- Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003
- Dreamweaver MX 2004
- EditPlus (though dreamweaver has better builtin ftp support)
- SQLYog (free!) (wonderful tool for MySQL
- Enterprise Manager / Query Analyzer
- Subversion (best source control I've seen)
Visual
StyleXP (lots of clean visual styles out there)(i just recently learned that stylexp only hacks the microsoft dll to provide unsigned styles.The same thing can be accomplished with a manual hack.WindowsBlinds has their own dll for skinning, so I'm testing that out.I also got a copy of RoyalXP (the 2005 MCE style -- nice!)- Customize.org (for wallpapers)
- Windows Media Player 10 (though it's pissing me off to no end)
- Winamp 5
- Nero
- Alcohol 120%
- Daemon-Tools (for mounting images)
- CloneDVD
