Just reformatted comp

[Rahwgwar]

Hey everyone. I just reformatted my computer and now have to reinstall all of my old programs. That number is in the 60's. I kinda tweaked my comp a little before it crashed, but I don't think it had anything to do with the crash. The reinstalling of programs don't bother me all that much. It's the tweaking that consumed a lot of time and the SP1, etc, etc that I now have to download again. I was just wondering if you could get me some links to tweaking/download sites. Also if you have any good programs, please mention them. I know many of the common ones, so maybe you can point me in the direction of a few less known ones that work really well.

Now that I have a fresh start, I just want to keep my comp on its toes. If you have any tips/advice please do so as that would also be helpful. I am running Win XP. If you need any more info, please just ask. Sorry that was broad and all, but I'm not really looking for anything in specific. I appreciate all the help I can get.

[cpugeniusmv]

www.tweakxp.com

[zaphodiv]

Consider buying a spare harddrive. Once you have got all your vital software installed and working, make an image of the original drive and put it away in a safe place. When you run into problems again you can put in the spare drive, restore your work from your last backup and be up and running again quickly.

[Krell]

Once you get it JUST RIGHT, zaphodiv has a good idea, or you can also move it to another partition, unless you needed to wipe that out too.

You buried yourself with these tweaks, and youre running head long BACK in to them, dont.

Be judicious, go slowly, methodically, it will take you a week to get things done, correctly.

Frankly I suggest you stay away from tweak for now. If you want stability, and durability, do the first things first. Unless of course you have more than 1 O/S per week as I do.

The plan you PMed me is a good one, I would rather have a system thats stable and 90% tweaked, than a tweaked up one, that leaves me in a mess.

If you dont have a copy of your old system driver versions etc, let me know, I still have them, and WATCH that hard drive

cheers

[Koffee Bean]

The best tweaking program I have found is Xteq System's X-Setup 6.2. (http://download.com.com/3000-2094-10127489.html?tag=lst-0-1) It's also virtually idiot proof because on everyone of the tweaks that can cause a serious problem, they tell you that you can end up ruining your computer first before making any changes. Oh and listen to Krell, he is the Windows expert, I had MAJOR computing problems a couple of months back, Krell gave me advice. I listened and did exactly what he said and have been crash-free for over 3 months, and haven't reinstalled Windows in over 3 months too, when before I had to reinstall almost every week. Listen to him, the man knows his stuff.

[Rahwgwar]

Advice heeded. We've actually been exchanging PM's for a while. He's proven to me time and time again that he knows what he's doing and IS in control of his OS and computer. Although I knew about those 2 programs, I appreciate you guys responding. I have a question about X-Teq. When it says this plugin allows you to change values that may cause system instability, do you still install the plugin and leave it alone? What I'm saying is: If you just install the plugin, will that do any immediate damage? Cuz sometimes I just wanna "look" at the contents of the plugin WITHOUT actually changing anything. Like a preview, just to see if I know any of the things they are talking about. Hope that came out right.

[Koffee Bean]

Rahwgwar, all your doing is just enabling the plugin, so you can tweak things, Simply activating it does nothing, you must change the values for it to take effect.

[Rahwgwar]

Rahwgwar, all your doing is just enabling the plugin, so you can tweak things, Simply activating it does nothing, you must change the values for it to take effect.

@Koffee Bean: Thanks for clearing that one up for me man. I just want to take some precautions and I can never be too sure. This time around, I'm gonna educate myself more and not throw ANYTHING out the window and assume it is "safe."

[Theinfamousone]

Ok Krell Mr Windows God.

When I type in a web page like www.ebay.com, my computer takes me to this web page http://www.qksrv.net/click-1213175-6647411 instead. Not just ebay but usbank.com, and a few others, but most are ok, do you have any idea what it does this?

[Krell]

Hey there I just saw your post. My experience with weird redirects is after I was doing warez searches without being properly configured. I ended up with that LOP.com bullshit. After a little research, I figured out how to avoid that, and the popus, and browser hijacks. Then , , , , I raped their sites very very heavily !!!

Use the Spybot to see if theres any spyware, until you've done that, theres no need to guesstimate it to death. Im sure there's others here with the same experiences that can help.

[MarkB]

Originally posted by Theinfamousone
When I type in a web page like www.ebay.com, my computer takes me to this web page http://www.qksrv.net/click-1213175-6647411 instead. Not just ebay but usbank.com, and a few others, but most are ok, do you have any idea what it does this? Just like what Krell suggested, you might want to configure your firewall (if you have one) & your IE properly so it blocks you from being re-directed to another site. It also blocks sites from requesting information about other Web sites you have visited, also known as "referrers". Whenever you are visiting one web page and click on a hyperlink to visit another web page, your browser automatically tells the second web site that you were referred to it by the first web page. Among other things, referrer information allows advertisers to find out which sites you are visiting, even if you never click on an advertisement link. When combined with cookies, referrer information truly allows "the powers that be" to track your every move on the Internet.
That link that you provided is a spyware cookie or web bug. Read more about it here: http://www.safersite.com/Support/ so that you are not vulnerable when browsing.