Last updated:
22 October 2006;
Supplements this
Knowledgebase
Article.
Windows Installation &
Maintenance
The key to maintaining a smooth operating
system starts with the installation. Many of the issues that people face
with Windows systems come from improper installation practices, compounded
by poor or non-existent maintenance habits. These issues cannot be addressed or corrected by
installing so-called Fix-It Utilities, which are another source of problems
for many users. Here are
some guidelines for installing and configuring a Windows-based system so
that it runs silky smooth and gives you the least possible grief. It is
possible (and desirable) to do this without a tremendous number of 3rd party utilities.
If you haven't already done so, please, please, please ditch
the Windows
9x/ME family. They have served their purpose as a transition from 16-bit Windows
to 32-bit Windows, but it is time for us to move on... Trust us on that.
You want to be using a
stable OS with proper memory management and a
robust file system. This limits the choice (for Windows OSes) to 2000 or
XP on the desktop, and 2000/2003 on the server.
We favor XP in virtually all circumstances (even at the corporate
level), and more specifically XP Pro. Only the most novice of users
should settle for XP Home. Anyone who might ever conceivably install a
network will find that XP Pro is a better choice. (And don't focus on
the list price of the OSes -- you can
find bargains all over the place,
particularly online).
In order of preference, here's what we would
recommend on the desktop:
Windows XP Pro
Windows 2000 Pro
Windows XP
Home
On the server-side, our list looks like this:
Windows
Server 2003
Windows 2000 Server
Since the release of NT, Microsoft
has provided a list of compatible hardware that they've tested with their
Operating Systems. This list is not 100% inclusive, but if you don't see
your peripheral in this list, you should make sure that the vendor really
does support the OS you are looking to use.
The next step is the
vendor's website. Be sure that you are going to be able to find drivers
for your equipment BEFORE you start installing the OS. If you purchase
your system from one of the big OEM vendors, then this is less of a
problem, as the OS will be preinstalled, and the system should have
only certified components. Also, check that your system BIOS and the
firmware for any other components (such as the drive controller) is
up-to-date.
If you're putting your own system together, then you
need to do a decent bit of research before purchasing anything, so that
regrets are minimized. Go with well regarded, brand-name products --
don't make the wrong choice between quality and cost.
Windows
NT/2000/XP is much more picky about hardware than Win9x/ME. Don't assume
that your sound card will work with the new OS just because it worked
with the old one. Additionally, your drivers can make or break a
system... (or at least a peripheral).
Also, if you are into
overclocking, do not overclock your CPU or peripherals until
after you've successfully installed the OS and have had things running
properly for a day or three. Just because your 500Mhz overclock worked
under Win9x doesn't mean it will work under Windows 2000 or XP. This is
just a small price to pay for the vastly improved stability, superior
memory management, and efficient multi-tasking of the Windows NT family.
Similar to the issue of hardware
compatibility, you will want to verify that the apps you want to use
are actually available on the new Windows OS of your choice. Besides
Microsoft's site, there are a number of
other sites that address this.
Windows XP has excellent backwards
compatibility with many older apps --
Windows 2000 (starting with SP2) possesses some of this functionality -- and games. The
greatest area of contention will be utilities, particularly disk
utilities, since they tend to interact more with low-level interfaces
that can change between versions of the OS.
Although you will be tempted to save some
time on your new install by simply upgrading over the old install,
this can cause more problems than it's worth. Clean installs are
generally advised unless you took really good care of your previous
installation, and you don't have lots of 3rd party utilities installed.
If you were running NT or 2000, and you want to upgrade to 2000 or
XP, respectively, then you can take a chance with an upgrade. If,
however, you were previously running Windows 95 or 98 -- and especially
WinME -- then you are encouraged, make that commanded, to perform a
fresh install. Otherwise, you'll just be delaying the inevitable clean
installation -- after days of annoying troubleshooting.
Systems
that are upgraded from Win9x to 2000 or XP tend to be far more sluggish,
or exhibit weird boot-up or shutdown problems vs. machines that are
installed clean, or upgraded from NT4 or later.
Upgrades should be
done from within the old OS, while clean installs should generally be
done by booting from the CD (or DVD). If you're upgrading an older
system, make sure that your firmware is up-to-date, and that you download
all the necessary drivers in advance.
RECOMMENDED UPGRADE
PATHS Do not attempt to fix software problems with the OS by
simply upgrading to a new version, as quite often, the problems are just
carried over.
|
XP Home to XP Pro |
Either In-Place Upgrade OR Clean Install Recommended |
|
2000 to XP Pro |
Either In-Place Upgrade OR Clean Install Recommended |
|
NT to 2000 or XP Pro |
Either In-Place Upgrade OR Clean Install Recommended |
| |
|
|
Win 95/98 to NT |
Clean
Install Highly Recommended |
|
Win 95/98 to 2000 |
Clean
Install Highly Recommended |
| |
|
|
Win 95/98 to XP |
Clean
Install Recommended |
| |
|
|
WinME to anything |
DO NOT
EVER PERFORM AN IN-PLACE UPGRADE FROM WinME unless you enjoy trouble
and are looking to improve your troubleshooting skills. If you were
unfortunate enough to install WinME in the first place, you deserve a
Clean Installation to anything else.
Remember: Two wrongs don't make a right! |
If
you still decide that you will upgrade directly over a previous version
of Windows, be sure to at least run a good SCANDISK/CHKDSK, a solid
defrag, and perform a full backup before starting the upgrade process.
Remember that if it breaks during the upgrade, you'll likely have to
revert to your backups.
Also, be sure you remember to disable or
uninstall your AntiVirus software when installing the OS, and also when
installing any major patches or service packs. This is more important
than most people realize. Whatever
you do, don't make an
OS partition smaller than 8GB. You don't want to run out of space
on your OS partition or make it too hard to defrag, or not leave enough room
to install patches or run an upgrade. Disk space is cheap -- don't be
stingy with it.
You
can take a few steps to make your system easier to recover in an
emergency, such as broken permissions, forgotten password, bad software
install, or even a hard disk failure.
The first
thing you should do after completing your OS installation is to install
the Recovery Console. Go into your installation CD and run the following
command:
cdrom_drive:\i386\WINNT32 /CMDCONSOLE
This will help
you recover from serious issues without the use of the installation CD.
You'll still need the CD if you have to restore any original files, but
other functions will not require it.
The next thing you'll want to
do is install the Support Tools from the OS CD (under the SUPPORT
folder). These utilities provide timesaving diagnostics functions and
assist in tweaking the OS.
Lastly, you should create an
administrative account that you only use for emergencies. It's a good
practice to use a regular account for everyday activities, and have a
backup admin account in case you get locked out from your normal admin
account by mistake.
This is easily done from the command-line. For
our example, we will use the following info:
User Name
.............. MICKEY
Password ................
Disney4Minnie
NET
USER Mickey
Disney4Minnie /ADD
NET LOCALGROUP
Administrators
Mickey /ADD
This will add Mickey to the Administrators group. Remember that
Account names are NOT case sensitive, but passwords are. Be sure
to give your backup Admin account a nice, strong password with lots of
mixed case, and extra characters.
Another thing for you to consider
is to copy the setup files from the CD to your local machine, and point
to it whenever the OS asks you for setup files. This is faster than
looking around for the CD and reading it from your CD drive when
necessary.
Many folks bring over their Win9x/ME habits after they upgrade to
Win2K/XP. They install all sorts of apps and utilities that they believe are
necessary to keep the OS
running smoothly. While this was needed to keep Win9x from
periodically imploding on itself, this is not the case with either
Windows 2000 or XP. I would definitely recommend avoiding products like
Norton SystemWorks, as I have witnessed many problems on machines
where this software was installed, and the ultimate resolution was simply to
remove that software altogether.
Additionally, many users of Windows 9x have gotten into a habit of
frequent (3-6 months) reformatting, due to crappy software installations,
or corrupt registries, or inexplicable performance degradation.
This behavior is foreign to folks who are used to NT and family. There is simply no
need for being so familiar with the FORMAT or FDISK commands. With
simple, but proper maintenance, you can keep your Windows 2000 and XP
installations running at full steam for years rather than mere months. On
average, a complete reinstallation of the OS should be necessary no
frequently than every 24-30 months.
If you're running Windows 2000 or 2003 Server, then you'll want to
make sure you install Terminal Services (in Admin mode) to make remote
administration a breeze.
The primary activities that constitute
regular system maintenance are:
SERVICE PACKS & PATCHES
Be sure to visit
Windows Update regularly to find out what patches and hotfixes are
available for you system. Check out the README file and any other
documentation prior to installing patches, even recommended ones. And
ALWAYS disable your AntiVirus software before installing critical Service
Packs (after scanning the download). The recommended policy for Service Packs and Hotfixes is to try to stay as up to date as possible, after reading up on
the fixes, and possibly testing them on a spare system.
You should
also occasionally check for newer firmware for your motherboards and
other peripherals, but when dealing with firmware updates NOT
related to security products, we would recommend that you update only when problems arise.
In other words, LET SLEEPING DOGS LIE.
BACKUPS
NTBACKUP,
the default backup utility in Windows NT and later, is pretty robust,
especially since it now backs up to a file (rather than just tape). It still
doesn't backup directly to CD or DVD without the use of 3rd party software,
but there are many solutions to accommodate this scenario. Even so, you should make regular use of
NTBACKUP to perform SystemState backups, which will help you recover from
serious system issues.
You can use
this script to automatically
backup your SystemState on a daily basis. It will make
system recovery easier, particularly if you later decide to disable
SystemRestore for some reason.
DISK CHECKS
You will find that
CHKDSK is all you need for checking your drives. There's nothing that the
3rd party products offer that is compelling vs. the built-in tool. This is
especially true if you're using NTFS rather than FAT32.
DEFRAGGING YOUR DRIVES
There are many
defragging tools available for 2000/XP,
including PerfectDisk and Diskeeper (from which the built-in defragger is
derived). The 3rd party tools make it easy for you to schedule defrags
based on percentage of file/disk fragmentation, and can address Master File
Table (MFT)
and directory fragmentation as well.
You can use this
script to automatically defrag your drives each night.
REGISTRY CLEANERS When installing applications, make sure that you
keep track of what files
and components are installed, and what settings are made to the registry.
This will help you identify conflicts if any should arise.
In the
2000/XP world, Registry Cleaners are not that useful or necessary. They do provide
a definitive benefit to Win9x/ME
systems, but you shouldn't be running those operating systems anyway. If you must use
a Registry Cleaner, try the one from
JV16.ORG and be sure to backup your registry
(or, better yet, SystemState) before proceeding.
DISK CLEANUP
You should periodically clean out your temp files and folders, as
many programs leave things in there that they shouldn't. You can use the
Disk Cleanup feature of Windows 2000 and XP to handle this, or
script it
yourself. If you choose to do it yourself, be sure not to do it
immediately after installing software that has asked you to reboot "in
order to complete the installation." And don't schedule such deletes for
right after your system has booted up. Other than that, cleaning out
temp files once a week or once is month is not a bad idea at all. This
includes Internet Cache files, too.
For that matter, it is a very good practice
to limit your Temporary Internet Folder size to a max of 20-50MB.
There is no need for a 500MB web browser cache -- it just leads to slow,
buggy browsing.
Now that you've installed your system,
you'll want to ensure that your system is secure. The value of system
security cannot be overstated. There are a number
of
vulnerability scanners that you can use, but a
free one is provided by
Microsoft that is tied to the Hotfix management tool.
You will
want to consider 3rd party utilities for both
AntiVirus protection and
Personal Firewalls. XP does come with Internet Connection Firewall (ICF),
but it only manages inbound traffic (not outbound), and is not as
flexible as many of the free alternatives.
Here are some recommended
desktop firewall products:
Kerio Personal Firewall
Tiny Personal Firewall
SyGate Firewall
ZoneAlarm is a fan favorite,
but the interface and flexibility of the tools mentioned above offer a
better value.
Here are
some recommended antivirus utilities:
AVG and AVAST currently have free editions,
for home use. In corporate environments,
Trend is a highly regarded AV product. McAfee and Symantec produce
products that are very popular, but the aforementioned products are just as
effective, consume far less resources, and are easy to uninstall if you
choose to use something else, for any reason.
AVG (Grisoft) has a very cost-effective
corporate product, with a nice centralized administration tool.
While your first instinct might be to
disable every OS setting that you don't understand or
consider useful, it
might be a bit better to see how things work for a while before launching
into serious Tweak mode. Also, don't make a whole lot of changes all at
once, as it is harder to troubleshoot problems that result from such
changes, and ALWAYS, always, always be sure to make backups before
changing things around.
Here are some good tools to use when changing
your OS settings:
Take the
opportunity to configure the
file system for best performance, by
disabling "Last Access Time", among other things.
You'll also want
to set a
good sized pagefile, based on your installed RAM and anticipated
system usage patterns.
Finally, tweak the
CMD console for maximum
efficiency, since the command line is your friend.
Here are the key things to check when
troubleshooting OS issues:
Check the Event Logs
Look at
running processes
Verify installed applications
Check driver
versions
Check jumper settings on your hard drives
Check connectivity of cables
Verify SCSI termination
By far, the most common issues which you
will end up troubleshooting involve permissions, bad software
installations, and/or self-inflicted registry tweaks.
When installing
software, you should keep track of changes made to your files and the
registry. Apps made specifically for 2000 and XP are more likely to
follow the guidelines for good behavior, but many older Win9x apps act as
though they expect to be the only thing ever installed on a system. Be
careful what you install. (Use Tracking software)
The first place you
will want to look when you begin a troubleshooting episode, is the
Event Logs. These are the primary location for determining all that
goes on within the OS and applications. Again, apps specifically written
for NT/2000/XP will be more diligent about writing to the Event Logs than
apps written for, and tested on, Win9x.
Contrary to popular opinion,
FDISK and
FORMAT are not
troubleshooting tools. Don't be so quick to reinstall the OS as soon as
you encounter problems, or you'll never learn how to troubleshoot or
resolve any of the issues you or others might encounter. And you will
fail to address the condition that could bring the problem back in
days or weeks.
One of the few real reasons to go with FDISK/FORMAT
is after a virus infection or a compromised system. It is advisable to start afresh, rather than
try and piece everything back together, when there may be hidden
backdoors put into place by the virus, worm or trojan.
Related Knowledgebase Articles
|
