Two Stop Bits | I'm not sure what to think of a guide that "highly recommends" to install "Quick...

Darkstar 86 days ago | parent

I'm not sure what to think of a guide that "highly recommends" to install "QuickVerse Bible 4.0" AND "PC-Study Bible 2.1" ...?

Also, disabling the task scheduler, NTP and windows file sharing? Disabling Windows updates without suggesting an offline update package? yeah, no, thanks.

To me at least half of this guide sounds like snake oil or cargo cult.

But yeah, some things might be useful for some people. The trick is finding the needle in the haystack

Borg 86 days ago
Actually, this guide is not bad really. Well written. There are few questionable things like installing some specific software that can be skipped. Also, Firewall is a must. Even if you harden your XP, there are still few ports left open like 135 and 445. They seem to be inactive (wrapper?) when you disable services and uninstall Microsoft Networking, but I would not trust that. Also, antivirus is useless indeed. Better solution is sandboxing or even VM.
I use Win2003 daily on more powerfull PC (i5-2400, 16GB RAM) and its indeed blazing fast. When cache is warm, everything starts pretty much instantly, so SSD is not really needed. Cache FTW!