Ok, I will TRY to make this short and sweet.

I work from home. I generally try to keep good care of my computer (DELL Inspirion 1100, And a DELL Optiplex GXA desktop)

I skin a lot, And i am a heavy P2P participant, In other words, My computer gets full of useless crap, constantly needing to be erased. After carefull consideration, I have decided it might be best if i were to consult some pros about some things. I hope im not asking waaaaaaaaaaaay to much, So let me know if i get out of hand.

1st, Longhorn... Stupid question: Is this even an OS? And if so, Anyone know where i could get some detailed information about it? Any others you might have in mind would be great. LIke i said, Big on games and media of all kinds, So i need a small os, with big production, Is this plausible?

2nd, I run XP- But im misiing the damn Inteligent transfer files, Therefore can't d/l Any service packs or anything of that nature. I dont really care too, As i have heard it causes more trouble than it's worth. SP2, Good idea?

3rd, The third and (hopefully) final thought: As i said before, hardrives full of useless $*!t slows me down bad. After bying the completely craptastic "All in ones" from Norton and Mcaffe, I still find all kinds of crap- To make it worse, It is impossible to uninstall any of these progrmas without a big hassle. Anyone know where i could get a good flie shredder or something of the likes. One that is inteligent, Can dectect broken partions and otherwise bad/unused files?

Once again, i hope this isnt too much. I would like to say thanks right now. I really hope to get some good feedback.

Hello,

Firstly, be careful of the P2P program you use. I would recommend edonkey as it does not come with any included software. I have heard Shareaza also does not. Just make sure whatever one you do choose does not have bundled or included software. It's 99% of the time spyware, and is not good to have on your pc (it collects information about you and sends it back to the software developers, or advertisers).

Download and install Spybot Search and Destroy, it's free. Install it, then update it. Then run a full scan and let it take care of whatever it finds.

You can do the same thing with AdAware if you want, but it finds less "baddies" than it does just normal stuff.

SpySweeper is also free I believe, and finds a lot of the bad stuff other programs don't.

These programs will get rid of spyware and the like that are on your pc to collect information about you for other people. Note that they will find cookies and stuff that are legit too, but those will be recreated the next time you visit a site, so don't worry about them.


1) Yes, Longhorn is an OS, however it will not be released until Mid-Late 2006. XP is your best bet all around.

2) You shouldn't need the "Intelligent Files and Transfer Wizard" program to download service packs. That utility is used to transfer files from an old pc to the pc with XP on it. If you open up Internet Explorer, go to Tools, and then go to Windows Update, you should be able to download any updates and service packs available.

I recommend doing this immediately

Nearly every worm or major exploit you've heard about over the past 2 years (Sasser worm for example) was fixed before the problem hit the internet. Users just didn't patch their computers properly or in time, which is why so many go infected. You should ALWAYS keep your OS patched and up to date. I have been running SP2 since it first came out with NO problems, on 2 different pc's. My friends have not reported problems either. I always recommend keeping the OS completely patched and up to date.

On that note, when/if you go to update, if you don't have SP1 or SP2, expected to spend about an hour+ patching your OS.

3) My best recommendation for a cleaner program is one called ""CCleaner". It is also free (I like free programs ), and it finds crap all over the place to clear off.

The other day I manually cleaned off the HD (temp files, internet cache files, etc.) and ran the program afterwards. It restored OVER 1 GB of hard drive space that was taken up by unnecessary crap. I mean this program is just crazy. It will take a long time to run on a large hd (took about 10 minutes to completely run through on my 80GB HD). But it's worth it.

You won't need a program to detect a broken partition. If you have more than just "C:\" in My Computer, and you ever go in and there isn't the other drive listed, you've detected it yourself. Now fixing a problem like that may not be too easy however.

hth

Great! Thanks for the information. I still dont understand this Windows Update thing. The shortcut, of course, takes you to the microsoft download center. From there I actually get the message "Inteligent Background Transfer Service Files missing or corrupted." I tried going into services and restarting the app, And it reports no errors. I really dont get that. But, eh- What can ya do? As for the cleaner... I am in love... with a machince. Odd? Methinks not

I ran it, took about thirty minutes, And freed up almost 3 1/2 gigs.

As for P2P, I use ARES. I don't know if your familiar with it, But i like it. It has a small "footprint" and generally runs great. Again, thanks for the help. Now if i can just get SP2, without ordering a d@mn CD...

rofl...the CD is free if you need it.
You started the service and there were no errors, but when you went back to their site it still gave you that error?

Try updating it manually
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...&DisplayLang=en

Then see if you can access their site properly.

Ok... I'm this close ::holds fingers really clos together:: To writing a nasty email to Microsoft. lol. After the update, I still get the same messege. It seems the site is trying to tell me i have automatic updates turned off, Witch I don't

Exact error message: [Error number: 0x8DDD0018]
Windows Update cannot continue because a required service application is disabled. Windows Update requires the following services:
Automatic Updates enables detection, downloading, and installation of critical updates for your computer.
Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) enables faster, restartable downloading of updates.
Event Log logs Windows Update events for troubleshooting. To ensure that these services are enabled:

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. Type services.msc and then click OK.
3. In the list of services, right-click the service name, and then click Properties.
4. In the Startup type list, select Automatic.
5. Verify that the service status is started.


After following the troubleshooter, And trying all the knowledge base support i couls find i still dont get it. I hate to bug ya, as this is getting out of hand.

This sucks

Ok, disregard the last post. I finally figured it out after a couple hours of F#%^ing with the F#$%ing Windows Update. F#$%^ing crappy Microsoft Software.... Ok, im done. Thanks for all the help Guys.