Murphy's Law: The Post-Windows-7 Freeware Survival Guide

Posted 10/23/2009 at 10:00am | by David Murphy

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What's the first thing you're going to do after installing the Windows 7 operating system?  If you live in Japan, perhaps you'll go celebrate your new, wallpaper-shifting desktop with some cardiac arrest.  If you're one of the stalwarts still clinging to your XP or Vista operating system, well, you're probably going to spin your chair around in smug defiance of Microsoft's latest bit of software.  And if you're a Maximum PC reader, I would hope that you're going to treat your fresh new installation of Windows 7 as an October spring cleaning of-sorts.

In fact, I urge you to.  One doesn't often get a chance to reinstall an operating system from scratch.  Or, rather, it's always easier to think of the hundreds of reasons why it's just not the right time to wipe-and-reinstall the contents of your primary hard drive.  Resist the temptation to take the easy route.  Backup your drive, give it a good format, and install Windows 7 onto your clean-as-a-whistle partition.

And once you've done that, read the rest of this article.  While my colleagues at Maximum PC have given you some good first steps into your new Windows 7 world post-installation, I'd like to go one bit further and list out my typical post-installation routine for any Windows operating system.  There are a number of key freeware choices that you'll want to slap onto your system to establish a baseline environment that's as efficient as it is secure--that, and you should really take this time to establish preventative measure that will keep your PC as clutter-free as can be throughout its new Windows 7 lifespan.

After all, bloated systems make Kylie sad.

Step One: The Interwebs

After I've gone through the various Windows 7 settings and tweaked them to my personal preferences (I like my hidden folders shown, damnit), I fire up Internet Explorer for its first and last time... to download Mozilla Firefox. I'm not a Firefox fanboy through and through--especially given the memory leaks that continue to plague the browser in various ways. However, just about anything is more useful, less cluttered, and better secured than Internet Explorer. The helpful IE View extension ensures that I'll always be able to load up the IE rendering engine if I'm in a jam (or navigating Microsoft's Windows Update site). Better still, I can immediately grab all my cherished bookmarks from the Cloud using the much-loved Xmarks add-on.

Step Two: Security

Before I start downloading programs and files en masse, I like having some kind of virus scanner either running in the background or easily available through a context menu. When's the last time I actually had a virus? I couldn't tell you. But I could tell you when the next time is that a virus is likely to infect my PC: never. There's been a lot of chatter about Microsoft's free Security Essentials application. I haven't honestly tried the scanner myself. I'm a time-tested fan of good ol' Clamwin, the open-source virus scanner that's quick to install, easy to run (and update), and relatively scare in its footprint. Whatever your choice, an antivirus scanner is worth its weight in easing your own personal stress over potential computer infections... even if it never ends up finding a virus at all.

Step Three: Decrapping

Just so I can get a good habit started before I forget, I make sure to grab the latest version of Spybot S&D and set the program's advanced configuration so that it always runs on my machine at particular intervals. I like Spybot S&D for this very fact: You can literally "set it and forget it," as the popular infomercial saying goes, and have a constantly updating, spyware-free system without having to worry about starting the application manually. Another nice feature of Spybot S&D is its ability to "immunize" your system against certain spyware "infections." In short, the program adjusts your browser's settings to block out known problems before they occur--a nice bit of preventative maintenance that you don't always find in a typical "scan and delete" application.

Get ready for steps Four and Five on page two!