keep your ethernet unplugged until you've installed Tiny Personal Firewall or equivalent! block anything that starts with "wga".

holy crap is XP dumb when it first comes up. wow.

• wallpaper → not dumb
• appearance tab
  • style → classic
  • effects: "transition effect" → off, "hide underlined letters" → off
• resolution → decent

• "change way windows notifies me" on left, all → unchecked
• "windows firewall" config link at bottom, → off
• "windows update" config link at bottom, → off

• "group similar" → off
• "show quick launch" → on maybe
• "hide inactive icons" → off
• start menu tab, → classic menu
• customize, at bottom of check list, "use personalized menus" → off

• "do not move files to the recycle bin" → on

• go to "c:\"
• view | details
• view | status bar → on
• tools | folder options
  • tasks → "classic folders"
  • view tab
    • "display simple folder view" → off
    • "display the contents of system folders" → on
    • "hidden files and folders" → "show hiden"
    • "hide extensions" → off
    • "hide protected OS files" → off (then hit [YES] to confirm because the computer clearly outranks you)
    • "remember each folder's view settings" → off
    • [Apply]
    • [Apply to All Folders]
    • [Reset All Folders]
    • [Apply to All Folders]
    • [Ok]

• run it and go through obligatory "do you need an isp" crap
• homepage → anything but MSN (google?)

• advanced tab
  • performance settings
    • → "best performance"
    • if moving swap file, do it in advanced tab now
  • startup and recovery
    • "automatically restart" → off (so bluescreens don't look like random reboots and you can actually read the error message)
  • if moving temp path or adding program paths, edit environment variables now
  • error reporting → disable

• if you got a retarded icon by default or something, change it (even though you'll likely never see it again)
• "change the way users logon"
  • "use welcome" → off
  • "fast user switching" → off

• alerter → stop and set to manual
• automatic updates → stop and set to manual
• themes → stop and set to manual

• pointer scheme → 3d bronze (or manually switch just the animated hourglasses)

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

• tools, options, → "always ask me where to save files"

http://windizupdate.com