New computer going from XP to W7 utilities?

[Rick]

I just got a new laptop with Win 7 pro home.
I'm coming out of XP, so this is new to me.
What utilities do my fellow dopers suggest for a brand new Win 7 machine?
In the past I have run things like:
Spybot search and destroy,
Super anti-spyware
Avast anti virus
some registry cleaner that I don't recall the name of
etc, etc, etc.
Are those still suggested/recommended for Win7?

[Tim R. Mortiss]

I recently made the same leap. I'm using all the same utilities that I used before, and it works just fine.

[jz78817]

Originally Posted by Rick

I just got a new laptop with Win 7 pro home.
I'm coming out of XP, so this is new to me.
What utilities do my fellow dopers suggest for a brand new Win 7 machine?
In the past I have run things like:
Spybot search and destroy,
Super anti-spyware
Avast anti virus
some registry cleaner that I don't recall the name of
etc, etc, etc.
Are those still suggested/recommended for Win7?

Microsoft Security Essentials for AV
Spybot if you're paranoid or cruise a lot of pr0n sites
Registry cleaners are worthless.
Use a sandboxing browser like IE9 or Chrome.

[drewtwo99]

windirstat is a great utility. Helps you see graphically where all your files are, how big they are, and colors them by type. I couldn't live without it. Great for clearing up space.

"So THAT'S where I hid my 42.3GB porn collection!"

[Rick]

Sandboxing?

[jz78817]

Originally Posted by Rick

Sandboxing?

Sandboxing. Essentially confining the web browser (and its plugins) to a low-privileges corral in an attempt to limit the damage of any exploits.

[Keeve]

Originally Posted by drewtwo99

windirstat is a great utility. Helps you see graphically where all your files are, how big they are, and colors them by type. I couldn't live without it. Great for clearing up space.

Ditto. Finding wasted space is pretty much the *only* thing it is good for, but it is the perfect tool for that job. (I am very partial to programs that do only one thing. I hate the ones that are bloated with a gazillion features.)

[voltaire]

One little thing that peeved me about Win7 was how sleep mode (which is otherwise great) would kick-in even if you had a download in progress. Kind of ridiculous that Microsoft didn't build-in a way to prevent this without disabling or manually increasing the sleep timeout.

Enter a small, free utility called Coffee that won't allow your PC to sleep if there is network activity above whatever threshold you set.

[Keeve]

Originally Posted by voltaire

One little thing that peeved me about Win7 was how sleep mode (which is otherwise great) would kick-in even if you had a download in progress. Kind of ridiculous that Microsoft didn't build-in a way to prevent this without disabling or manually increasing the sleep timeout.

Enter a small, free utility called Coffee that won't allow your PC to sleep if there is network activity above whatever threshold you set.

Sounds interesting, but I need something just a little different. My problem is that as far as I can tell, there are only two things that will prevent sleep mode under normal circumstances: moving the mouse (or touching the mousepad) and hitting the keyboard. You have identified something that ought to be on that list but isn't, namely network activity. The missing item in my opinion (and would solve your problem as well) is: changes to the display.

Here are two simple cases to illustrate what I mean: (1) Suppose you are watching a movie. For 30 or 60 minutes or whatever, you stay away from the mouse and keyboard, and Windows thinks nothing is happening, so it goes to sleep. But if something is happening on the screen -- either moving pictures in my case or a crawling progress bar in yours -- that too should suffice. (2) I work in a school with touch-sensitive SmartBoards. Touching the screen moves the mousepointer, but (apparently because it isn't actually the mouse itself) Windows doesn't sense that anything is happening, and right in the middle of class, the pc will go to sleep.

Anyone know of a way to convince Windows that screen activity should prevent sleep mode?

[voltaire]

Well, most media player programs will inherently disable sleep-mode when in full-screen mode - or it's usually an option at least.

The screen activity thing could be problematic, because there are lots of things that produce screen activity that you don't care about and wouldn't want getting in the way of sleep mode - screen savers being just one example.

I dunno much about SmartBoards, but if an option isn't available to make touching the screen prevent sleep, you could always just increase the sleep timeout in the Power Settings to last at least the length of the class.

The problem with downloads is that you're never really sure how long a download will take, and even if you were, it would be a pain to go in and change the sleep timeout accordingly every time you wanted to start a download and leave your PC unattended.

[Blakeyrat]

Originally Posted by Keeve

Anyone know of a way to convince Windows that screen activity should prevent sleep mode?

Windows has an API call to temporarily disable monitor sleep, for exactly the reasons you need it. It's up to the application you're using to properly use the API call, though... no call, and it'll go to sleep.

[Rick]

Originally Posted by Keeve

Sounds interesting, but I need something just a little different. My problem is that as far as I can tell, there are only two things that will prevent sleep mode under normal circumstances: moving the mouse (or touching the mousepad) and hitting the keyboard. You have identified something that ought to be on that list but isn't, namely network activity. The missing item in my opinion (and would solve your problem as well) is: changes to the display.

Here are two simple cases to illustrate what I mean: (1) Suppose you are watching a movie. For 30 or 60 minutes or whatever, you stay away from the mouse and keyboard, and Windows thinks nothing is happening, so it goes to sleep. But if something is happening on the screen -- either moving pictures in my case or a crawling progress bar in yours -- that too should suffice. (2) I work in a school with touch-sensitive SmartBoards. Touching the screen moves the mousepointer, but (apparently because it isn't actually the mouse itself) Windows doesn't sense that anything is happening, and right in the middle of class, the pc will go to sleep.

Anyone know of a way to convince Windows that screen activity should prevent sleep mode?

I feel your pain. When I was instructing IT mandated that all computers in the company have a 5 minute screen saver with password protection. Since I might talk for 30 minutes on one PowerPoint slide this drove all the instructors nuts.
I think it was the threat to fly to home office and kill them all is what got them to make the change so we could teach.

[Quartz]

Originally Posted by Rick

What utilities do my fellow dopers suggest for a brand new Win 7 machine?

Go to Ninite and take your pick.

[Rick]

Originally Posted by Quartz

Go to Ninite and take your pick.

Ooooooooooo. I can't wait to get home.

[barbitu8]

Originally Posted by jz78817

Microsoft Security Essentials for AV
Spybot if you're paranoid or cruise a lot of pr0n sites
Registry cleaners are worthless.
Use a sandboxing browser like IE9 or Chrome.

Registry cleaners are worse than worthless. Don't touch any with a 10-ft pole.

[Rick]

Originally Posted by barbitu8

Registry cleaners are worse than worthless. Don't touch any with a 10-ft pole.

Why do you say that? I have had excellent luck in the past with them on XP and VISTA machines.

[Folacin]

Originally Posted by voltaire

One little thing that peeved me about Win7 was how sleep mode (which is otherwise great) would kick-in even if you had a download in progress. Kind of ridiculous that Microsoft didn't build-in a way to prevent this without disabling or manually increasing the sleep timeout.

I run BOINC software (World Community Grid in particular), and went in to power options and set this PC and another one to 'never sleep'. They did, however, continue to sleep after several hours.

I finally poked a little deeper into the options and clicked the 'Advanced' button - turns out that 'hibernate' has it's own setting (it looks like 6 hours may be the default) - I increased that and it solved that problem.

[jz78817]

Originally Posted by Rick

Why do you say that? I have had excellent luck in the past with them on XP and VISTA machines.

What problem did you think they were solving?

[Rick]

Slow running, mainly, and screen freezes, I have noticed are greatly reduced after running a registry cleaner.

[barbitu8]

Originally Posted by Rick

Why do you say that? I have had excellent luck in the past with them on XP and VISTA machines.

Indeed you've been lucky. They can screw up your registry, to the extent even of not being able to boot up. Altho I knew better, I recently let iObit clean my registry (one of the many tools it has). Since then, my mouse acts differently. If I keep my finger on it too long (more than a fleeting instant), it acts as if I've clicked twice, sometimes highlighting stuff I don't want to highlight and deleting more than I want to delete. For example, I just clicked the end of the last sentence and the whole paragraph was highlighted. I fleetingly clicked the last sentence, and the period was highlighted.

[Keeve]

Originally Posted by Rick

Why do you say that? I have had excellent luck in the past with them on XP and VISTA machines.

The operative word being "luck".

I would trust these cleaners if they would give me an explanation of each and every change they're making. Without such explanations, I have no choice than to presume that they are removing things which LOOK like junk, without being sure that they ARE junk.

Are the authors of these registry cleaners familiar with every last piece of software that exists? How can it be so sure that any particular entry should be "cleaned"? When they can answer these questions, I'll begin to trust them a little bit. But I have not yet seen even one which offers anything even close.

[Rick]

Originally Posted by Keeve

The operative word being "luck".

I would trust these cleaners if they would give me an explanation of each and every change they're making. Without such explanations, I have no choice than to presume that they are removing things which LOOK like junk, without being sure that they ARE junk.

Are the authors of these registry cleaners familiar with every last piece of software that exists? How can it be so sure that any particular entry should be "cleaned"? When they can answer these questions, I'll begin to trust them a little bit. But I have not yet seen even one which offers anything even close.

So you have no first hand experience with them, or cites about their effectiveness or lack thereof.

[Keeve]

Originally Posted by Rick

So you have no first hand experience with them, or cites about their effectiveness or lack thereof.

I have watched others use them at work. I have asked if there is any report of what changes it will make, and the answer is no. I have looked at the sales information online about them, and all I see are promises and testimonials, but nothing explanatory about how it decides which "junk" is worth getting rid of.

Suppose I would be adventurous and try one. My system might appear to be better and faster, but I'd have no way of knowing which changes fixed that, and whether some other changes are for the worse but I just didn't notice anything bad yet. And the opposite: My system might be obviously worse off, but I would not know which changes caused it, so I'd have to undo everything, so why bother?

But if have can suggest another idea, I'd really love to hear it. Are you suggesting that some registry cleaners DO itemize every change, with a reasonable explanation?

Let's see, at the top of GQ, there's a sticky titled "How to protect and clean your computer from malware". The first registry cleaner mentioned there is CCleaner. Wow! That's the one I watched my co-worker use! Let's take a look at what their website says...

Ooops! I owe you thanks and an apology. The screen capture shown here seems to be exactly what I've been looking for!

Ignorance fought! Thanks!

[Gedd]

Bit of a sidebar question-

The McAfee 1-year subscription that came with my wife's laptop (win7) is up and will renew for 40$. I'm pretty sure you can get the same protection for free. I read in one review that Avast gave a 365 day free trial, but I thought it was . . . well, "for real" free. Which is it?

[BigT]

Originally Posted by Gedd

Bit of a sidebar question-

The McAfee 1-year subscription that came with my wife's laptop (win7) is up and will renew for 40$. I'm pretty sure you can get the same protection for free. I read in one review that Avast gave a 365 day free trial, but I thought it was . . . well, "for real" free. Which is it?

Avast, like most antiviruses that offer a free product, also has a paid version that has more "features", which mostly amount to bloat or things you can get elsewhere for free.

Which connects with my suggestion for Windows 7: ThreatFire. (It does have problems on Windows 8, but it doesn't sound like the OP will be upgrading anytime soon.) Unlike regular antiviruses, the software tries to detect the behavior of software rather than trying to identify already known viruses. It makes traditional antiviruses much more effective.

Also, I really wonder what about Microsoft Security Essentials people think is effective, as it's always mentioned despite its relatively low malware protection score. If it's speed, that's likely because it doesn't work as well.

BTW, I always just pick the best free antivirus from that site's testing. It's worked so far.

[binaryman]

I use Directory to find out where all my disk space is going
It is like WinDirStat but faster
Finds duplicate files too