X-no-Archive:yes
Almost. And so this is almost true, but just wrong enough to be dangerous.
Here's a fun way to see this at work. On a newly installed Win9x, hit
Ctrl-Alt-Del, and write down everything that is running. It might also be
fun to list all icons in your system tray (on the right of the task bar, in
the outline around the time). Save this list. From time to time, or
immediately after installing ANYTHING whatsoever, including and especially
Office, IE, Outlook, and your favorite AV scanner, repeat the above process,
and see what interesting and strangely named new processes are now consuming
memory and CPU cycles. Hint: if your system tray now consumes half your task
bar, you need to thin it out a little. On old / existing installs of Win9x,
run MSConfig, and see what it lists for Start up items.

You probably have more than a few things you really don't need running in
the background all the time (such as widgets to let you dynamically change
your display depth and resolution, or detect when a music CD is inserted,
both core business functions that are only slightly less useful than your AV
scanner). Some of these are installed stealthily, and some are installed
with your knowledge and consent. As this system clutter accumulates, your
system will run slower, due to less memory and CPU cycles being available
for the foreground tasks at hand.

The FDISK isn't necessary. The format is overkill; this basically removes
the system registry, and there are far faster and easier ways to that. It
also makes it harder for users to reinstall the system-resource wasters. And
while reinstalling Windows without the existing system registry is possible
and not that hard, it is usually only necessary in the most extreme cases of
too much junk.

Wirt and Denys are of course right about what causes and how to prevent
these problems (but you certainly didn't need me to tell you that). I will
add that even versions of MS Office can do things that you would rather it
not do, such as install and run FINDFAST. I have at home the Win98 Plus CD,
which includes a clever little Deluxe CD player. Upon insertion of a new CD,
it offers to get the CD info from Internet sources, and automagically, I
have title, artist and track information. It also upon running adds a
registry key that causes it to load on start up, a behavior I find
counterproductive.

If you have the internal IT resources, they can investigate and solve issues
with resource wasters, so as to prevent them. Policies can go a ways to
preventing these problems. Now, there are company policies, and there is
something called policies in Windows, which can allow and disallow certain
actions. Disallowing things that users need to be able to do is a great way
to infuriate them. Disallowing things that people are used to doing and
believe that they should be able to do (such as running SETI@home) will also
win you no friends among the little people. We can forget what the P in PC
stands for, and while you have a business to run, it is people that do the
work and make it work. Under Windows 2000, I have seen default user settings
that did not allow its users to change their color scheme or screen saver.
That's a little harsh. The nice thing is that in Windows 2000, this is very,
very granular. So, if you've been wanting to go to Windows 2000, you have
your sales pitch right here.

Greg Stigers
http://www.cgiusa.com