Blade Edge

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So I’m just about done setting up my laptop. I finished moving all mt files off my old laptop last night (this morning actually, if you want to get technical), I just defragged it a little while ago, and now I’m finishing up my Spyware and Antivirus scans. Nailed a few suckers that managed to creep on over the past three or four days. I have Panda Antivirus, ZoneAlarm, Spybot and Ad-Aware all running 24/7 in my tray to provide me with the most protection possible. I’m willing to sacrifice some cycles in order to avoid some major disasters down the line. Best to nip these things in the bud. After this last spyware scan (it’s the third spyware app I have, Spy Sweeper. I have three, and they’ve all detected spyware in their scans, which proves that just having one isn’t enough), I’m going to run Disk Cleanup to get rid of all the temp files I ammassed while installing all my downloaded apps, among other things.

I’ve also set up tasks in Outlook to keep me from letting the comp get clogged up:

daily – download new antivirus definitions for Panda
weekly – Full anti-virus/-spyware scans (Spyware scanners update before scans)
monthly – Run Disk Cleanup, back up files and defrag

This is all thanks mainly to some great reference articles from MaximumPC magazine.

So my next step after this last spyware scan completes is to tweak out XP. Not totally – I’m not going to skin it or install like a bajillion tweak utilities (ie XTeq Setup, TweakXP, etc) – just TweakUI and some registry settings and Service modifications.

After that I should be ready to rock and roll! I’m going to hold off reformatting my old computer until next weekend – I want to make sure I have everything transferred over, and the best way to do that is use this comp for a week. If I don’t need to go back to the old comp for anything, I’m set. In the meantime tho I’m going to shut it down and hook the Samsung up to my new lappy for some dual-display goodness. Mmmmmm….

Random Note

Kinda somewhat funny thing happened today. I had unplugged the speaker cable from my old laptop and put it in the new one. As I was defragging I started hearing the high-pitched scraping sound (at least that’s what it sounded like). But it was very soft. So at first I thought my speakers were generating noise, so I turned them up – no change. Then I realized it was coming from my old laptop. I leaned down by it and the noise defined itself into what sounded like the hard drive scratching along like mad. I almost freaked out because I though it was on its way to a critical drive failure when I realized it was… playing out a beat. Yup, my screen was closed and the teeny speakers were pumping out Mona Lisa Overdrive (Matrix II CD) in tinny tones.

So yea, scary, then funny, then stupid.

Whoops – scan’s done. Back to work!