I recently got hold of a new laptop for work purposes, and for the first time had access to administrative priviledges on my main work computer. It came with Windows XP, which despite being pretty ancient these days still seems to just about be a reasonable choice. I recalled seeing some posts made by DeathBoy ages ago in which he pointed out that despite initial appearances, Windows is customisable and tameable without too much fuss. While I didn't directly consult his LJ for advice, it was the fact that he'd bothered to point this out that led me to try to do something about my work environment on Windows XP.

What I eventually ended up with is the following:

• I switched to the silver theme in Control Panel → Display → Appearance → Color scheme. It's the least horrid of the themes that came with the system.
• I switched off the screensaver in Control Panel → Display → Screen Saver. I also adjusted the power-saving features to my liking - much of the time I use the computer in a dock at my desk. The main change here was in Advanced where I made sure that it prompts for a password on resuming, does nothing when I close the lid, and prompts me when the power button is pressed.
• I set folders to show details, hidden files, file extensions by setting that view in the Desktop folder and then choosing Tools → Folder Options and under View selecting full path, hidden files, and unchecking "Hide extensions for known file types", and then clicking Apply to All Folders. In General I also made sure that it would open each folder in the same window.
• I turned off desktop icons by right-clicking the desktop, and under Arrange Icons By unchecking Show Desktop Icons.
• I added the Desktop toolbar to the taskbar by unlocking the taskbar and activating Toolbars → Desktop. I resized it to show just the Desktop header. I also switched off the language bar in Control Panel → Regional and Language Options → Languages → Details → Language Bar by unchecking Show the Language Bar on the Desktop.
• I installed Vim, and had it add an "Edit with Vim" context menu entry, so that I have a familiar editor available in a pinch.
• I set the tray to hide inactive icons by right-clicking on the Start button and selecting Taskbar then Hide Inactive Icons and in the Customize settings hiding the unwanted icons.
• I customised the show/hide settings to show just the icons that I generally use
• I switched off some services and other auto-run things by installing ccleaner and using its startup management features.
• I activated X style window focus by installing TweakUI (obtained from annoyances.com) and selecting Mouse→X-Mouse→Activation follows mouse
• I turned off autoplay in Tweak UI → My Computer → AutoPlay.
• I turned off the Sophos anti-virus icon with a registry setting, by creating and running a .bat file containing REG ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Sophos\AutoUpdate /v HideTrayIcon /d 0x00000001 /t REG_DWORD /f
• I turned off autodial in IE in Tools → Internet Options → Connections → Never Dial a Connection. This was only annoying because my work VPN connection appears as a dialup connection and when the regular connection was a little slow the system tried to dial up.
• I installed AMP Font Viewer and used its previewing and copying features to archive away a whole raft of fonts that I doubt I'll ever use. This leaves me with a manageable font-list in applications.
• I remapped Caps Lock to be another Ctrl key with another registry setting. This time I used a .reg file with:

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,1D,00,3A,00,00,00,00,00

Some things that didn't work out for me:

• I tried to make it easy to type ë with a couple of applications:
  • AllChars was good and mirrors the way I type characters on Linux, but it got confused as I moved in and out of NX sessions and VirtualBox sessions.
  • CFi Characters was even better with a pretty neat interface, but crashed a couple of times.
  Ultimately the disappointment is that these seem to be limited to CP1252 characters.
• I tried to remove the tray icon for networking, by removing the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{7007ACCF-3202-11D1-AAD2-00805FC1270E} but then I couldn't enter credentials for the work wifi network (it's a bit of a jittery network setup, so it does seem that sometimes I have to enter the details again.)

Overall, I think I've managed to get a useful environment without too much fuss. Many thanks to DeathBoy for inadvertently setting me off on this little quest!