I buy computers on a regular basis for the company I work for.  I have bought Dell, Compaq, Hewlett Packard, etc.  They all have one thing in common, they are full of bloat. What is worse, the problem seems to continue to get worse, not better. Let me illustrate this for you a little better.

Back in the 1990′s this problem started to appear in store-bought computers.  Manufacturers started to include their own shells for windows, and a variety of other useless software.  The problem was mild compared to now.  Just as an example, a computer back in the day may have come with an 800 MB (that is megabyte!)  harddrive.  Very small by today’s standards.  The operating system and included software would usually consume about 200 MB, leaving the other 600 MB free for the user.

The most recent HP I just bought for our company had a 160 GB (that is gigabyte!) and it had 86 GB used before I ever turned it on.  That is 53% of the harddrive!  You might think my comparison to the old computer isn’t that bad.  But here is the real difference.  Back then, the operating system only used about 100 MB of space.  That means 50% of the pre-loaded software was the operating system.   Today, Windows XP only takes up about 1 GB of space.  That means the other 85 gigabytes was included software.  That means just over 1% of the included software is the operating system.

But wait!  It gets worse . Normally I erase the harddrives on these and load them up manually with all of the software that our company uses.  But last week my boss told me we were in a hurry and just to get a few essentially pieces of software loaded onto a computer for a new employee and that we’d swap them out in a few days when I got another one loaded up properly.  So I turned the unit on and allowed it to boot to the manufacturer’s software.  It took some time to load up and I was presented with about 15 different nagging screens asking me to register this or that, and update this and that.  I noticed the computer even appeared to be bundled with various different forms of ad-ware and browser toolbars.  I immediately went to the control panel under add/remove programs and decided to start removing things I didn’t want.  It took about 2 hours, actually (I still had an hour left before it had to be finished) and I had managed to remove just about everything that wasn’t critical.   The machine seemed to run a little better.  I thought I’d check the harddrive and see how much space I had managed to save.  Can you believe that the harddrive still showed 76 Gigabytes used.  A fresh install of XP pro usually takes less than 2 GB.  I couldn’t even figure out what was consuming all of the space.  It was ridiculous.

Needless to say, I took the next computer and booted it up to an erase disk and cleared it all off!  After the operating system was installed with all the latest patches and service packs, the amount of used harddrive space was under 2 Gigabytes, leaving the other 158 Gigabytes available for the user.

The easy answer to this problem is that you just reload the computer with its original operating system disc.  Certificate of AuthenticityUnfortunately, most manufacturers don’t give you one with your computer.  However, this is still the best way to solve the problem, so you’ll need to hunt down a CD.  Let me make one thing clear, all new computers that come with an operating system already have a license for using that operating system.  You should have a sticker on the computer somewhere that looks something like the one shown here.  That is your license.  As long as the CD you use is the same version of windows as the license, you’re product code will work to activate it and there is absolutely nothing illegal about doing this.  It also doesn’t really matter where you get the CD.  For example, if a friend of yours has the CD, use theirs.  There is one catch a lot of people don’t realize though.  You cannot use a retail copy of the CD for a computer that comes with an OEM license.  That means that if a friend of yours bought the CD at the store and it came in a cardboard box, then it is a retail version.  It will reject the product code if you try to type in the one from your OEM sticker.  Another place to check is with your computer manufacturer.  Often (but not always) if you call them on the phone you can request a Windows CD for your computer.  There is usually a charge that ranges from $20 to $50 depending on which company it is.  There is another surprising source, as well.  You can actually get one from Microsoft.  If you find the right number to call and say you have a license for Windows, but you do not have the media, often they will sell you one for under $50.   Typically this service is for people who’s computer manufacturer is out of business or can’t offer you one.  There are even places on the internet where you can download ISO images of Windows CDs.  Most of these are pirate sites, and we won’t link to any of those on here.  But you can search for them yourself.

Okay, so you have the CD.  Now what?

Well, before you go much further, you need to get on the Internet and hunt for drivers.  The best place to look is the computer manufacturer’s website.  Go to their support page for your PC.  90% of the time, they will have all the drivers you need available for download.  Make a folder on your desktop and start downloading each one.  It helps to make sub-folders called things like “video” and “audio” and save the files in there.  That way when the time comes, you know which driver does what.   Sometimes there are more than one driver for a particular device.  That means they may have shipped one computer with one device, and others with a slightly different device.  In this case, download all of them so you know you will at least have the right one in there somewhere.  Once you have them all downloaded, burn them to a CD or copy them onto a USB flash drive.

Okay, now you are ready.

Insert your windows media into the drive and reboot.  You’ll need to tell your computer that you want to boot from CD this time.  It is beyond the scope of this document to explain this because it is different on nearly every computer.  Just look for something on the screen when you first turn on your PC that says something similar to this, “PRESS F9 FOR BOOT ORDER” or “PRESS F1 FOR SETUP”  Whatever it is, press that before the BIOS finishes and begins to load windows.  If you miss it, just power the computer off and start over.   You’ll know you’ve gotten it right if you see this message, “PRESS ANY KEY TO BOOT FROM CD”  This message comes from the Windows CD.  So press a key and the windows installer should come up.  It is beyond the scope of this document to walk you through this process.

Once you’ve finished installing windows, you’ll want to check out the device manager.  On windows XP, you can get there by going to the control panel, clicking system, then hardware.  A perfect device manager should look like the picture below.

Device Manager

Okay, if your device manager looks like this, then count yourself lucky.  It probably has several devices listed with problems.  This is where that CD you made with drivers on it will come in handy.  Unfortunately, it is beyond the scope of this document to tell you how to install drivers.  They don’t all install in the same way.  Generally, try browsing to the files on the CD with windows explorer and double click them.  Many of them install automatically like this.  When you are done, hopefully your device manager will look like this.

Next thing you will want to do is updates.  That may sound boring and unnecessary, especially if your computer appears to be working fine.  But the consequences of not doing it means you may become infected with tons of spyware and viruses very easily.  Just click the windows update icon in your start menu and install every update and service pack it suggests.  You may have to restart the computer several times.  Every time it asks you to restart, just keep going back to the windows update icon and keep doing it until it says there are no more critical updates.

Final Notes.

Congratulations, your PC is free of bloat.  Unfortunately, it may also be free of a few useful pieces of software too.  Common examples are DVD movie playing software, and CD burning software.  There is no easy answer for this, other than to go out and buy some.  about 50% of the time, these programs are also down-loadable from the manufacturer’s website along with the drivers.  But for those of you that aren’t that lucky, I do have a suggestion.  Sometimes the prices of these programs are outrageous.  For example, CD burning software may cost as much as $89 retail.  But, if you check on ebay you can often find these programs for sale for under $10.  Also it is worth mentioning that if your computer came bundled with a program, you are licensed to use that program on the computer.  If you know somebody who has the install CD for that same software, it is not considered piracy to use their copy.  Just don’t use their serial number.

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Note: This article centers around the use of the Local Group Policy Editor.  The Local Group Policy Editor is not available in Home versions of Windows 7. Don’t worry, because we also include a registry fix for Windows 7 Home to accomplish the same task later in this article.

Let’s get started!

Type gpedit.msc into the Search box in the Start menu and hit Enter (Click Start –> type gpedit.msc into the search/run box and press enter).

Once the Local Group Policy Editor opens, navigate to User Configuration \ Administrative Templates then select Control Panel in the left Column. In the right column double-click on Prohibit access to the Control Panel.

In the next window, select Enable, click OK, then close out of Local Group Policy Editor.

After the Control Panel is disabled, click on the Start menu button.  You should no longer see control panel listed!  It’s really that simple!

If the user tries to type Control Panel into the Search/Run box in the Start menu, they will get the following error message indicating that access is restricted.

Disable Control Panel with a Registry Tweak

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, you can also use a registry fix to hide the Control Panel. This registry fix will work with all versions of Windows, including Windows 7 Home, Windows Vista, and Windows XP.  We highly recommend you make a restore point before modifying the registry.

Type regedit.exe into the Search box in the Start menu and hit Enter (Click Start –> in the Run/Search box type regedit.exe and press enter).

In the Registry Editor navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Policies\Explorer.  Right-click in the right pane and create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value.

Name the value NoControlPanel. Right-click on the newly created Value and click Modify.

In the Value data field change the value to “1” (the number one) then click OK. Close the Registry Editor.  You will need to restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

After you’ve rebooted, you should no longer see Control Panel listed in the Start menu.

If a user tries to access it using a workaround, such as by typing Control Panel into the Search box in the Start menu…

Windows will respond with the following message indicating access is restricted, just like if you were to disable it via the Group Policy Editor.

If you want to re-enable the Control Panel, go back into the Registry and change the NoControlPanel value back to “0” then reboot the computer.

This comes in handy if you have inexperienced users working on your machine and don’t want them messing with Control Panel settings, or if the computer is in a public area where some prankster might change settings on your intended users.  It’s a simple fix and works well!

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Bill Gates: I prefer PC’s over Mac’s because there’s a lot more software available for Windows.

Steve Jobs: So long as you include anti-virus and anti-spyware programs.

It just doesn’t get much truer than that boys!

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To add a folder to the taskbar, just right-click on the taskbar and choose the Toolbars menu, and then click on New Toolbar.

Just find the folder that you want… in this instance we’ll select the Computer icon and then click on Select Folder.

Now you can see the Computer folder right there on the taskbar. If you click the little arrows it will pop up and let you browse through all your drives. As a bonus this also works in Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

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To open up the sounds configuration panel quickly, just type in mmsys.cpl into the start menu search box, and hit enter. You could also go to the Sounds and Audio devices in Control Panel.

Click the Sounds tab and then browse down in the list to “Start Navigation”

You’ll see that the dropdown box has “Windows Navigation Start.wav” selected. Change this to (None) at the top of the list.

Hit OK and your annoyance is over with.

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If you don’t know what the quick launch menu is, its the little icons by the start button:

You can either drag an application or shortcut to the quick launch bar… or you can right click, and choose Add to Quick Launch:

Note that you could also use Pin to Start Menu…

To remove an icon from the quick launch bar, simply right click it’s icon and select Delete.

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Okay, the name doesn’t sound very exciting, I’ll admit. But after I tried it a few weeks ago, I’ve set it as my default audio and video player and never looked back. The thing is, I was satisfied with Windows Media Player, or at least I thought I was. There were lots of little things that always bugged me about WMP, but I always assumed it was the best thing out there, so I never bothered to try anything else.

What started it all for me was when I bought a new Sanyo CG6 digital camcorder that records directly to SD memory cards. I started making home movies, but I realized that when I tried to email those movies to my friends and family, they couldn’t open them. I tried and tried to find some kind of codec that you could install in Windows Media Player that would allow them to view the video, but nothing I tried would work. The only solution seemed to be to install the whole software suite (which takes about 20 minutes) from the CD that came with the camcorder. So I started looking on the Internet for a small, self-contained program that could play MPEG4 video. I came across several, and tried many of them out. But GOM player just blew me away.

So what makes GOM Player different? Here are 12 reasons.

1) Small. Yes, the entire install file is only about 4 MB in size. You can email it to somebody. Anyone checked to see how big the full Windows Media Player is lately?

2) Fast. Because it is small, it is faster and more efficient than Windows Media Player. When I click on a movie to play, it opens and plays almost instantly. Media Player is slow to start even on my Pentium 4 and often starts playing before it even finishes resizing the screen. GOM player even seems to be able to play high-definition videos at full speed that Media Player chokes on, with my Pentium 4.

3) Built-in codec’s. That’s right, it comes built in with its own codec’s, so it does not depend on anything else being installed on your system. So you won’t have to go hunting them down for most things. Also, the built-in codec’s seem to work far more reliably than Windows Media Player.

4) Codec recognition. Okay, so if you are using Windows Media Player and it doesn’t have the right codec, it just gives you an error about not having the right codec. GOM player will actually tell you what codec you need to play the file, and point you to a place where you can download it for free. Don’t worry, the place it points you to go is totally free of spyware and viruses.

5) Simple & Compact. One thing that drives me crazy about Windows Media Player is that when you first open it, you entire screen is filled with useless things, while the video you want to see is a very small little portion of the player. True, you can apply a skin to Windows Media Player, such as “corporate” but most people don’t know how and it never happens.

Controls. Yes, in GOM player you can adjust EVERYTHING. Ever tried watching a video in Windows Media Player and it was too dark? Ever tried finding the brightness control? Sometimes it is there, sometimes it isn’t (depends on the codec) Or, have you ever tried turning off visualizations in Windows Media Player when playing an MP3 file? You’d think it is a no-brainer, but you’ll find it can’t be done. With GOM Player, every single control imaginable is there, and it is always there and always works.

7) Full Screen. Yes, Windows Media Player has full screen mode too. But have you ever noticed that often it doesn’t work right? How many times have you tried to make a video full-screen and instead what happens is that you get a full black screen with a tiny little video playing in the middle? Also, some people never could figure out the alt-enter or double-click to go full-screen. With GOM player, you click one icon and it just works. It’s fast too.. No blanking of the screen and waiting several seconds for the video to come back.

Sequential Playback. So, you have several files called “video1.avi” and “Video2.avi” etc. Just click on the first one, GOM Player automatically looks for sequential filenames and starts playing the next one automatically.

9) Safer. Less chances of contracting a worm through a security hole, since Windows Media Player is a more popular target for hackers.

10) No Genuine Advantage. That’s right, you won’t have to worry about using Windows Update or installing/passing the Genuine Advantage hassle in order to get it installed and periodically update it.

11) Easy to Uninstall – If for some strange reason you don’t like it. Have you ever tried to uninstall Windows Media Player?

12) It’s Free! So it can’t hurt to try it, and if all else fails, see reason #11.

Okay, so there are 10 good reasons to switch to GOM Player. So far, I haven’t found a single reason not to. Over the years, I have wound up with a lot of videos in various different formats that have required hunting down tons of codec’s in order to play correctly. So, from my personal experience, here are some of those:

1) My Sanyo CG6 Camcorder – Uses MPEG4 compression, AAC Audio, and MP4 container format. None of these are native to Windows Media Player.

2) My Aiptek IS-DV2 Camcorder – Uses MPEG4 Compression, in .ASF format. – Not native to Windows Media Player

3) My Home CCTV Security Camera Recorder. It uses Intel Indeo 5 inside of an .AVI – Not native to Windows Media Player

4) My wife’s Fuji Digital camera – uses MJPEG inside of an .AVI – not native to Windows Media Player.

5) Videos I download from the Internet in XVID or DIVX – not native to Windows Media Player. Some also use AAC or AC3 Audio – Also not native.

6) MKV files (Matroska) from the Internet – not native to Windows Media Player.

7) DVD Video in MPEG 2 – Not Native to Windows Media Player

FLV video (Flash video) ripped from YouTube, amongst other places. – Not native to Windows Media Player.

All of these essentially play “out of the box” for me. It can actually do a ton more types than this, but these are the ones I use regularly.

Every now and then, I come across a piece of software that makes me go, “Wow! Why didn’t I know about this before?” This is one of those. Now it is installed on every computer I own or use.

For more information visit: http://www.gomplayer.com/main.html

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