While installing Windows, I put together a file with quick reference of a few non-obvious things that are nice to do when you install Windows.

http://yoni.valhallalegends.com/stuff/CRnotes.txt

These notes are written for installing Windows Server 2003 and getting it to work more like Windows 2000 Professional... Some/all of them may apply to Windows XP as well. Also, almost all of them are biased towards my preferences, adjust as you wish.

Windows, boo!

What's wrong with autorun? :-\

[quote author=hismajesty[yL] link=board=2;threadid=7674;start=0#msg69956 date=1089641949]
What's wrong with autorun? :-\
[/quote]

Some music cds these days will automatically install anti-piracy software on your computer. That, and some auto-runs are just annoying.

Oh, agreed music cd autoruns are annoying. I hate when it runs an annoying interactive flash thing when all I want to do is rip the CD. :P

I usually hold shift when I put in a CD which I don't want to autorun. Otherwise, the feature is quite useful for when inserting commonly used music CDs.

Autorun is nothing but annoyance. It's never useful, sorry.

Edit: Added a few more things to the gpedit.msc list (removal of recycle bin, removal of Themes tab from Display control panel). See link above for updated notes.