This has been a long time coming. To long to be honest, but it’s done now. That’s right, Microsoft Windows XP Professional has been reinstalled on my main rig. I’m actually in the process of reinstalling various applications as I type this.

So, what are some of the first things I install? Well, in no particular order:

• Windows Updates (Duh) - Including Service Pack 2
• AVG AntiVirus
• nVidia NForce Drivers (66.93) and various other device drivers.
• Opera 8.0 Beta 2
• Google DesktopSearch
• Google Toolbar
• Google Picasa 2
• Sun JRE (Java) 1.5.0_01
• OpenOffice.org 1.1.4
• XFire
• Trillian 3.1 Pro
• Tiny KeyCounter (TKC)
• Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0
• World of Warcraft
• CosmosUI for WoW

In addition to all of those, I also make it top priority to uninstall many of the default things Windows XP installs. Things like Windows Messenger, MSN Explorer, as well as the default set of games, wallpapers, and various other useless things. After those are gone, I also take a extremely close look at the Windows Services to see what I want to disable. For those of you who don’t know what you can or should disable for better performance, I’d suggest taking a look at this guide.