Help a Linux User!

[Fidelio67]

Blimey, what a palaver Windows is. I'm probably making all sorts of basic mistakes. It seemed to take about 5 reboots to install the system, and within an hour of getting up and running, a bit of noodling around looking online for game demos etc, something had changed my Chrome default search from Google to Ask Jeeves. How does stuff like that happen? Does that suggest I've already got malware? I certainly didn't agree to any 'Do you want to change your default serach engine?' dialogue.
So just a quick ask if there's anyone who can point me at a savvy noob's guide to windows. It would be good if I could set it up so that it asks for a password if anything wants to change settings. I don't think I could ever see it being my main OS, but a bit of web access on the gaming machine seems necessary and I want to stop it pissing about changing my settings. The update thing in windows appears a bit basic, as it seems to require a lengthy reboot (or two) rather than just running in the background, so a way of streamlining that would be good too.

Also, the last time I used Windows was 98 and XP and they seemed to have a habit of sort of silting up and becoming slower. I could never work out why. Has this been fixed in the newer versions? I'm still on 7, if it makes a difference.

Mind you, I quite like the file structure. I'm sort of used to drives having moint points within a file system that starts at /root rather than having them all at the top, so that's quite transparent.
Thanks in advance
Fid

 

[c627627]

he way I do it is to partition the SSD into relatively small partitions, then install multiple OS on their own partitions. After setting everything up just like I like it to be, I image one OS from the other and vice versa.

I do this all the time, it's quicker than diagnosing problems. As long as you don't keep personal data on the OS partition, just reboot from one OS to another then nuke & reimage. I did this on old Win 9x machines and I do it today.

 

[The_Programer]

It seemed to take about 5 reboots to install the system, and within an hour of getting up and running, a bit of noodling around looking online for game demos etc, something had changed my Chrome default search from Google to Ask Jeeves. How does stuff like that happen? Does that suggest I've already got malware? I certainly didn't agree to any 'Do you want to change your default serach engine?' dialogue.

Welcome to Windows! I keep wanting to go to linux but haven't quite made it yet.
Multiple reboots to install is normal.
Search engines changes and tool bars are something you have to be constantly on guard against in windows. Anything you download free potentially has a toolbar/search engine setter in it. Theses are often hidden in the installers, to avoid installing them choose custom in the installer instead of automatic. Then somewhere in the options there will be a checkbox for what ever it came bundle with (toolbars, search engines, junkware) that you want to uncheck. Do that and you should be able to avoid having your settings changed.
Also check out Steam if you haven't already. Its a digital game distribution store that has 90% of all windows games in it.

It would be good if I could set it up so that it asks for a password if anything wants to change settings. I don't think I could ever see it being my main OS, but a bit of web access on the gaming machine seems necessary and I want to stop it pissing about changing my settings.

Short answer: you can't.
Long answer: Prompting on changing settings is enabled by default. Password required for non admin users. Problem is those settings changers are bundled with installers. So you just gave them permission to do what they want. Read above for how to avoid them.

The update thing in windows appears a bit basic, as it seems to require a lengthy reboot (or two) rather than just running in the background, so a way of streamlining that would be good too.

Again welcome to Windows! Updates are what you see is what you get. The best you can do is tell it to ask for every update and then ignore them until you want to reboot.

Also, the last time I used Windows was 98 and XP and they seemed to have a habit of sort of silting up and becoming slower. I could never work out why. Has this been fixed in the newer versions? I'm still on 7, if it makes a difference.

Somewhat. Most of the slowdown was caused by disk fragmentation, defragmentation is scheduled by default these days and that helps alot.

Mind you, I quite like the file structure. I'm sort of used to drives having moint points within a file system that starts at /root rather than having them all at the top, so that's quite transparent.
Thanks in advance
Fid

Its great unstill something assumes C:\