Security in XP

[freeztar]

I'm setting up a new XP install and thought it would be interesting to have a discussion on security issues in XP and how to make XP as secure as possible.

 

I don't need a "Fort Knox" setup here as I'm the only user and I'm pretty savvy with XP, but I thought it'd be fun to go above and beyond what I need so that I can learn all the various tweaks. It might pay off in the future.

 

I found a program called "xpy". I just used it and am quite impressed. It basically saves the user a lot of time manually configuring services and registry. (eg disabling RPC and DCOM, securing user login, etc.)

Some of the tweaks I've found unnecessary (deleting page file on logoff), but overall they seem very useful and time saving. I decided to go with all of the tweaks. A brave move as I did not scroll through and look at everything it was doing, but I've got backups just in case. I was pleasantly surprised. Bootup time seemed slightly quicker and certainly more secure (though I was surprised that it didn't add the ctrl-alt-del option). It removed a lot of stuff in the basic UI as well. (who needs icons in the taskbar :)).

 

Overall, I'm quite pleased. The only peeve (so far anyways) is that it disables services needed for MS updates, but I'm not really worried about this as I can occasionally enable these and do an update.

 

Has anyone else tried this?

 

What security tweaks do you use?

 

EDIT: I meant to add that you should *not* use xpy if you are a novice. It can wreak havoc on your setup if you don't know what you're doing!