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ABC ~ All 'Bout Computers
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Scratch Building a New PC the Jacobs Way
~~Kathryn Jacobs, PowerPointAnswers
                                                with Bruce Jacobs

By the way, if you frequent the PowerPoint newsgroup, every once in a while you will hear talk of "Brianizing" a machine. You may wonder what we are all talking about. Wonder no more: Brianizing is the process of taking your computer clear down to an unformatted hard drive and re-installing everything you need. It gets its name from Brian Reilly, a PowerPoint MVP who believes you can't scratch build a machine too frequently.

Bruce (my husband and system administrator) and I don't normally brianize very often. But recently, we went through a spate of rebuilding and rebuilding our PCs. Several of them were going to be used at a conference, so they needed to be cleanly scratch built both before we went to the conference and after we got back home. The following is the process we used.

All of the Windows PCs in our network run Windows XP, Service Pack 2. We recommend you do the same.

Before you start

Before you start, you need to make two sets of backups of everything on the computer that you need to keep. We make one backup on another machine on our network and a second to a CD or tape. Put the second copy away somewhere safe so that you have it if something goes wrong.

Next, obtain a copy of service pack 2 on CD-ROM. If you can not get a copy of service pack 2 on CD you will need to configure the network on your PC with an XP firewall before you download it. Since that can cause a number of potential security openings in your computer network, we never add a Windows computer to our network that doesn't have SP 2 installed already.

Unplug all network cables and remove all wireless capabilities from your machine. This may be as simple as removing your wireless card or as complicated as disabling the wireless connections from your BIOS (see your manufacturer's website or support documentation for information on the BIOS option). If you really can't disable the wireless connectivity, make sure you do the scratch build from some remote place with no wireless connection.

Do not plug in your cables until we tell you to do so!

Do a complete Windows XP install

Insert windows XP install disk and cycle power. Do not select repair. Instead, do a complete install as follows:

1. Delete all partitions
2. Setup any partitions which are to be kept.
3. Format slow/fast NTFS
4. When it asks for name and company either enter correct data or just enter user
   
   Some programs can embed this info in your documents, and spyware may also use this info. Because of this, Bruce usually just enters user
    
5. Use defaults except make sure you have a non-trivial admin password.
   
   A non-trivial password is one that is not based on any English words, contains both numbers and letters, and is not easily associated with anything in your life that the general public might be able to find out.
    
6. Create accounts for all the users

After all the reboots are done

1. Check the disk drive for errors
2. Defragment (Defrag) even if it says you do not need to do so

   As hardly any thing is on the drive yet you can do both of these steps better now than you can later. Defragging now will allow your computer to optimize where all the system pieces are placed on your disk. Once you start installing other things (even service packs), you will not be able to move some of the system files.
   
   

3. Do not activate at this time unless you like to talk to people on the phone

   Since you have no network connected yet, you are better off waiting to activate until just before you are ready to install other programs

Finish Windows

You are now ready to set up passwords for each user and confirm Guest is disabled. Once that is done, you can install Windows Service Pack 2 from your CD.

Install the virus checker of your choice. We use Norton, but there are many out there. We really don't care which one you use, just be sure you use a good one and keep it current. If it recommends you run a virus check, do it. It should be quicker to run it now than it would be to do it after you are connected to the network.

Your computer is safe enough to get connected to the outside world. You have the basic protections offered by Windows XP Service Pack 2 installed and working, so reattach your network cable and configure the computer to talk to your network.

Before you go much further, you need to check that none of your device drivers have errors or are missing. Right click the "My Computer" entry in your Start menu, select properties. Go to the Hardware tab and click the "Device Manager" button. Look for any drivers that are highlighted in yellow. These devices are having problems. You can double click each icon and click the "Troubleshoot" button. You will be guided through the process of fixing each problem.

Whether you found any device driver problems or not, your next step is to go to the website for the manufacturer of your video card. Check to see if they have updated drivers available (they probably will). Download and install the updates. This is especially important if you are running PowerPoint, as it gets really picky about video driver problems.

Run Windows Update. There are additional patches added for Windows XP regularly. If you don't run Windows Update at this point, you will think you are secure and protected, but you aren't.

Create a short cut to windows explorer for the desktop. Using this shortcut, open Windows Wxplorer and set up your folder view:

• Go to the View tab of Tools => Folder Options…
• Select "Show hidden files and folders"
• Clear "Hide extensions for known file types"
• Clear "Hide protected operating system files…"
• Answer Yes to the dialog box
• Click apply to all folders
• Answer Yes to this dialog box

You are now ready to activate Windows. Since you are connected to a network now, you can click on the icon in your taskbar to do the activation. The button should be near the lower right hand corner of your screen. Doing the activation will get rid of the annoying icon.

Add software

Every machine in our house has the following software installed:

• Some version of Office (most have 2003, but we have older versions as well)

  If you are installing multiple versions of Office, install the oldest first and then move through to the newest.
  
  

• Some drawing tool - usually PaintShopPro from Jasc
• SnagIt from TechSmith
• Spybot - to keep our machine clear of spyware

  If you need spyware protection, check out both Spybot and AdAware. Both are good products. You may even find you need both programs.
  
  

• Acrobat Reader from Adobe

Either as you finish installing each program, or when you are all done installing, check each program for updates. For Office, you can go to Help--> Check for Updates and follow the links on Office Online. Other products have similar mechanisms to get the updates.

Make sure that as you install and update each product, you also activate and or register each one. This will allow the company to update you on fixes and new releases. However, when Bruce and I activate and register products, we generally do not allow them to send us any emails other than that which is related to the product being activated or registered.

The final thing we do before using a machine is to set up Office in the best, most useable way possible. We set up PowerPoint consistently, but don't set up the other Office applications the same way from computer to computer. Since PowerPoint is my life, I am going to share with you the things you need to change in PowerPoint before you use it.

To set up PowerPoint, you will need to do the following:

1. Tools--> Options, Save tab
   • Turn off Fast Saves
   • Verify that AutoRecovery is checked and set to a time you can live with
   • Change the default file location - (Since you really don't want to store everything in My Documents, you really do want to organize your files into sub-folders.)
2. Install a Printer
   • No printers installed = No PowerPoint
   • You don’t need an actual printer. You just need to install drivers.
   • I have both color and b/w print drivers installed on every computer. It extends the usability of PowerPoint.
3. Tools--> Options, Edit tab
   • Check your recently used files list. If you share a computer, set it to zero. If you swap between multiple projects, you may want to set it higher.
   • Set the number of bytes for "Link sounds" to as high as possible (50,000). This will allow all but the very largest WAV files to be embedded. No other sound files will embed in PowerPoint.
4. Tools--> Options, General tab
5. Review the number of undos. You are likely to find you need a different number than the default. Slow machines need lower numbers, as do busy machines.
6. If you will be working with older presentations and can’t use the multiple masters or new animations, then disable the bottom three check boxes.
7. Tools--> Options, Print tab
   • Turn off background printing. It has nothing to do with whether your slide backgrounds will print. It has to do with how PowerPoint sends your print jobs to the Print Spooler (the program that handles the printer).
8. Tools--> Options, Security tab, then click the button or Tools--> Macro--> Security
   • Set your security level to Medium, if you run macros or add-ins. (They won’t run if your security setting is high or very high.)
   • Set your security level to Low only if you are willing to take risks. You may also want to set it to low if you write your own macros and add-ins
9. Tools--> AutoCorrect, AutoFormat tab
   • Uncheck the bottom three settings, so that you can make your own formatting decisions. If they are checked, PPT will change text sizes and slide layout to fit what it thinks you want.

Learn visually?

Check out this self-running PPT Presentation on setting up PowerPoint correctly.

Kathryn Jacobs, Microsoft MVP, PowerPoint and OneNote
Get PowerPoint answers at http://www.powerpointanswers.com

Get OneNote answers at http://www.onenoteanswers.com/

Cook anything outdoors with http://www.outdoorcook.com

Kathy is a trainer, writer, Girl Scout, parent, and whatever else there is time for.

I believe life is meant to be lived. But, if we live without making a difference, it makes no difference that we lived.