As a developer, what changes do you make to a vanilla Windows install?

Question

When I get a vanilla Windows system, there\'s a bunch of stuff I change to make it more developer-friendly.

Some of it I remember every time, other stuff I only do as an

Answer 1

over the years i have arrived to the decision that i do as little customization as possible since workplaces change and computers change (both at home and at work).

i used to do all kinds of crazy tweaks with litestep, setting up partitions, etc. these days i pare it down to the basics, and it does not take me long to setup a machine and have a familiar environment.

in addition to the usual "win32dev" setup (classic scheme, optimized for performance, no special effects, show all files, details in explorer views, blue background, etc) i have the following stack:

• cygwin (gcc, vim, curl, wget, perl/ruby/python, svn, git, ssh, netcat, etc; rxvt for terminal)
• ffox + adblock + dev plugins
• clipx for simple stack-like clipboard with previews
• textpad + a few basics syntax highlighters
• virtuawin - the only minimal window manager that does all i need and nothing more
• autoHotKey for basic app shortcuts
• procexp to replace task manager
• all other sysinternals tools
• tortoise svn
• putty + agent + keys
• 7zip
• keepass
• wireshark

everything i install by hand goes into c:\programs (for easy no-space, lowercase paths).