Reformatting - What do you put on right away?

[Zosi]

The essentials, roughly in order:

foobar2k, to provide a soundtrack for the rest
Firefox + NoScript
Irfanview
WinRAR or 7-Zip, depending on how recently I've gotten sick of 7-Zip's shitty interface
CCCP with Media Player Classic
Vim
Pidgin
PuTTY and WinSCP

The non-essentials that get installed over the next day or so:
Java runtime and JDK
Eclipse
Python
uTorrent
ClamWin
Simon Tatham's Puzzle Collection, the very best simple time-wasting puzzles ever
Daemon Tools

I'll probably edit more in when I get home, at work now.

[Nynaeve]

OS updates
Anti-virus & firewall
Firefox
OS updates
Driver updates
Email setup
IM setup
etc.

I'm paranoid and I like installing big OS updates, like the latest service pack or a packaged group of IE security updates, from a flash drive. Then AV and software firewall before I plug in my network cable. After that I think it's just personal preference on what you have to have installed before you can start using the PC or let yourself go to bed (as I usually end up doing these things at odd hours).

And yeah firewall notifcations ftw

[Amele]

It's messy, but I prefer a software firewall as well as my router's hardware one. I like notifications about apps asking for net access and so on.

oh definitely, but for the purposes of protecting a system on the first networked boot up, a hardware firewall is fine (you just want something that will exercise better port control than windows default firewall). then you can set up the software wall later if that's what you prefer. - I personally prefer hardware walls but I admit that has a lot to do with how long I've been working with firewalls (back in the wild west days when software walls were basically placebo junk-ware that had more to do with image than actual protection.)

[EagleCeres]

I just did a fresh install of my desktop and it went something like:

• OS (XP Pro)
• Drivers (originals off original cd's, newer off usb/fresh burnt cd's)
• AVG + Spybot + Ccleaner
• OS Updates
• FireFox + Addons
• AlZip
• Media Updates (divx, cccp, etc)
• FFXI
• Office-like software
• Photoediting software
• Disk burning software
• Random software (CDisplay, Internet Messengers/Chat Clients, desktop mascots, etc)
• OS Updates (again!)

[Shuemue]

(back in the wild west days when software walls were basically placebo junk-ware that had more to do with image than actual protection.)

You're talking about Black Ice aren't you?

[Amele]

You're talking about Black Ice aren't you?

early versions of alot of the antivirus brand firewalls were basically vapor ware too (like norton's) but yeah, black ice was what I had in mind lol