There are a few features in Windows that aggravate me to no end so I thought I'd share the scripts I use to disable them in case you feel the same way.

The first evil feature is simple file sharing in Windows XP. Simple file sharing is on by default for systems not on a domain and turning it off is hidden all the way at the bottom of the View tab in Windows Explorer's Folder Options dialog. This feature hides all the Security tabs in Explorer, wreaks havoc when trying to use authentication in IIS, and basically makes it impossible to share files with anyone that has the setting turned off. Save yourself a lot of headaches and confusion by disabling simple file sharing.

The second evil feature is called hide file extensions for known file types. This brilliant feature makes it so half your files (the "known file types") have extensions and half of them don't. For the half that don't, you're expected to look at the little icons to figure out what kind of files they are. Someone working on Windows must have thought having ".doc" on the end of document files was too confusing. This feature is especially concerning since a malicious person can send you a file with double extensions and Windows will actually help them hide the real file extension. Thus, a file that looks like "budget.xls" could actually be "budget.xls.js" which, when opened, could run code to install spyware, delete your My Documents folder, or anything else. I can't understand how hiding file extensions could be useful to anyone and I'd be more than happy if this "feature" was eliminated in Longhorn.

Click here to download a zip file containing scripts that disable these two evil features.