xpy
by Jan T. Sott

xpy is a small software, securing your Windows 2000/XP/2003 installation and protecting your privacy. In addition to so-called Antispy features, it disables common security threats (RPC/DCOM, LMHash) and increases your Windows performance. Besides disabling Windows and some of its components to communicate with Microsoft servers, xpy improves privacy settings and your system’s security.

Features:
• Disable Windows “calling home”
• Disable questionable services
• Disarm Internet Explorer
• Disarm Windows Media Player
• Remove Windows Messenger
• Improve privacy and security
• Improve performance

xpy is currently available in two versions, Redistributable and Monolingual. The Redistributable build includes all available languages and is intended for distribution on offline-media (i.e. CD-ROM) or Intranet, while the Monolingual builds try to save bandwidth for fastest possible download speed.

Open Source - Free!

Info: xpy Homepage
Project: @ SourceForge

Vispa
by Jan T. Sott

Vispa is 'xpy for Vista' - a small software, securing your Windows Vista installation and protecting your privacy. In addition to so-called Antispy features, it disables common security threats and increases your Windows performance.
Free - open source!

It displays the following categories that all have several entries that can be tweaked: General, Services, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Usability and Delete Files. The general and servies categories seem to be the most interesting ones. You can disable automatic windows updates, time synchronization and services like this there.

@ Author:
"The only recommendation I can give is not applying settings without vague knowledge of what you're doing. Not every setting is desired in every environment. Vispa is no tool for beginners, just a more convenient way of tweaking your operating system."

Download»

Click to view attachment

xpy v0.10.4 Monolingual
(2008-06-13)

Changes:

• added new features
  • disable windows desktop search
    
  • remove windows desktop search
• added /noreboot switch
  
• re-added czech translation
  
• re-enabled DelSamplePlaylists
  
• fixed display bug in GenUnPrefetch
  
• fixed possible bug in UsabDisableSounds autodetection
  
• modified batch-mode to run passively
  
• improved sourcecode configurability
  
• improved sourcecode documentation

@ SourceForge

xpy 0.10.5 and Vispa 0.2.5
20. June 2008

"Many new features and many bugfixes are coming with the all new version. A bug causing language problems should’ve been fixed, making English the default language (again) on unsupported language environments. Also some bugs with batch-files has been fixed, they now create restore points properly and read the search engine given in the file. The next release will see some more features and fix another minor bug.. and everything else i don’t know about yet!"

xpy Changelog
xpy Download

Vispa download link

xpy Redistributable / Special Builds v. 0.10.9
December 4, 2008

Changelog:

• fixed restorepoint-notification bug in batch-mode
• fixed bug in ServNetMeetingDesktop
• fixed bug in ServTelnet detection

Specical builds are: minixpy-0.10.9-bin.zip/minixpy-0.10.9i-bin.zip/xpy-0.10.9i-bin.zip (all i386)

Get it @ SourceForge

Vispa 0.2.9 (2008-12-04)

• fixed restorepoint-notification bug in batch-mode
• fixed bug in ServNetMeetingDesktop
• fixed bug in ServTelnet detection

Download: http://code.google.com/p/vispa/updates/list
http://vispa.whyeye.org/
Note: changelog is in the download file.