Speeding Up Your Computer 101

K3rupt

K3rupt

New Member
[size=+2]Speeding Up Your PC 101[/size]

Over a few threads, More and more people are asking how they can speed up their computers.

Here are just a Few Ways.

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[size=+1]Virus Scanners[/size]

Virus's Are every computer users Nightmare. They commonly can make computers painfully slow, transmit Vital Data and be a Pain to get rid of.

AVG Free Edition. is a great Free Virus Scanner. Personal Experience has seen it remove 99% Virus's found.

Virus Scanners are a must have for Computers of this age unfortunately.
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[size=+1]Firewalls[/size]

Firewalls are excellent tools for protecting a users computer from Unwanted Fools, Malicious Programs, Annoying Popupz and just overall Pains in the bum. (excuse my Immaturity.)

Sygate Personal Firewall Is the only firewall i trust to be easy to use, Effective and great to setup.

This program is vital for those who use the internet. Without one, Your computer is left open to attacks remotely.
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[size=+1]Adware And Spyware[/size]

This type of attack can be Nasty. They are primarily designed too Slow up computers, Send data to remote addresses, and be overall Pains. They are usually quiet good at hiding from Virus Scans.

Ad-Aware-2007 Free Edition is a Decent program to find and remove this type of attack on your PC.
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[size=+1]General Cleanup[/size]

Cleanup! is a good program to use to find things that may hide from other programs. It will remove/delete anything not needed on your PC
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[size=+1]General Cleanup2[/size]

CCleaner Is an excellent Free Program with the capability's to clean up your Registry, Unwanted Icon, Remove temp Files and Much more.

As Requested by patrickv and hpi
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[size=+1]TweekUI[/size]

This program is Released by Microsoft and gives you access to your Systesms Setttings that are not shown in the Default user interface.

Using these settings, You can adjust your computers speed by removing options you do not need.
TweakUi Power Toy
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[size=+1]HiJackThis[/size]

Warning. For Intermediate Users Only.


HiJackThis is a simple program that will scan your computer, to find any junk you don't need. Absolutely amazing at finding hidden things.

Onces Scan is complete, You will be given a log file and the Results.

What you wish to remove, You tick the box. And Select 'Fix'

This could potentially do more damage then good to your PC.

If you are unsure, Post the log, We will take a look and give you the information needed to remove the malicious junk.
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[size=+1]MsConfig[/size]

Using Microsofts built in agent, you can increase your boot speed, get rid of programs starting up you never knew were, remove junk from start up.

To Do So.

Go

Start -> Run -> Type: msconfig

Go too "startup" Tab

If you are unsure as what too remove, i suggest you let us decide.

Upload Screen shots too somewhere such as Photobucket and post the [ img ] Tags Here

And we will tell you what you can get rid of from your start up, Thus making your computer start faster!

Over time, Junk builds up everywhere. Slowing Down your PC.
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[size=+1]Disk Defragment[/size]

Built into Windows, Is a application called Disk Defragmenter. It is designed too increase access speed by rearranging files stored on a disk.
The purpose is to optimize the time it takes to read and write files to/from the disk by minimizing head travel time and maximizing the transfer rate.

This program can be accessed by:

Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter

Running Disk Defragments often will see a increase in time needed to access files. Thus Speeding up your PC
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[size=+1]Disk Cleanup[/size]

Along with the Disk Defragmenter, Another program Disk Cleanup Will aide in speeding up your PC

By freeing disk space, you can improve the performance of your computer. The Disk Cleanup tool helps you free up space on your hard disk. The utility identifies files that you can safely delete, and then enables you to choose whether you want to delete some or all of the identified files.

Too Access this utility Click Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools-> Disk Cleanup
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[size=+1]Re-Format Your Computer[/size]

Warning - For Intermediate Users Only

Re-Formatting your computer will let you start again.

Fresh. Fast. New.

Excellent Way To Make your computer run faster.

Downside is you Lose anything you do not Backup.

I have previously Made a Thread on how to Reformat your PC For Windows XP

Reformatting Windows XP
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Last But Not Least.

Remove unneeded programs and

Stay Off Inappropriate Sites.

Good Luck.

K3rupt.
 
Last edited:
not that you will agree with it but i use REGCURE.
i would have used the built in one with CrapCleaner but as ive mentioned in another post i got a BSOD cause of it..lol
 
CCleaner is good.

It stands for Crap cleaner haha who doesn't want that as a program.

This should be stickied imo it's real nice, informative and simple.
 
hpi said:
CCleaner is good.

It stands for Crap cleaner haha who doesn't want that as a program.

This should be stickied imo it's real nice, informative and simple.
Click to expand...

Added On.

Thanks.

patrickv said:
not that you will agree with it but i use REGCURE.
i would have used the built in one with CrapCleaner but as ive mentioned in another post i got a BSOD cause of it..lol
Click to expand...

REGCURE? Thats Shareware? Not Freeware right?

I only want to add Free programs for people too use, Unless you can prove me otherwise :D
 
Microsoft BootVis.

Free, speeds up your boot time, gotta know how to use it though (takes a whole 2 seconds to learn though. Trace>trace start up and drivers. Trace>optimize). :)
 
Looks like a good guide. A couple of suggestions, though:

With regards to antivirus, you may want to list more than one alternative. I'd also suggest adding a warning against running more than one antivirus program at once.

With regards to antispyware, I would suggest posting more than one alternative, since one program will often remove threats that another can't. Similarly, I'd include a warning against running more than one in resident mode (i.e. only have the real time scanner active on one program).

With regards to HijackThis logs, I would suggest you ask people to post logs in the Security Section. They tend to get lost when they're in other sections of the forum. You might also want to change the link to TrendMicro, since they own it now, and Merijn's site still refers to the Beta version (although the link is to the updated version).

Another useful program (I guess we could go on and on :)) is StartUp Lite. It displays and allows you to easily remove startup entries that are known to be unnecessary. A lot safer than HijackThis or msconfig, particularly for beginners, although not as powerful.
 
ceewi1 said:
Looks like a good guide. A couple of suggestions, though:

With regards to antivirus, you may want to list more than one alternative. I'd also suggest adding a warning against running more than one antivirus program at once.

With regards to antispyware, I would suggest posting more than one alternative, since one program will often remove threats that another can't. Similarly, I'd include a warning against running more than one in resident mode (i.e. only have the real time scanner active on one program).

With regards to HijackThis logs, I would suggest you ask people to post logs in the Security Section. They tend to get lost when they're in other sections of the forum. You might also want to change the link to TrendMicro, since they own it now, and Merijn's site still refers to the Beta version (although the link is to the updated version).

Another useful program (I guess we could go on and on :)) is StartUp Lite. It displays and allows you to easily remove startup entries that are known to be unnecessary. A lot safer than HijackThis or msconfig, particularly for beginners, although not as powerful.
Click to expand...

CCleaner allows you to select start up programs and files quite easily.
 
theresthatguy said:
CCleaner allows you to select start up programs and files quite easily.
Click to expand...
Yes, but it does it in a similar way to HijackThis or msconfig - by just displaying the name of every program that is running on startup, the file path it's located at and the registry key it's running from. For you and me, that's not a problem, but someone who doesn't really know what each of those entries represent could easily accidentally remove important entries.

At the end of the day, these sorts of guides are always targeted more towards the beginners, as those with more experience know how to do these things anyway. Beginners are likely to have troubles with CCleaner's Startup List.

That's why StartUp Lite can be useful - it only displays entries that are known to be safe to remove, and provides a brief description of what each one does.
 
format and reload computer is really a last ditch effort, and not really a fix. Managing resources is the best way to improve overall performance. Keeping enough free disk space open for virtual memory is another way. Making sure all your software is up to date with the latest bug fixes is also a way to improve performance.

Overclocking is not really a good method of improving performance either. You get stability issues and the less stable your system the worse it is off.

Keeping your OS clean is also a good idea. Messy desktops are the worst. Clean up all those files, those short cuts, etc and toss them into the drive itself. The more crap you have on your desktop slows down performance.

Since the release of windows xp, a user can not removed a needed start up item in MSCONFIG, so you can disabled everything in MSCONFIG's start up and be fine. Where as in previous versions it listed required processes like explorer.exe for example. So, if you want to you can disable everything. Just remember if you don't have a router with NAT and a firewall on the hardware level you better have some software based firewalls running. If you do have decent hardware protection you can disable them. I do on my computers.
 
mrjack said:
RegCleaner is a good piece of software to use when you want to clean the registry.
Click to expand...

That's beciause RegCleaner is a registry program as well as having an autmatic registry cleanup tool in it. The only thing seen in CCleaner regarding the registry is an uninstaller for choosing individual programs not for finding and removing leftovers in general.

Others like RegCure will be retail while RegCleaner remains the best freeware for that purpose. The main window displays the main registry keys for all non MS programs installed and can also open the regedit tool from the dropdown list under tools. It runs on all versions of Windows from 95 to Vista being a plus there.

For adwares, spywares, free firewalls there's a few other programs not even mentioned on the thread so far. Lavasoft's Ad-Aware 2007 is available with it's new Ad Watch feature included. Spyware Terminator includes a Web Security Guard feature in the Crawler toolbar option as well as providing a mild form of firewal of it's own. It also finds more data miners then the older free program by Lavasoft.

Comodo and Jetico Personal Firewall see the best reviews for freewares in that area. Comodo also offers a recent BOClean malware hunter also a freeware.
 
Nice in deed. but unless i missed it a good degrag would be nice.
Im using perfect disk but have used diskeeper pro. im just happy with perfect disk but not free.

thankyou........
 
CCleaner will cleanup now useless empty temp folders left by installers and uninstallers alike along with totally cleaning out the IE history and off line content. If you have things set to remember user names and passwords you will simply have to re-enter those all over again if you leave the IE items checked off when running the program.

Diskkeeper was great for 98 when originally tried out since that would defrag a hard drive like lightning compared to how slow 98 was. :P It's still a good retail program for XP but made the difference when used on the older versions for sure.
 
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