Seven Steps to Sharpen up your PC -------
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Step one: Clean up any Adware and scumware
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Free programs on the internet are not always what they
seem. Often the sting in the tail is, the behind the scenes,
installing
of Adware or Scumware as it's sometimes known.
This usually consists of programs that run in the
background and advertise
various offerings which can be
targeted to match your preferences. These programs take up
valuable system resources
and should be cleaned out.
Programs such as Gator (form filler) and Kazza (music
sharing) are well known examples of this but there are
many
others.
The solution to this, is for you to download one or both of
these free programs.
or
Use them to clean up your system regularly.
I personally use them both once a week.
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Step Two: Clean out your start-up files
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Nearly every program you load on your computer wants to be
top dog. By that I mean when you install the program it
usually
sets itself up in your startup list.
This means that whenever you start up your computer the
programs installs itself automatically into main memory
whether
you are going to use it or not and just takes up
valuable resources that could be better utilised by
programs you are
using right away.
If you hit the Control-Alt-Delete keys once
(if you do it twice you will reboot the computer and lose
any unsaved
work) you will be able to see all the programs
that are running behing the scenes.
The more you have running that you are not using,
the more memory will be taken up and the slower and less
stable
the system will be.
Things like Anti-Virus programs and "system tray" should be
left running but many others can be removed.
To do this in windows 98/ME, hit "Start"-"Run"- and type in
"msconfig" and enter, then choose the right hand top tab
marked
"startup" Uncheck all the programs that you aren't using all
the time. You will be able to run them normally
at any time
from your start menu so don't worry about that.
Most of the programs can be identified by the program names
at the right hand side, any that can't, you can always
type
it into google and see what comes up. Occasionally you find
programs loaded here that are malicious programs such
as
Trojans or Browser hijackers that you definitely don't want.
To get rid of them search for the filename in Google
and then
see if it comes up as a nasty and then get the info on how to
remove from the anti-virus website.
You will notice a definite improvement in start-up speed
and general running when these are removed.
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Step Three: uninstall any old programs that are no longer
used
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Windows registry is the section of windows that contains
all the information relating to your system and software.
As time goes by it can get extremely bloated and even if
you are not using the old programs anymore, the time taken
to
search through registry is increased.
Uninstalling the programs rather than just deleting the
files will ensure that the entries in the registry are
removed
and this helps keep the size under control.
Another little utility you might find useful is called
"EasyCleaner" and it is great for cleaning out all these
unwanted
files and registry entries that were somehow left
behind.
You can also use it to locate temporary files used by
various programs that just clog up your hard drive and slow
things
down.
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Step Four: Invest in a good antivirus program
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Invest
in a good antivirus program such as Shield-Antivirus
or Panda anti-virus and keep it regularly updated. Having a
virus
on your system can not only wreak havoc with your system
speed but can lead to more serious problems and data loss.
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Step Five: Delete or uninstall unwanted fonts
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When
Windows loads it installs all available fonts.
This not only takes up space but also valuable time.
Deleting or uninstalling
fonts that you will never use
will help streamline things a bit more.
To view the installed fonts, select Start, Run, type
"fonts", and press Enter. To see what a font looks like,
double-click
its icon. You can delete a font by
right-clicking it and selecting Delete, but it's safer to
uninstall it by dragging
it to another folder so you can
always drag it back if you really need it.
You must do this dragging (in either direction) from within
Windows Explorer. Moving or copying a font to or from
the
C:WindowsFonts folder via DOS commands or some other
utility won't properly install or uninstall it. Some fonts
should
stay put, such as Windows system fonts, which have
the extension .fon instead of .ttf. The icon for a system
font has
a red 'A' rather than a gray-blue 'TT'. System
fonts are usually hidden files, but they're visible in the
Fonts folder
in Explorer. They disappear when you move them
elsewhere, though. Some applications require specific
fonts, such as
Arial, Verdana or Times New Roman, so you'd
better keep them around.
Any other ones you don't use can be moved to another
folder.
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Step Six: Optimise your system
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A
few basic pointers for optimising your system.
(1) From the desktop right click on the "my computer" icon
and select properties. Select "file system" and under the
hard
disc tab, where it says "for typical role of this
computer" select "network server" in the drop down menu as
this speeds
up transfers.
(2) Under floppy disc make sure the little box is not
ticked as this increases boot up time slightly.
(3) On Internet Explorer while surfing the net, images are
stored on the hard drive in a section called the cache.
This is useful if you are using a slow dial-up connection as it
means the most used images don't have to be continually
downloaded
so surfing speeds are increased.
If the cache size is too great then Explorer has to check
through all the images before it downloads them and this
can slow up browsing. The optimum size is a bit, hit or miss,
but with ADSL or cable the cache can be set much smaller
as
the images download quickly. Also when the cache is too
large the files get fragmented (this is covered later) and
the
hard disk thrashes around trying to piece it all together thus
slowing everything down.
It's a matter of trial and error but I wouldn't recommend
much more than 50MB for a slow connection and about 10MB
for
ADSL or Cable.
Adjustment is made by clicking on Internet explorer "tools"
and "internet options" then under "temporary internet
files" the settings button and use the slider to adjust the
amount.
(4) A program I find very useful for optimising various
parts of your computer is one called "Speed up my PC" With
this you can set it automatically to take care of memory usage
and can prevent system crashes at awkward times. It's
not free
this on but it might be worth taking a look at it.
You can read more on it here:-
http://www.pcsandthings.com/speed_up_my_pc.htm ***********************************************************
Step Seven: defragment your hard drive regularly
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De-what, my hard drive? I might hear you say. Sounds a bit
severe but it's something that should be done fairly regularly.
Your computer works efficiently when the data it takes from
the hard drive to process in memory is all in one place
and
doesn't take very long to fetch.
After using your computer for a while, related files get
broken up into fragments and are scattered all over the
disc.
This happens in normal use and it can significantly
increase the time it takes to collect it all up.
A bit like you going to another room to fetch your files
from a filing cabinet and if they were all together it
would
be easy to collect them. If on the other hand they
were in different cabinets all dotted around the room then
you
get the idea.
The thing to do is run the defragmenter that comes with
Windows. Double click "My Computer" and then Right Click
the
icon for drive C: and then click properties. Select
defragment and follow the instructions.
This process can take a long time on a large hard drive
with badly fragmented files, so it may be advisable to
set
this running at a quiet time computer wise or even
overnight.
There is a another program I highly recommend for
defragmenting which is called Diskeeper Lite and is much
better
than the built-in version that Windows has. It is
available as a free download plus some more articles on
fragmentation
from
http://www.executive.com/downloads/menu.asp Defragmenting is best done last after the other steps above
as removing files and clutter will leave gaps that can
then
be put back together for normal use.
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Carrying out the above actions will help keep your PC
running faster and more stable and hopefully crashing
less
causing you less stress and frustration from lost work.
So get started now and clean up your PC and make it a habit
to do it regularly and keep your system running at peak
performance.
And don't forget one of the most cost effective upgrades you
can do to your PC at the moment is to add some more
Memory
(RAM).
Check our website below for advice on memory selection.
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Dave Fraser makes it easy for beginners to learn about
their
computers in less technical terms. For more Free
tips and tricks to make your computing experience better,
visit
http://www.pcsandthings.com and sign up for our FREE
newsletter.
(c) Copyright 2004
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