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If you think your computer is not performing as it once did, don't feel alone as it happens to all of us. Countless books, articles, FAQs, and coffee shop discussions have been made concerning how to get some of that performance to return. One of my favorites has always been from Chapter 2 of a 1994 Microsoft TechNet article titled "Zen and the Art of Performance Monitoring." "To determine the precise location of the bottleneck in your computer, you
must become as one with If that paragraph is amusing, click here for the rest of the introduction to that chapter. Without diving into too much detail, and keeping in mind that this is but a guideline for the reader that has not read the countless books, articles and FAQs, here are a few general tips to get some performance back into your Windows based computer. 1. Run the Add Remove Programs in Control Panel. Get rid of any software you no longer use. Doing so through this Control Panel applet removes files, shortcuts, registry settings, references in .INI files, etc. Simply deleting a folder may remove data created and/or create boot up problems, especially if the operating system is trying to load a file that it is not aware of being deleted. 2. Download, install, and run a program to detect and clean "SpyWare." See my Spyware Info page for utilities to clean and prevent this scum or to learn more about what spyware is. 3. Make sure your anti-virus is up to date and do full scans. If you don't have up to date software, check my Virus Info page and click the link for a free online scan from Trend Micro. There is a free for personal use anti-virus program I recommend on my everyday software page. 4. Run the disk cleanup program found in the Start, Accessories, System Tools. 5. Remove unnecessary programs from starting up automatically. They take time to load when logging on the system and consume resources. Be careful to not remove the vital ones, if in doubt leave it. A great free utility to do this is Startup Control Panel. It finds the common places that can start a program and allows you to selectively disable or re-enable them. 6. Run a program that scans the system's registry for remnants of programs no longer installed. Currently I recommend CCleaner as it also has options to scan and delete old temp files, files left behind by poorly written uninstall routines, and safety features such as prompting to save the registry settings before making its modifications. CAUTION: Do not run programs such as ccleaner continuously or as a matter of habit like you would a defrag. Sometimes they do their job too well. An example is that it may delete program setup logs. Then, when attempting to uninstall a program errors result and the program lingers. If this happens it might be possible to uninstall it by performing another INstallation so that setup logs and/or settings are created again. This is why I have this step listed AFTER the preceding steps. 7. Now that things are cleaned up, a thorough defrag is due as explained on my how to defrag page. As always, YMMV. Click HERE to mail a link for this document to someone.
Schmahl World Computer Assistance, LLC this page: http://www.schmahl.net/tuneup.php updated September 25, 2008 |
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