I have picked up a few tips and tricks and tools that I use quite frequently in my daily work, and I want to share them with you. You can also find a few “technical tidbits” by checking out the Category “Computer Tech” in my blog.
Remember how fast that PC was when you bought it?
Does it seem really slow now?
A little maintenance on your part can bring it back to life. All versions of Windows starting with 98 have a couple of utilities that can really speed your computer up if you use them on a regular basis.
If you click on “Start”, “Programs”, “Accessories”, “System Tools” (Vista - “Start”, “All Programs”, “Accessories”, “System Tools”) you will see three items that you can do to really help.
1. Click on “Disk Cleanup”. Windows is constantly creating files in the background to help it function, but it doesn’t always remove them when it is finished with them, and you are creating new files also. The Disk Cleanup Utility helps you safely remove those unneeded files. Select the drive you want to clean up (usually C:) and check the appropriate boxes and click “OK”. This may take from 1 to 10 minutes, and the program will go away when it is done.
2. (Windows 2000 and Windows XP and Vista can skip to 3B.) In Windows 98 and Windows Me we need to do the really tricky part. Press “Ctrl”, “Alt”, “Delete”. These are three keys on your keyboard that needs to be pressed once at the same time. A window will pop up. This shows you all the programs that are running in the background. You only need two of them for the next part of the tune up: Explorer and Systray. Highlight one of the others then press the End Task button. Press Ctrl, Alt, Delete again, highlight a program and press End Task again. Continue doing this until all you see are Explorer and Systray. Don’t worry if you have to end the same program 5 or 6 times before it goes away, this is normal.
3A. Go back to System Tools and click on Scandisk. The Scandisk programs look for errors in the filing system that Windows uses to organize things on your Hard Drive and will attempt to repair them if at all possible. An error in the filing system will slow the computer down while Windows tries to find things. I recommend setting the options like in the pictures below:
First, check the Automatically fix errors box, then click the Advanced button.
Make sure your window looks like the one above, click OK, then click Start and go take a walk. Sometimes it may take several hours for this job to complete, be patient. On a large Hard Drive it may very well take all night.
3B. Windows 2000, XP & Vista don’t use “scandisk”, they use “chkdsk”. Double-click on “My Computer”. Right-Click on the “C:” drive and choose “Properties”. Click on the “Tools” tab. The first button says “check now”, click it. Check the “Automatically Fix Errors” box and click “Start”. You will get a warning box that says that the disk check utility needs exclusive access to system files, do you want to schedule the check to occur after you restart Windows? Click on “Yes”. Now restart your PC. If you are watching you will see a warning telling you that a disk check is about to be performed. Don’t touch anything but wait until it is complete and things look normal once again, this may take a long time depending on the size of your drive.
4. Now we need to go back to System Tools and choose “Disk Defragmenter”. The Disk Defragmenter program arranges the files on your Hard Drive in a predefined arrangement that makes it easier for Windows to find them. Have you ever had a stack of photocopies get out of order and then had to dig through the stack trying to find the one page you need? Defragment puts the pages back in order. Start the program running (you shouldn’t have to change any options) and walk away. This may take all night also if you haven’t done it before. Vista’s Defragmenter does not show a visible progress bar and it does not report on the fragmentation.
When the Defragmentation is complete restart your computer. It may start a little slowly the first time, but after that it should be much faster. If you follow these steps on a regular basis (once a week or once a month) it should go very quickly and your PC should stay fast.
A couple of “Aftermarket” or “third-party” utilities that can help (I use them always) are PageDefrag and Contig, both form Sysinternals. You can download them for free from the Sysinternals TechNet web site. BE SURE TO READ the documentation on the web site before you use them.
Internet Speed Test
Not sure how fast your Internet Connection is? Try this web site. They will test your actual speed over the Internet. What you learn may surprise you.
http://webservices.cnet.com/bandwidth/
Other Tips and Resources
Buy a good Anti-Virus program and keep it enabled and up to date. One virus can destroy many days work in seconds and can also make you liable for damages if your pc was used to pass viruses along. There are several good Anti Virus programs on the market, ranging from the free version of AVG to the various paid programs such as McAfee, Panda, and Trend. Most AV software runs about $50 for the software and about $30 for the annual update package, both together are far cheaper then the minimum $100 a shop will charge to remove a virus.
Be careful with your Anti Virus! There is a virus that is marketed as an antivirus that can be picked up as you browse past a website, it will pop up and tell you that your PC is infected and requires a scan; whether you click “OK” or “cancel” the virus is installed. The name changes but is commonly known as AntiVirus 2008 (last year it was AntiVirus 2007).
Get some spyware tools. Ya gotta be careful here, there is some spyware that is marketed as being a removal tool but it just installs more. The two that I like to use are Spybot and Ad-Aware. I like to use them both; install one, update it, let it clean up what it can, then uninstall it, install the other, let it clean up what it can, uninstall. Most antivirus packages now include some anti-spyware tools but I am not familiar with them.
Get a firewall. This is a bit harder to do. Comodo is a free firewall that has won more than it’s share of awards and commendations. ZoneAlarm has been around for many years. Many AV packages now have Firewall protection built-in or as an add-on. Firewalls take a LOT of configuration to get them to work efficiently. After it is installed and enabled, expect to spend days getting the config correct. It will continually be popping up windows asking you if this or that is allowed. If you read the message carefully and respond appropriately you will end up with a solid configuration. If you get frustrated and turn the firewall off you will have nothing.
For those who like to dig into the dark recesses of the OS I strongly recommend that you visit a few sites. I can highly recommend Steve Gibson. He has been around for a while and knows his stuff.
Mark Minasi is a Techie who is also a very good author and lecturer. I have attended his seminars and they are well worth the money (I don’t say that lightly!) and time, and his books are usually among the most up-to-date and complete references available. His books are available thru Amazon.com and his webpage is at Minasi.com. If you subscribe to his newsletter you WILL NOT be wasting bandwidth.
Another good site to visit was Sysinternals. They were purchased by Microsoft in July 2006 and now Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell work for Microsoft. They still maintain and update their utilities and the utes have gotten better than ever before. You can link to their TechNet site either thru the previous link or here.
Of course, who better to explain the inner workings of Windows than the authors themselves? www.microsoft.com has a great deal of useful info, but you must dig hard to find it. The Knowledge base is located at Support.microsoft.com and the MSDN Technet site has an overload of info MSDN.microsoft.com.
My favorite Tools
Here is a list of the tools that I like to use. Because I’m a cheapskate, most of these are free for personal use or are open source.
IZArc is “the ultimate freeware archive utility”. It can even read ISO images.
PrimoPDF is “the worlds #1 Free PDF creator”
Ultimate Boot CD for Windows is sweet. For years I used to create a boot CD with tools so I could scan a PC for viruses or corrupt files, etc., but then I found this. Because it is community-driven, it has tools available I never even imagined. UBCD4Win includes some of my favorite tools such as Spybot and AVG, and you can update the image with the latest defs before you burn the CD.
FTP Commander is, in my opinion, the best FTP tool out there. It has all the functionality I want but little more, making it sweet and simple to use.
IrfanView is a nice file viewer that, with the proper plugins, can view almost any file type.
MP3Gain As the author describes it: “Tired of reaching for your volume knob every time your mp3 player changes to a new song? MP3Gain analyzes and adjusts mp3 files so that they have the same volume.”
MP3Tag lets you edit the mp3 tag. Very flexible, well written interface.
CD Wave is a tool I use to rip audio from records and tapes. The newest versions can rip directly to mp3, but my older version can only rip to wav format. I typically burn a CD (for archive) from the wav file, then convert the wav to mp3 using CDex. CD Wave is try before you buy shareware; if you want to keep it you need to pay $15 for it after 30 days (which is dirt cheap in my opinion).
CDex is an open source tool I use to rip CD Audio to mp3 or wav.
Nero Burning ROM is an inexpensive CD Burner software that I use for EVERYTHING CD and DVD.
UltraVNC is the remote control software I prefer.
Firefox is my “everyday” browser, although I am using Google Chrome more and more, especially when I need a stable browser.
And I can’t leave out the Sysinternal tools. I use PageDefrag and Contig to keep my PC running smoothly, Process Explorer in place of the Task Manager so I can see what is really happening, Autoruns to see what is happening at Startup, Process Monitor to view the real-time action. BG Info I like to use on the desktop, makes it much easier to ID which system you are working on when using multiple PC’s. Get the Suite and learn about your PC.