Hey all, You know when you get your computer brand new it's so fast you can't believe your eyes? You play games at an exciting pace and programs open up in mere seconds? Well, it's past that time for my slow computer. What ways are there to fix this every once in a while? I do several things provided by Norton Utilities and Windows, but are there alternative methods? ------------------ Nederland 2002 Rockets crush Bucks. Read The Cat's latest game recap.
1) Defrag your hard drive. 2) Get a utility that will move your frequently used programs to the inner sectors of your hard drive. 3) Clean out your registry of unnecessary entries (if you feel comfortable doing it, because if you screw up, you almost screw up your Windows installation). 4) I blow everything away and re-install my applications once every 6-8 months. It's amazing how fast your PC runs when that registry gets nuked and a new one takes its place with only the things that need to be there. Of course it's a pain to go back and re-install everything. One way around this if you don't install or upgrade your applications often is by getting an imaging utility like Disk Image or Ghost and taking a snapshot of your machine after you've installed everything. You can then always image your hard drive back to this "snapshot". Of course any applications you install after imaging won't be in the image. 5) Upgrade memory. No one should be running Windows 95/98/2000/ME with less than 64 MB. 3) Upgrade your machine. This one ALWAYS works... trust me. I just put together a new PC and it's amazing how much faster my machine is with an 800 MHz CPU over the old 400 MHz Celeron I had... ------------------ A friend of mine graduated from law school in May, and he's had a heck of a time finding work....He might be a moron, though. (I don't think he is, but one never knows. He was a moron when we were five years-old.) -- mrpaige reflects on his friends
DoD, Somehow I knew you would have something to say. No, I don't feel comfortable with the registry so I don't even touch that section. Tried it before. Maybe when I learn more about it. I was thinking about clearing everything out, but I wanted to check here first. Where could I het #2? Oh, and for those of you talking about upgrades or overclocking my processor are talking about other issues than what I'm referring to. Of course, those things could help. Too bad I don't have the cash for an upgrade now. ------------------ Nederland 2002 Rockets crush Bucks. Read The Cat's latest game recap.
Ace I am assuming you are using Windows 98 or higher. If so, go to Start->Run and enter msconfig. Click on the Startup tab and you will see all of the programs that are loaded at Windows start time. You can safely uncheck everything except scanreg and systray. Everything else is nto necessary to run your computer but may be necessary to run various applications you have on your system. Reboot and see how things run. If you find you need somethingloaded at Windows start time, simply run msconfig and check what you need. Running defrag will help as well. ------------------
You mean one of them multi-thousand dollar cube things that crack? ------------------ A friend of mine graduated from law school in May, and he's had a heck of a time finding work....He might be a moron, though. (I don't think he is, but one never knows. He was a moron when we were five years-old.) -- mrpaige reflects on his friends
Both Norton Utilities and Ontrack Fix-It Utilities do it. But I'm not sure how much better performance you're going to get. Your best bet is to re-install Winblowz and then re-install your apps. If you don't want to spend too much money, get one of those utility packages and run one of their defrags. But like I said, I can't imagine performance will increase too much. Oh by the way, I just upped the memory on my primary machine to 256 MB. Nyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!! ------------------ A friend of mine graduated from law school in May, and he's had a heck of a time finding work....He might be a moron, though. (I don't think he is, but one never knows. He was a moron when we were five years-old.) -- mrpaige reflects on his friends
If you don't want to buy a Mac then here are some easy steps that will speed up any cpu. 1.Put a headband on your monitor 2.Put knee high socks on the speakers 3.Give it a cool nickname ------------------ Walt Williams is great atheistalliance.org
Norton Utilities is great -- it cleans up everything, including the registry, pieces of programs you didn't know you still had, defragments, and virus checks. It made a huge difference in my PC. The System Check also eliminated a LOT of little buggy things that were causing problems. If you are worried about messing something up, it does have a safety feature, which highlights removable registry and program items in green (safe to remove) yellow and red. It's like $30-40, but well worth it. Everyone should have this utility. The only thing I would caution against is the Crash Guard. It seemed to cause crashes -- It pauses when it thinks a crash is developing, and always seems to freeze up in the process. I took it off. You can install the Norton Utilities without using this option -- Do so! You are better off rebooting and running system check if you have a problem. MEMORY -- can make a huge difference, and it's really a cheap and easy way to fix a lot of problems with your computer. If you have 16 or 32 that came with the computer, it's not enough -- Windows can eat that up. Netscape or IE use 16 more. Windows is designed to optimize the use of whatever memory is available, so it can make a huge difference. You can get a 64 Meg SIMM of memory for about $30, pop it in yourself in 5-10 minutes, and make a huge difference in your system. One quick check to see if you have enough memory -- if when you change from program to program, or try to use different options, and your hard disk light is constantly flashing, you are relying on the virtual memory space on your hard disk to make up for a lack of RAM. This slows everything down. ------------------ Stay Cool...
And I'm still running with an Intel 233 MMX. ------------------ Only in America....do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke.
DeanB, you can also let your computer's 'fro grow out, that'll speed it up a bit and provide a funky soundtrack while you work... rockHEAD ------------------ *** THIS SPACE FOR LEASE ***
I gotta echo what dc sports said about Norton Utilities...it is fantastic. (BTW I haven't had any issues with CrashGuard....hmmm) I highly recommend it for virtually everyone who owns a PC. Like many others said, you should defragment your hard drive (or drives, if you have more than one), if you have one. In fact, do this on a regular basis. The rate that you do this would probably depend on the size of your hard drive and how often you use your PC. Defragmenting will organize the free blocks and the allocated blocks of storage on your hard drive in such a way that access to programs, files, etc. is faster and more efficient. I would go on, but I'd probably end up getting a bit too technical Anyway, like others said, increasing the amount of RAM in your computer can also make a big difference, and the price of RAM is dropping like crazy. (I plan to upgrade from 64 MB to 128 MB very soon myself, because my PC is probably using its virtual memory a little more often than I want it to). Ace, if you want, why don't you provide us with the specs of your computer...we may be able to give you even more detailed assistance. BTW, don't listen to DEANBCURTIS...in my experiences with them, Macs suck And me with a Hewlett Packard Vectra VL w/ an Intel Pentium II 233 MHz processor, 64 MB RAM, and a dual hard-drive system (one 2.4 GB, the other 13.9 GB). If my PC were a person, I doubt it would be able to bench press very much weight. On top of that it used to crash 5 times per day when it was running Windows 98, but it's been behaving much better since I installed Norton Utilities and upgraded to Windows 98: Second Edition. My PC ain't all that (I dislike HP's computers because their expandability is too limited), but hell, I got it for free! When I get enough $$$ I'm either gonna get me a state-of-the-art PC (either a Dell or a Gateway) or learn how to and build one myself. ------------------ [This message has been edited by Cold Hard (edited November 15, 2000).]
If his machine uses SIMMs then I see his problem. ------------------ A friend of mine graduated from law school in May, and he's had a heck of a time finding work....He might be a moron, though. (I don't think he is, but one never knows. He was a moron when we were five years-old.) -- mrpaige reflects on his friends
No, I don't use SIMMS. Left those a while back. Anyway, I now have 64 MB of RAM and hope to upgrade. Have you guys been to TigerDirect? They have a good deal for 128 at $60. About those registry editors...does it come with Norton Utilities or must I purchase/download something else? Is there a good one that searches for those that are redundant? ------------------ Nederland 2002 Rockets crush Bucks. Read The Cat's latest game recap.
A. Yes, buy a Mac. But if you do decide to buy a Cube. Look at it BEFORE you throw down the dough! It has flow lines where photo clean plastic hardens in the mold. Seriously, why would anyone buy anything for more than 50 cents sight unseen. B. If you buy a mac, get a G4 so you can add more hard drives, up to a Gig and a half of memory, PCI cards, etc. For mac users out there who want to make their machine faster: DO NOT immediately fall into the trap of buying more RAM. RAM is what applications use to run, the more applications you want to run at once, the more RAM you need. But if you are just surfing the web 128 is enough. Rebuild your desktop more than once every century. I do it at work once a week. Restart and hold down the option and the Apple (command) key all the way to the desktop until a message pops up: "Are you sure you want to rebuild the desktop on (name of Hard drive?" Click OK. You will be amazed how much this improves he speed at which applications open up. Oh yeah and "overclocking the processor", brilliant. Oh, I know lets jack with the jumpers on the processor to make it go 100 Mhz faster than it was tested by guys in bunny suits to be known to handle. Great, fine, fab-oo just don't b*tch to any tech you call when voo-doo like things start happening to your data. My PC is on fire, why me lord? ------------------ The truth is out there.
