Any tips from you computer gurus out there as far as little things you can do do improve your computer's performance? Things like deleting your internet cache, disc fragmenting, etc? Anything else?
More ram or a faster cpu is the easiest way. You could try deleting spyware/hijacking programs with hijackthis. I wouldn't recommend it if your a novice. If your planning on upgrading to a new computer, ddr2 ram has hit rock bottom and this might possibly be the cheapest it will be in awhile. $65 after MIR for 2 x 1 gigs of DDR2 800 mhz ram. I think ballistic is the brand. I purchased 2 gigs of G. Skill myself for $100 for my future PC. You can also purchase a AMD X2 3600+ cpu for $65 now. I think it's the 1.9 ghz, which can easily be OC to 2.5 etc. Cheapest dual core CPU and easily OC'able. There are some people who say the 65nm chips perform better than the 90nm.
If you don't wanna buy anything, just reformat. It makes EVERYTHING faster. Then reinstall all your programs and the important files. This saves you the time of having to delete all the unnecessary crap yourself. After that, all you gotta do is defragment and you're good to go. That's what I do at least and it always made things better.
Ya kinda have to have some computer know-how to really achieve this. Start -> Run -> msconfig Disable any extra stuff that you computer doesn't really need to have running all the time (but be careful - don't disable stuff that is crucial to Windows) Double click on "My Network Places" and remove any shortcuts that exist there, but you don't need. Remove any CD or DVD disks from your disk drives. If you have a floppy drive, remove and disable it. Buy more RAM. Make sure your antivirus software is properly installed (I got a bad build of AV software once and it made my machine crawl. After installing a new build, it improved dramatically). Remove all adware, malware, and spyware from your machine.. If you use IE configure it to clear out its cache every time you exit the application (in IE, it's under Tools -> Internet options -> Advanced tab ... scroll to the bottom and check "Empty temporary Internet folder when browser is closed"
Buy an additional hard drive to place everything from VIDEO, SOUND, attachments, "downloads", program installation files... move them there from the drive where your OPERATING SYSTEM is. Windows is picky about trying to find system files, so it's imperative that the OS is the only thing running on it, and only a few more program files. For example: A friend sends you "internal_call.wmv" to your yahoo! email. Don't click "view" or "open" on your email. INSTEAD, click "save" instead of "open" from IE, and then save it to the new drive (not where the Windows system is). If you want to view this attachment, go and open it from the additional hard drive. This will make the program read the other drive, and not the one where Windows is, and it will load even faster. If you click "OPEN" right from the email, Windows chooses a temporary directory on your C: drive, and that will slow Windows down. If you have to install permament programs, make sure you have enough space on c: to install, and to leave the program there (say, something like Office or OpenOffice or PhotoShop). If you'll be installing a temporary program like "Barbie and the Nutcracker CD", make the installation folder the additional drive's "Program Files" folder, not the one where Windows exists. This will load the program from there, not bothering where Windows is, and Windows will run faster. You can then remove the installation (with the uninstall program that came with the installation or the add/remove control panel applet) so it doesn't take up space on the additional drive. If you record sound or video or large files, record them on the additional drive. I can't think of any now, but there are programs that look for registry keys that point to programs that you no longer have, and so it takes Windows a long time to boot or even start another program. The less programs on your PC, the better, at least for Windows. :whew:
there is a way to turn off the special effects in windows such as smooth opening of windows. That use up a lot of ram. I don't know the proper term for it but I tired it and it helped. it was kind of odd though so I turned them all back on.
taken from years of gain knowledge as a web designer: 1.) from Wild's post, nothing in the "startup tab" is crucial to windows, but you might want to keep your av on. the "win.in" and the system.ini are "legacy" startup files for old programs. the only thing you need to be careful about is under the "services" tab (aside from the "boot.ini"). go online and you can find out what to turn off to speed up your comp. 2.) get another hard drives and place the virtual memory on the second drive so windows can run programs and swap files in parallel. 3.) turn off system restore. that runs constantly in the background. go to start-> program->accessories->system tools->system restore. 4.) defrag the disk or use diskeeper (which does it on the fly with low overhead). 5.)besides the usual hardware upgrades, also get a dedicated soundcard. the intergrated one takes more cpu power since the DAC is software driven. 6.) turn on the harddrive writeback cache. right click My Computer -> properties ->Hardware->Device Manager . find your hard drive and right click -> properties -> policies "enable write caching" 7.) turn off all the visual bells and whistles on xp. go back to system properties (see above) and click on performance and either custom or just adjust for best performance. this is all under xp of course. you can't sue me if you messed up. you don't need to clean out your drive. more stuff on your hd doesn't make the comp slower. it's a misconception. more stuff running in the background cuz of installed software does (see step one to fix this).
mine is getting slower and slower. im due for a new one. Its been just over 4 years ands thats my experience for lifetime of a computer with no upgrades. im looking for a good gaming machine...and recommendations for parts, e.g. process speed, graphics card (or 2), physics accelerator, memory, etc?
Try subscribing to eacceleration go to stopsign.com/free and you can get a free scan of how much crap is in your system. price: $7/mo up to $34/6mos ... $58/year. They have threat scanner, a firewall and a program called veloz which will speed up your system as much as 200% because it will detect empty programs, bad downloads, and yes this will go in and delete your temporary files and internet cache as you wish. Also download spybot just google it and download ccleaner also google. Both free downloads. Plus depending how much you download programs and or your disk capacity on your HD fluctuates use diskeeper to clean up and defrag your hard drive. That should start to help you a lot with your situation.
my computer has been starting up waaayyyy too slow. so i followed your suggestions here under the startup tab...disabling a bunch of stuff. it opened back up in diagnostic mode, despite the fact i didn't set it that way. any idea why?
One thing that drives me nuts when using other people's computers is that they have so many things running in the system tray (bottom right hand corner). When you install certain programs they will make themselves run in the system tray at startup, so they'll always be in the background using resources. It's not much, but I go through each program in there and it should be an option somewhere like 'don't run at startup' or 'disable system tray'. Of course if you actually do want to use it frequently then keep it running (anti-virus is the only one for me...do you really need real player or quicktime always on?) You're not going to knock out as many programs as msconfig, but I also delete anything in my 'Startup' folder (in 'All Programs'). The best method is to reinstall Windows, if you've got lots of time. Hardware-wise, like everyone said, is probably more RAM. If you're running low on hd space, then a bigger and faster hard drive will increase performance.
