There are two general things that will help your computer's performance without overclocking or adding/upgrading hardware. Those two things are basic operating system maintenance and boot control.
Basic Operating System Maintenance
Disclaimer: You are responsible for any form of corruption, data-loss, damage, or any other negative occurrence that comes from following these instructions. I suggest you back up the registry (type the windows key+r; type "regedit" into the text box; click on "my computer;" click on "file," click on "export...;" save to a location easy to remember, e.g. the C drive (c:\) and also create a system restore point (click on start>all programs>accessories>system>system restore; click on "create a restore point;" type some restore name; click create). Even after this, you may cause irreversible damage to your computer. you have been warned ;)
maintaining a computer is somewhat like maintaining a car. every so often you need to do some major fixes, but most of the time, all that is required is mundane upkeep.
one of the very first things things you should know how to do is use some of the computer maintenance tools that come with windows. the ones i will be talking about initially are error-checking, disk cleanup, and disk defragmenter. i'm going to lump all three into one tutorial because they work together quite well.
1. error-checking
first things first, before we worry about all the files on our computer, let's go ahead and let windows see if it can find any problem with the hard drive disk itself, and even correct them. for this we will use error-checking, a.k.a. scandisk. error-checking will scan the disk, checking for any computing errors that the system has made. depending on your computer, this can be a timely process. the best course of action for this is to set it up to do its check before you turn in for the night, or when you have a good two hours where you will not be at your computer.
on ntfs systems like most windows xp computers, the error-checking program will run at start-up, so it's not something that you can do while using other programs.
a. to begin the program we need to go to "my computer" located on the desktop or in the start menu. when you see the "my computer" icon, right-click on it to bring up a list of options that you can do with that (this list is called the context menu, because the menu changes depending on what context your in, e.g. right-clicking on my computer, the desktop, your internet browser, etc. will all have different menus.)
b. when the context menu pops up, click on either open or explore (open gives you the folder, explore gives you the folder plus a computer hierarchy tree on the side.)
c. when the window opens up, locate your hard disk drive in the section marked "hard disk drives". this should be drive c (c:). right-click this drive.
d. select "properties" from the c drive's context menu. another window will open.
e. in the new window, marked "(something)(c:) properties," there are several tabs. click the table labeled "tools."
f. on the tools tab, the first box will be labeled "error-checking" and have a "check now..." button; click this button.
g. on the new window labeled "check disk (something) (c:), put a check mark next to both options listed by clicking on the box. then click on start.
h. if you have an ntfs formatted hard disk drive, after click the "start" button as indicated above, you will be given a prompt that lets you know that the check cannot be run now and will have to be run the next time the computer boots up. when it asks if you want to schedule the check for the next time windows starts, click "yes."
*note: if you disk is formatted in something other than nfts (e.g. fat, fat32) the system check will begin right away. just leave the computer alone while it works to afford it the best possible chance of completing the scan successfully.
i. if you have partitioned hard disk drives (a.k.a. logical drives) or more than one hard disk drive return to step c. and continue through step h., replacing drive c: with any other hard drive listed in the "hard disk drives" section.
j. restart your computer by clicking the start menu button, click on "turn off computer" and then click "restart" on the window that pops up. your computer will automatically restart and perform the error-checking before restarting windows. once windows is back up and running, this job is done.
2. disk cleanup
disk cleanup allows you to free up some space on your hard drive by deleting files that you probably don't need anymore. it will give you options of things that it thinks you can delete without having any adverse problems, but you are the one that has to make the final call. i'll explain as we progress.
a. to begin the process click on start>all programs>accessories>system tools>disk cleanup (which means click on the "start" button, then click on the "all programs" button, then the "accessories" button, etc.). this will bring up the disk cleanup gui (gui stands for graphical user interface which is any program that doesn't run from the command line, i.e. programs that don't run in dos. if you can point and click, it's a gui ;)
b. the first window that will pop up will ask you to select a hard drive. the drop down list will list all of the hard drives that were listed in the "my computer" "hard disk drives" list that we talked about in section 1. (to view the drop down list, click the blue down arrow button.) the select the c: drive and click "ok."
c. the computer will now scan the hard drive for files it can delete. upon completion, it will pop up a window that will list all the places it checked and how much space can be deleted from each.
d. from the list check or uncheck each option as desired. if you are unsure of what to what the option is referring, simply click on the option name itself. a description will be placed in the "description" box bellow the list.
common options and some explanations are as follows:
downloaded program files - as you surf the web, you'll intentionally and unintentionally download web programs like java, activex, flash, et al. if you have a file that has already been downloaded (and there isn't a newer version of that file), then you won't have to redownload the program (which is good if you have dial-up), you can use what's already on your hard drive. if you have a high-speed internet connection or if you look at many different sites, your best option would probably be to delete these files. if you have dial-up or if you only use a couple sites online, you probably would be better off just leaving these files here, unless you feel like getting a fresh start, then you can always delete them. the next time you go to the site that requires the program, if you don't have it on your computer, your browser will just automatically download it for you.
recycle bin - these are things you have deleted from your computer; a purgatory for files that have yet to be "deleted for real." if you may have accidentally deleted something you do not wish to delete, simply click on the "view files" button, and the recycle bin window will open, showing you all files that will be deleted. if you want to undelete something that is in the recycle bin, simply right-click on the file and click "restore" from the context menu. anything left in the recycle bin will be deleted if you select this option.
webclient/publisher temporary files - somewhat like the downlaoded program files, these files are not programs, but contain information that you've picked up along the way while surfing the web, and can be redownloaded the next time the site is accessed. these files are usually even smaller than the program files and shouldn't cause much of a difference in download time, even if you have dial-up. so most people can delete these safely.
compress old files - if your computer moves very slowly, or if you have plenty of hard drive space, you probably don't need to do this. if you're tight on drive space or your computer runs pretty quickly, this option is probably for you. when a program has not been opened/run within a certain amount of time, windows will compress the file to conserve disk space. this means that the next time you open/run the compressed file, it will need to be decompressed (which usually takes fractions of a second, depending on file size and computer speed). the length of time that it waits before it compresses the file can be changed by clicking on the "options" button in the description block. you can increase or decrease the number of days by using the blue up and down arrows, or you can just type a new number into the box. then press "ok." note: if this is the first time compressing files, or if there are a lot of files that will need to be compressed, this option can take a while, perhaps up to five minutes or more depending on number of files, file size, and computer speed.
catalog files for the content indexer - the content indexer is what is searched when you use windows built-in search utility. the content indexer saves back-ups of the index in case something goes wrong with the current index and the user tries to search the computer. the indexer stays fairly current and usually doesn't make mistakes (that the back-ups could fix) so these are usually unnecessary.
e. after you have selected which options you want to delete, click on the "ok" button at the bottom of the window. the computer will begin to do the work you asked it to do. the windows will disappear after it has completed the work.
f. to clean other hard drives, repeat this process, changing the drive selection in step b.
3. disk defragmentation
now that you have fixed the disk errors and cleaned up extra space on the hard drive, you're ready to stream-line the files on your computer.
as you use your computer, files are written to your hard drive, and files are deleted. your hard drive is kind of like a cd or a record that hold all the (almost) all the info on your computer. along the track of the hardrive are lots of little cubby holes for information. if nothing was deleted from your computer, these files would pretty much be full from beginning to end, and any new file would just be put at the end where the first open cubby hole is. then, depending on the file size, the program would take up more and more cubby holes until it was all written on the disk. but since there are files being deleted from the disk, when the program finds its first open cubby hole, it may not be at the end of all the information, it may be somewhere near the front. if the space left from the deleted file is smaller than the space needed by the file that is being written to the disk, the program will first fill all of the cubby holes it can, and then go looking elsewhere for more cubby holes until it has been written completely. then, when you use this file, the read has to jump around from one place to another to read all the information of that file. and this doesn't just happen once, but many many times over. what disk defragmenting will do is move the files around to fit all the parts of the same file together. then when the disk reader needs to get a file, it just has to look one place, which saves time and wear-and-tear on the hard disk/reader.
a. to begin defragmenting, go to start>all programs>accessories>system tools>disk defragmenter
b. when the gui (program window) opens up you'll see a list of one or more hard drives (all the drive of your computer). select the c: drive by clicking on it.
c. click on the "defragment" button. the computer will now set about putting all the file parts back together.
d. you can see the "before and after picture" of your hard drive and watch as it defragments by looking at the littls colored bars and lines in the deframneter window. a red line is a fragmented portion of a file, a blue line is an unfragmented file, a green line is unmovable file space (i.e. files used by the system to operation, hence files that cannot be moved while the system is operating), and the white lines are open space. this is only an estimation of what is taking place, but it gives an indication of what is really going on. you'll see blue and red lines move into open space as the computer appends, concatenates, and restructures files. in the end, you may not have all blue and green lines in one big lump, and you may even have a couple red lines left over, but your disk will certainly be much better off.
e. upon completion a pop-up window will let you know that the operation has completed and give you the option to view details. you can choose to look at the details or not (the details just give percentages of the before and after disk to let you know what was corrected; it's virtually the same information that was supplied in graph form while the process was running - the colored lines mentioned above). just click view report to see the report and close to close the pop up box.
f. to defragment another drive, simply follow steps b. through e., selecting a different drive.
depending on how often you use your computer, this entire process of error-checking/correcting, disk cleanup, and disk defragmentation should be done about once a month. if you install and uninstall a lot of programs, or create and delete a lot of files, you may want to defragment even more, as much as once a week. if you are finding that the only time you're getting on your computer is to do your monthly check-up, you should seriously consider donating the computer to your local school or charitable organization for a tax write-off and checking your email at the local library ;)
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Speeding up the boot process
Disclaimer: You are responsible for any form of corruption, data-loss, damage, or any other negative occurrence that comes from following these instructions. I suggest you back up the registry (type the windows key+r; type "regedit" into the text box; click on "my computer;" click on "file," click on "export...;" save to a location easy to remember, e.g. the C drive (c:\) and also create a system restore point (click on start>all programs>accessories>system>system restore; click on "create a restore point;" type some restore name; click create). Even after this, you may cause irreversible damage to your computer. you have been warned ;)
when you push the power button on your computer, the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) takes charge, running some system checks to find things such as the CMOS, hard disk drives, media drives (cd/dvd drives, floppy, etc.) and begins to start processes the system feels are necessary to run at start up. Most of the time, the system is right, and the processes are needed. But the computer user continues to install more programs, many programs feel that they are important as well and say they need to be run at start-up. After a while, system start-up can seem to take forever. This tutorial will aid you in cutting down the needless processes and help your start-up/boot-up speed increase.
The easiest way to increase boot speed is to keep things from running at start that don't need to be run at start. There are some programs that you may or may not use that are probably running on your computer right now, just in case you happen to want to use them, or to perform, what they feel, are needed tasks. for a list of some running processes, you can right-click on the bar at the bottom of your screen in some open space. you will see a list, and at about the bottom third of the context menu you will see "task manager." click on this and the task manager will pop up. (another option is to press control and alternate and delete keys all at the same time, i.e. ctrl+alt+del; depending on your operating system and configuration, you may have to select task manager from a pop-up window, or the task manager may start right away.)
In the Window's tack manager, click on the process tab; you will see a list of all the processes currently running, as well as some other information, e.g. cpu usage, memory usage, et al. if you aren't sure what these programs are, do a google search for them. E.g., if you see svchost.exe in the Image Name column, and you're not sure what this is, type "svchost.exe" (with or without the quotes) into google.com and you find millions of sites that reference this process. One of the first pages will be microsoft's website, which is a good source of information on microsoft processes. Another page will be liutilities.com, which is a great page for finding out what most programs are. When you click on one of these, say liutilities.com, you will be given a description of the process, some additional info, and some suggestions for whether or not they thing the process may be malicious (virus, spyware, trojan, etc.), and if they feel it is important. In general, unless you feel you know better than the experts, you should go ahead and take their word for it and see that svchost is not a bad program, that is shouldn't be disabled, and in general, you should trust this because it's necessary for you if you want to be able to connect to the internet on that computer. Now, if you didn't need to connect to the internet or other peripheral devises or computers, you can probably get away with turning this off, thus going against liutilities. but most people want to be able to connect to the internet, thus the recommendation from liutilities.
You should repeat the above process with each program in the tack list. you should be familiar with what is running on your computer. if you know what all the processes are that are normally running on your computer, you'll be able to pick out processes that shouldn't be there (which may be malicious or simply unnecessary). this will take some work initially, but it will pay off in the long run. once you know what the program is, you may decide to stop the program. this is easy. simply click on the process (it should turn blue/become highlighted). then right-click on that highlighted line and select "end process" from the context menu. if it's a program you know you don't want, you may decide to remove the program by clicking on start>control panel> add/remove programs, and searching through the list for the program. to remove the program, simply click on the program and click on remove. follow the prompts, telling the computer that you are certain you want to remove the program from your computer.
now that you've become familiar with seeing what is currently running on your computer (well, at least the big stuff; we've not gotten into services yet..), let's look at what is run at the start-up of the computer.
hold down the windows key and press the "r" key (or click on start and then click on "run"). the run window will open and there will be a white box in which you can type commands. type "msconfig" (without the quotes) and hit enter. click on the "start" tab. this is a list of programs that may be run at start-up. if it has a check-mark next to the program, you can be sure that the program is running each time you start/reboot your computer. just like above when going through the task manager's process list one-by-one and checking google to figure out what the program is/if it's necessary, you should go through these programs, and if you're not certain of what the program does, consult google. same as above, if you find programs you feel you can do without, simply uncheck that program. Some things that google may say are necessary may or may not be. E.g. i find that update programs other than window's updates need not be automatically run, especially at system start-up. often times these programs will search for updates when you use them, or you can choose to manually update the programs at your preference; they need not run at every start-up. research the programs, understand what they do, then decide if you really need this to run every time your computer starts up. after you've completed unchecking all programs you feel you don't need, you simply click "ok." a prompt window will pop-up asking if you want to restart your computer. if you have anything open (e.g. notepad) that has something you want to save, save the info first before shutting down. after everything else is saved/closed, you may restart the system by clicking the restart button. allow the program to reboot. once the computer has reloaded, you will have another pop-up box letting you know that you've made changes to what starts when the computer starts. you'll most likely want to check the "do not show me this [annoying] pop-up window [ever] again." box, unless you want to see it each time your computer starts. now that you're up and running, defragment your computer, especially the c: drive (start>all programs>accessories>system tools>defragment; click on which drive you want to defrag; click on defrag; let defrag process complete. click ok/close and close out defrag program).
now we'll tackle services. services are parts of programs/processes that are running in the background that aren't listed in the task manager or start-up list in msconfig. to find these, click on start, right-click on my computer, click on manage; click the + next to services and applications; and click on services. (note: you may want to stretch the window to be able to see all you need.) you'll now see a list of all services on your computer. in the "start-up" column, you'll find three options, automatic, disabled, and manual. automatic means the system decides if it should run, disabled means it's not going to start on its own or you specified that you don't want the process to run, and manual means that it will either be started by you directly starting the service, or it will start when you open a program that requires it. same as before, you need to google all the services to figure out which ones you need, which ones you can disable, and which ones you'll only need if you start that program. e.g., i have plug and play set to automatic, error reporting service disabled, and windows installer set to manual because i want the computer to always be ready for me to plug in a new devise, i don't want microsoft to get a message every time my computer hiccups, and i only want windows installer to run when i actually start a program that requires windows installer. to change the service settings, double-click on the service. a pop-up window will give you a box that contains the current setting, and you can choose to change this by clicking the down arrow beside the box and selecting what you want, and click "ok." also, if you ever run into a problem and your computer gives you an error message and says something like "this program cannot run because blah service is not started" you can find the service in this list, double-click on it, and tell it to start by clicking start. after you've changed the services over to what you want, you can once again restart your system. it should come back up just fine, but if it doesn't you can just use the restore point you created and go back and try it again ;)
now the next time your computer starts, it'll hopefully run a bit more smoothly because you no longer have unnecessary programs and services running at every start-up.