How To: Speed Up Your Computer

How To: Speed Up Your Computer
Guide © 2008 Merchant_In_The_Dark
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In today's world, one of your most important tools is your computer. And, as everyone knows, they have an annoying trend of getting slower and slower the more we use them. This guide will teach you how to keep your computer fast, powerful, and virus-free - by learning where to find the best free tools and taking advantage of the hidden tools already built into your computer.
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This Guide Is Designed For:

• Windows XP
• Windows Vista
• Windows 98-2000

Contents:

1. SECTION ONE: Keeping Your Computer Virus-Free
   • How Do I Get Viruses?
   • Recognizing When You Are Infected
   • Using Free AntiVirus Tools
   • Getting Dirty: Killing Viruses That Just Won't Die
   • Defending Your System: Preventing Further Infections
2. SECTION TWO: Speeding Up And Optimizing Your Computer
   • Why Is My Computer So Slow?
   • Using Free Optimization Tools
   • Using Built-In System Clean-Up Tools
   • Optimizing Your Start-Up Programs
   • Tips For Old Or Extremely Slow Computers
   • Keeping Your Computer Fast: Regular Maintanence
3. SECTION THREE: Program Download Links, Downloadable Guide

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SECTION ONE: Keeping Your Computer Virus-Free

How Do I Get Viruses?
Unfortunately, there are too many ways to get viruses to count. The most common ways, however, are through file-sharing and the internet. If you use programs like LimeWire, BitTorrent, or other file-sharing networks, you're very likely to run into a virus eventually. Other viruses come through E-Mail as attachments, or are downloaded to your computer hidden inside another program (often obtained from a warez or hacking web site).

Recognizing When You Are Infected
The first step to ridding yourself of a virus is recognizing what it is. The best way to be warned of a virus is to have a good antivirus system - even if it cannot automatically handle the virus, it can warn you of it's presence.

Viruses come in two types, Destructive and Manipulative.

It's easy to tell when you have a destructive virus, as you will often find that they taunt you with messages, ads, or notifications that your hard-drive has been deleted.

Manipulative viruses are a bit harder to sniff out. They count on not being discovered by their victims, and can be used to either hijack your computer for the hacker's purposes or open a back door to give the hacker access to your files. Signs that you have a manipulative virus include:

• Unknown programs running in the "processes" tab of the Windows Task Manager
• Long start-up times for applications
• Periods when the computer seems to be working hard when you aren't doing anything
• Changes to your Internet home page or search engine

When you detect either type of virus, it's important to immediately start working to eliminate it from your computer.

Using Free Antivirus Tools
Free AntiVirus tools are one of the most important things to have in your arsenal. They are just as good as the expensive corperate versions, and they can fix and alert you to existing viruses as well as prevent new viruses from being downloaded or installing themselves.

The best place to find free antivirus and antispyware tools is www.download.com, which offers a wide variety to choose from. Here are some of the best:

• AVG AntiVirus Free Edition
• ZoneAlarm
• Avast!

AVG Free is my recommended program


Usually, AntiVirus programs are designed to kill specific types of malware (such as Adware, Spyware, or Viruses). It's good to have at one program each for Viruses and Spyware, or one that deals with them both.

Important: Don't install more then one program to deal with each type of malware! This can lead to complications if they interfere with each other, as well as making your computer irritatingly slow.

Getting Dirty: Killing Viruses That Just Won't Die
Sometimes, your antivirus program will tell you that you have a virus - and be unable to do anything about it. When this happens, the only thing to do is to "go in" and kill it yourself.

The first thing to do is to get any information you can from your antivirus program: The virus's name, and the names and locations of infected files.

Go on Google (on a different computer if necessary) and get any information you can on the virus, including other files that it commonly infects and what it attempts to do to your computer.

Now comes the fun part. Disconnect the infected computer from the internet before starting- this is important so the virus can't re-download itself as you kill it.

Use Explorer or Search to find all of the infected files. Attempt to delete them manually. You may get an error "Access Denied: This File Is In Use". This means that the virus is currently running on your computer. Cut and paste the infected file to your desktop, and rename it "deletethis.txt". The computer will complain about changing the file extension, ignore it. You have now rendered the virus unusable. Repeat for all of the infected files.

Now restart your computer, keeping the internet unplugged. You will now be able to delete the disabled virus files. Immediately afterwards, do the following:

• Empty the Recycle Bin
• Delete all System Restore points
• Do a full-system scan with your AntiVirus software

You should now run a system cleaner utility to sweep up any leftover pieces of the broken virus that are left in your system. Once the antivirus scan returns an all-clear, you're good to re-connect to the internet. Mission accomplished!

Defending Your System: Preventing Further Infections
With the proper precautions, you should never get another virus on your computer again. Follow the following guidelines to keep your computer clean and rock-solid against future attacks:

• Run daily virus and spyware scans
• Scan any E-mail attachments or downloaded files before opening them
• Immediately and permanently dispose of any infected file or program
• Avoid Internet sites that offer "warez" or "hacks", they also offer viruses

Finally, if your computer is infected beyond repair, salvage your personal files, wipe the disk, and re-install Windows- making sure to follow the above instructions to prevent and further infections.
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SECTION TWO: Speeding Up And Optimizing Your Computer

Why Is My Computer So Slow?
Like your bedroom, computers accumulate alot of crap over time. The more you use it, the more crap piles up. Imagine if you NEVER cleaned your room - It's a good visualization for what the insides of your computer probably look like after a year or so without proper maintanence.

What is this "crap" that piles up in my computer?
Every time you download a file, visit a webpage, or create a document, your computer creates more backups, caches, copies, and temporary files then it can keep after. These files pile up on your hard drive and waste space, as well as making the computer sort through them all to find the files you really need.

Your computer will also slow down if too many programs are running. many programs that you install request to be run at startup, so they can be more quickly accessed later. The only problem is, in making themselves faster they make the entire computer slower. many programs are still known to do this, the most infamous being Apple's Quicktime and Adobe Reader. Killing these startup programs not only makes booting up faster, but it increases the overall performance of your computer by freeing up wasted RAM.

Using Free Optimization Tools
Just like AntiVirus programs, when it comes to cleaning out your computer the best things in life are free. Glary Utilities is an amazing free program that does everything the expensive ones do and more, including:

• Cleaning out unneeded files
• Cleaning and optimizing the Registry
• Optimizing RAM memory usage
• Basic anti-spyware protection
• And much more!

There is no nag messages, no limitations, and no catches to this program. It's awesome. Get it here:

http://www.glaryutilities.com/gu.html?tag=download

Screenshot:



Once you install Glary Utilities, use the One-Click Maintanence feature
to take a big chunk out of the junk in your ststem. You'll be amazed by how much it finds. You can then go into the Modules tab, and use specific tools to clean out your computer even more thouroghly.

Run One-Click Maintanence around once or twice a week, and you'll be amazed at the difference in your computer's performance.

Using Built-In System Clean-Up Tools
Windows includes several handy tools to optimize and clean-up your system, and relatively few people know about or use them. They include:

• Disk Cleanup
• Disk Defragmenter
• Disk Checker

These programs can be found in:

Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools



Disk Cleanup: A thorough trash-collecter that can reclaim hard drive space by deleting and compressing old or unneeded files.

Disk Defragmenter: An essential program that makes your files and programs faster to access from the hard disk. This should be run about once every two weeks, and can sometimes take an hour or so to complete.

Disk Checker: This program finds and fixes "bad sectors" on your hard disks - reclaiming hard drive space you never knew you had.

Optimizing Your Start-Up Programs

Often, programs that you install request to be run whenever you start your computer. This is often unnecessary, and can put a large load on your CPU and memory as well as increasing boot-up time.

We can look at and change the programs that run on startup by running an application called MSConfig. You probably never knew it was on your computer, but it is. Open the "Run" box on your start menu and type the following:



You should see a gray box pop up. Click on the "Startup" tab, and you'll see a list that will look like this:



All of the checked programs on this list of programs are running every time your computer starts. Avgcc, for example, is the AVG AntiVirus updater, which I allowed to keep running on startup.

Uncheck the box and click "Apply" to disable a program from automatically running on startup.

Other programs that used to run on startup, which I disabled, include:

• Adobe Reader Speed Loader (Reader_sl)
• MSN Messenger (msnmsgr)
• QuickTime (qttask)
• Google Toolbar (GoogleToolbarNotifier)

None of these programs need to run at startup, and after I disabled them my computer started up and ran considerably faster. Before removing any programs from the startup list, however, do a Google search to see if they're worth keeping there (some programs you may want to keep include virus scanners and device drivers).

Check MSConfig regularly, as many programs have an annoying habit of consistantly re-entering themselves into the startup list. Some antispyware programs, such as Spy Sweeper, will automatically block these programs for you unless you approve them.

Tips For Old Or Extremely Slow Computers

If your computer is old and you want to speed it up even more, you can consider changing your graphics settings.

The following tweaks will lower your computer's graphic settings to improve RAM usage and CPU consumption. These can significantly help older computers.

To lower your color depth:
Control Panel > Display > Settings

Set the Color Depth box to 16 bit. You will notice slightly dimmer colors, and much faster computing.

To edit OS Graphics settings:
Control Panel > System > Advanced

Click on the "Settings" button under "Performance Settings", and uncheck boxes for all of the visual effects (i.e. - animated windows, etc) that you can live without. This will significantly affect the speed your programs and OS runs.

Keeping Your Computer Fast: Regular Maintanence
Your computer is finally clean - How do you keep it that way?

Follow the following tips to continue to enjoy a fast, crap-free computer:

• Run Glary Utilities weekly
• Use Disk Defragmenter every two weeks
• Periodically check startup programs

I hope you have enjoyed this guide. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post, and keep tuned for updates!!

~Merchant

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This Was very helpful thank you!

9/10

 

Oh baby... So your computer finally
got fixed over the summer? Or am
I still blocked on msn? Might wanna
change the signature to: Scammed the
most cash from a guide.

 

Hey Lagbot,

I haven't been on MSN or Sythe all summer due to RL issues, I wouldn't block you. I'll PM you now.

Would anyone be interested in a downloadable/printable Word document of the guide? I'll add one if there are enough people who will use it.

 

TuneUp would save all this.
Gud 8/10

 

Optimization programs are awesome, but if you really want to get everything you have to know how to do it yourself as well. Different cleaning systems get to (and miss) different areas

 

nice guide, pretty useful, but it's also important to keep the computer clean physically on the inside from all dust and crap. that slows your computer down also.

 

Wow nice guide. I usually use Ccleaner. To clean my computer to save space.

 

Wow nice bro I rather use my cleaner than do it manually

 

Cleaners are good, but it helps to know how to do it yourself as well. Drainingpower, that's a good point as well - physical crap like dust in your computer's casing can clog the fan and cause it to overheat. I just discovered that a few weeks ago, when my computer started making strange noises

Thanks for the feedback, everyone

EDIT: One more post to Guru w00t

 

looks good, nice work of colour, detail, although it lacks in pictures, you still have some so overall nice work. 8/10

 

Thanks, man. I may add some more pictures in the next few days, and a printable version in case people want to use it off Sythe.

Let me know if there's anything else you think I should add or cover more completely.

PS: I'm a Guru! w00000000000t!!!!

 

Also for the super old computers you should recommend using ubuntu home 8.04 cuz its a great free OS for old computers that need a refreshing.

 

Or you could save all this shit and use Linux like anyone with a brain.

 

CCleaner does half of this.

 

Some lesserknown virus programs contain viruses themselves. This works, although if you wish to speed your computer up you can always do a System Defrag. It'll clean all the usless junk up instantly.

/edit

7/10

 

I learned a few new things. Good use of color and good use of pictures. 9/10

To everyone who says CCleaner, CCleaner! - Sometimes manual is just better. A knowledgeable person can do a much better job than a program ever will.

 

Epic! Very good layout and pictures 10/10 helped me alot!

 

nice guide mate i've notied my comp is a slight bit quicker,, thanks =D

 

Thanks helped me good job