I had my computer for over half a year.
Now it runs like a piece of $#1'l' Can some one tell me (and anyone else who is interested) how I can actually make it run on the very maximum performance again?
I am defragmenting my Hard Drive right now. Then I will uninstall useless programs and scan for viruses and spyware. What else can I do here?
TELL ME ALL!!
EDIT: Anyone know any good free defragmenter cuz WinXP defragmenter sucks l3@77$
You would be suprised at how well going into
"C:\Documents and Settings\" and then renaming your user folder to something else will work.
When you reboot it will recreate a fresh user directory. You'll still have all the rights associated to the programs you have installed but it wipes alot of the useless bootup crap you might not need.
You might want to back-up your start menu and desktop options before you reboot, but you should still have access to your older the renamed folder.
Edit: forgot, you'll probably have to do this in administrator mode, or with a BartPE disk.
Defrag is usually the last step. A good defrag program would be something the likes of O&O Defragmenter (it is the full version of the one included with Windows, its quite good). Diskeeper is another very popular one.
As for cleaning up, first step is always get rid of spyware. Reason being is that spyware is often maelware, in that it tries to reproduce itself before you can rid of it.
My usual process is something like this:
Run Adaware, latest definition file
delete everything it finds.
check your start->programs->startup for anything suspicious.
open a regedit (run regedit)
goto:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
look for anything suspicious there, this is a very common place for spyware to hit as everything there will start up any time any user logs in.
Though there is an easier step if you use MSCONFIG (from run) check the startup tab... this is probably the better option as it should also have the startup items specific to your user account.
after that, check task manager, sort by user name (may have to add the option with view->select colums, User Name)
See if anything is running under your user name that really shouldn't be. The only ones required to be running uder your user account are explorer.exe and taskmgr.exe though you may have driver apps or browsers and such open as well.
After that, go through your hard drive for anything you don't need laying around, deleting stuff before defragging is always optimal.
Next, I'd run a chkdsk /f
it will ask to dismount, hit yes, it won't be able to, but it will ask if you want to scan on the next startup, hit yes.
Reboot, let scandisk go to fix any possible filesystem problems.
Run adaware again... to make sure you don't have a pesky one returning right away, if all is clear, start making sure all your drivers are current.
After that, defrag.
Defragging before doing all that, while still helpful, won't be as effective as doing it all data movement is done.
Hope thats a good summary of basic tips for getting a better running system.
Other side notes:
if you have 2 HDs, split your windows virtual memory between the two drives, and make sure your total minimum virtual memory is 2x your physical memory size.
Hmmm... defragmented stuff... cleaned registry... deleted 500 spyware s***-a-ma-gigs...Clened WinXP startup... Cleaned some other things...
BUT I STILL GET LAG ON THE RIGHT MOUSE CLICKING!!!!!
I can right click on something 200 times untill the menu pops up! Anyone here has an idea why this is heppening and what I can do to fix it?
EDIT: OFFTOPIC: IS there any way to make Blood2 run on 1024*768 Res Setting and above?
