Do you need computer maintenance??
I am at my parents house and they are computer illiterate. So I try to keep there computer operating for them.
Here are some good sites if you want to get your computer running well.
www.pcpitstop.com -- This site will look at all aspects of your computer and tell you the computers performance and how you may be able to better it.
www.ccleaner.com -- This downloadable free program will clean the registry, helps with add/remove programs and will clean temporary files to help your computer run better.
AVG antivirus is a free antivirus program that runs faster than Norton and is very very good. Oh yeah, did I mention it was free!! http://www.download.com/AVG-Anti-Virus-Free-Edition/3000-2239_4-10320142.html
Ad-aware and Spybot Search and Destroy are also two good programs to remove spyware. But since getting Ccleaner I have found that by cleaning the temp internet files it gets rid of the spyware.
Here are some good sites if you want to get your computer running well.
www.pcpitstop.com -- This site will look at all aspects of your computer and tell you the computers performance and how you may be able to better it.
www.ccleaner.com -- This downloadable free program will clean the registry, helps with add/remove programs and will clean temporary files to help your computer run better.
AVG antivirus is a free antivirus program that runs faster than Norton and is very very good. Oh yeah, did I mention it was free!! http://www.download.com/AVG-Anti-Virus-Free-Edition/3000-2239_4-10320142.html
Ad-aware and Spybot Search and Destroy are also two good programs to remove spyware. But since getting Ccleaner I have found that by cleaning the temp internet files it gets rid of the spyware.
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Thanks for the tip, my new laptop has a ATI setting Ive never set up. Best I can understand it has something to do with your screen resolution, but Im afraid to mess with it. 0 -
One of the easiest ways to get your computer running better is to do run the disc clean-up program, followed immediatly by disc defragment. 0 -
Don't forget
- Zone Alarm - the best free firewall on the planet
- FireFox - the best free browser on the planet
and a good registry cleaner. I use Registry Mechanic.
But most importantly - no matter what you run, there is no substitute for a good backup! [:p]0 -
Thanks for the links!![8D] 0 -
The single most important thing to keep a PC running well is to turn off as many instant-start resident programs as possible. Every new Windows install I've seen has a very cluttered desktop and has everything turned on and running at the same time. Every time a new program is added or upgraded it defaults to full time instant-on. I use a variety of methods for determining what loads at startup, and disable everything that isn't needed. Unfortunately, there's no easy way for the average user to determine what's necessary and what isn't. I always disable the default instant-on behavior of all media players, schedulers, and Windows features I never use.
I cleaned up my sister's XP computer a few years ago and over Christmas I checked it again and found it so bogged down it could hardly load and run a web browser. Somehow she had managed to have 3 antivirus programs running at the same time. I disabled all but 1. I found that upgrades to various media players, Acrobat Reader, and other things had turned the instant-on behavior back on again. I went through the startup list again and disabled the loading of a bunch of crap, shut down unnecessary Windows processes, disabled little nuisance utilities related to mouse and video card, etc, etc.
The default installation and upgrade behavior of most operating systems and application programs is to take over the computer and load in all kinds of memory resident, instant-on monitors and utilities that do nothing but use up resources and bog things down to a crawl. Antivirus and anti-malware programs are the worst. They default to everything turned on at once, all the time.
There's no easy way to describe how to fix this stuff. I would suggest going to a good book store and looking for how-to books that claim to have a lot of optimization and speed up tricks and tweaks.0 -
Dumpster Baby
I agree totally. I delete everything that is not used and cut the startup list to the bare minimum.
On my computer the only programs in the lower right corner are Trillian and AVG. Trillian is an IM program that puts together AIM, Yahoo, ICQ etc into one program.
My parents computer has windows installed, Word, AVG and not much else but they are still able to cripple the performance.0 -
Iobit.com
Advanced WindowsCare is probably the best free program out there.0 -
quote:Originally posted by Nighthawk
Thanks for the tip, my new laptop has a ATI setting Ive never set up. Best I can understand it has something to do with your screen resolution, but Im afraid to mess with it.
ATI is a proprietary graphics card, typically with amd, but i have seen one{1} with a intel, it should have many more setting than just resolution
best maintenance you can do for your puter is to keep it clean, once a year open it up, and blow it out with duster, dirt and dust are a great insulation, and hold in the heat very well, heat is the enemy, blow out everything, fans, heat sinks, power supply, and re apply the cpu thermal paste, it is a must once a year, it dries up, and fails to do its job, and will over heat the processor, keeping your cpu cool is like cool air to a engine =horsepower, and if you still have it in a desk with a door move it, they allow heat build up, if you notice they don't sell them like that anymore
the rest is just software issues, software is of little use with a burned up computer
fyi: a team of geeks last year reached the 5.25ghz with a p4 3.2 with liquid nitrogen as a coolant0 -
the biggest thing ive got to do is keeping the dust out
The biggest problem ive seen with people putting thier
computer on the floor, dust magnet0
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