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Cures for Slow windows machines


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There seems to be an increase in the amount of people asking for assistance in making their pc run faster with xp.

 

XP will go at snails pace with 256 meg of ram on board.

Xp will go at a crawl with 512 meg of ram on board.

XP will dance for you with 1024 meg of ram on board.

 

 

best solution - backup all personal data and FASA

Format

And

Start

Again

 

If this is almost impossible i suggest spybot search and destroy

 

avg free

clam win portable

 

regseeker

 

jkdefrag

 

spywareblaster

 

note-spywareblaster and spybot will work together on the same machine and no conflict

 

ccleaner

 

 

page defrag

 

 

hijackthis

 

there is a handy online scanner/remover of virii/adware etc

http://housecall65.trendmicro.com/

 

http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ie.html

 

http://www.kaspersky.com/scanforvirus

 

http://security.symantec.com/sscv6/default.asp?langid=ie&venid=sym

 

http://virusscan.jotti.org/

 

http://www.virustotal.com/

 

 

that should do the trick.

 

also if you using a Pentium 4 CPU from about 3Ghz and upwards these cpu's generate a *LOT* of heat.

i have 2 pcs running these cpus and i have got a 5 extra fans mounted in the case to keep up air flow to the cpus and the hard drives.

heat is a big killer of machines. and they are not that noisy at all.they will prograssivly get louder as the fans get full of dust. every 6 to 8 weeks take the pc to the shed and clean it out with your air compressor. shove your finger or a pencil in to the fans before you blast then with air. this is to prevent them from spinning to enable dust removal. if you dont stop then spinning, the fan blade can be sheered off , trust me, i have done it myself years ago.learn from my mistake and dot do it yourself.

 

another thing to do is to monitor the temp of your pc.there is a handy freeware program to achieve this and it is called speedfan

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpeedFan

 

there is another handy util to use but you need to buy it, it is called hmonitor and it is also very very good

 

http://www.hmonitor.net/

 

also make sure you have installed all the windows updates as they cure many known bugs

this can be easily done with portable firefox

http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

 

once installed go to this web site to get all the windows updates

http://windowsupdate.62nds.com/

why do it like this i hear you ask. if you go thru the windows update site they will install the windows genuine advantage kit. i have seen this utility run on machines with a genuine licensed copy and it has rendered it useless.

 

somhting you may find handy to test the hardware of the machine with for defects is the ultimate boot disc

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

 

this is a handy cd to keep a copy of.you can test ram, and hard drives for defects. faulty ram will cause XP to reboot and can slso cause an error to pop up every time it starts and say it need to reload a backup copy of the registry and other silly things.

 

a faulty hard drive can cause the pc to take ages to start as well or it may cause a few applications to run slowly as well.

 

also make sure you have loaded the correct drivers for you video card and mainboard as well. in particular if you have a via chip set mobo load the Hyperion drivers for it.

no matter what video card ou have be sure to load the drivers from the manufacturers web site, do not install the default windows drivers for the video card. the standard windows drivers are totally useless and will not allow you to get the best results from your video card and in many cases if you want to play games, the game will not run.

 

if your running a mame cabinet then cooling is essential. i have a lowboy with a P4 2.4 Ghz cpu in my lowboy and at the bottom of the cabinet i made a custom bracket to hold a 6 inch 12 volt fan about 2 inches up from the bottom of the cab to blow air straight up the cabinet over the cpu and hdd and it works a treat to keep it cool.

 

by keeping the coin door and the rear of the machine closed it is not very noisy at all. but open the coin door or rear of the cabinet and you will get a blast.

 

if you need to backup your data so you may FASA the pc here is some tips. you can burn the data a few ways, here is a few freeware programs to help you out

 

http://www.imgburn.com/

 

http://cdburnerxp.se/

(if you have the .net layer installed on your pc, then get version 4. if not, get version 3)

 

if you have wwwaaaayyyy too much data to fit on to one dvd, then this will help you as it will split it in to cd or dvd sizes

 

http://lars.werner.no/?page_id=2

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You forgot Prime95 (google it).

 

Basically it does very complex maths on your computer and it already knows te answer. It checks what your computer has compared to the correct answer. Shows off bad memory (or if the mem pass' memtest a bad motherboard/cpu).

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You forgot Prime95 (google it).

 

Basically it does very complex maths on your computer and it already knows te answer. It checks what your computer has compared to the correct answer. Shows off bad memory (or if the mem pass' memtest a bad motherboard/cpu).

 

 

Man!!! why am i always the one who has to google stuff and post a link. it only takes a few seconds for people to ad a link in their post:evil:evil

 

sorry... been a stressful day here

 

anyhow, this looks like some info at wiki

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime95

 

thanks for the info.hopefully others will benefit from this

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Windows is definately bloatware... but its not just MS's fault... every utility these days insists on secretly installing itself as a service and/or resident to your taskbar.

 

I really like the script in TinyXP that asks you in simple english whether you use certain features of Windows, and then turns off the respective service which results in a MUCH faster build. However this only works for the inbuilt Windows services and not 3rd party services you install later.

 

It'd be nice if MS put such features in their core operating system.

 

Do any of the utilities mentioned in this thread scan services, identify them in english, and give you the option of disabling them? They seem more for spyware and not 'useless utilware'

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AVG anti virus will obviously attach it self as a service and add itself to the tool bar.

 

Spybot will add itself as a service but *ONLY* if you enable the Tea timer when you install it.

the rest of the utils i mentioned , no they wont run as a service

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I think you missed my question... :)

 

I was asking if any of those utils help clean up existing un-needed services, not whether the util itself is a service :)

 

ok. none mentioned clean up existing services. i dont know if there is a utility round that would do that.

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google blackvipers xp services guide for info on services tweaking. Big thumbs up for tiny do (rev 5) is my pick... Also what about ccleaner and avast antirus instead of avg

 

I think he did mention ccleaner actually.. ;)

 

Smit

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Avast's GUI is so complex. Why? AVG is so much easier. Then main reason's I prefer AVG over Avast. GUI on Avast is complex to a novice, one has to register Avast every year.

 

i turn off avasts skin mode.... less memory usage and the gui is much cleaner :)

 

agreed though at first the skin mode is a little all over the place

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i was trying to help out with *FREE* utilitys that can be mastered in short time by folks who may not be proficient in their daily use of pc's.

 

if you want to nitpick over Antivirus scanners and want the best, you are going to need to pay for it in my humble opinion.

 

if you want the best, go here

http://kaspersky.com.au/

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  • 9 months later...

I always like to partition my drive for windows with at least two partitions . One is for the system files ( windows ) and the other personal files . This makes for an easy reinstall if things ever go bad in future ( and they will eventually ) .

 

Use Nlite for Windows XP or Vlite for Vista and cut out everything you dont need from the installation . You can also use Nlite to cripple services you dont need , (not a networked pc why have the service running ? ) .Use blackvipers service guide he has a safe list for those who are new to this .

 

If your not feeling confident with all that leave the installation alone and install fresh and tweak the services later by navigating to Start/ Computer right click the menu and choose Manage this will open up the Computer Manager . Go to Services and Applications/Services and here you will see everything thats running on your pc .

 

Start at the top and use blackvipers guide or just right click a service and select properties for more info on it ( be sure to check dependancies if you stop something ) only choose those things that start automatically and leave the manual stuff alone .

 

Make sure you dont turn off your antivirus and firewall and go through each one , use your head :) . Next use ccleaner and navigate to Tools/ Startup and turn off everything you dont want starting from those pesky programs like quicktime ,messenger and the like and just keep your security and those things you cant live without running and things will be a lot quicker :) .

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  • 4 months later...

Another one - clean the damn fans, had one of my wifes mates ask me to take a look at her PC which was running like a dog. Turns out there was half a bloody dog inside the machine, clogged full of fluff, dust and pet hair. P4 2.8Ghz do not like not having their heatsink blocked and fan limping round. The CPU clocks back when its too hot to stop it overheating and this heatsink was very hot to the touch.

 

That and the PC only had 256MB in it. A biiig clean out, and the heatsink is cool to the touch, all fans running again. New old PSU as it the old old one had bulging caps galore too.

 

Oh and upping the memory from 256MB to 1.25GB helped a lot - apparently I have "speeded up the internet" too. :rolleyes

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while cleaning the fans, if your proficient with sandpaper, lap the cpu heat sink

 

only takes about 20 minutes and use new clean fresh heat sink compound when refitting

 

*DONT* use 9 ton of the stuff either or it will act as an insulator

just a *THIN* film of it will do

 

hehe. I've gotta laugh. Sorry

 

You forgot one solution.

 

FORMAT C: /U

 

install Linux Kubuntu which looks and works just like XP for most stuff that the average Joe would want to do.

See my step by step tutorial for how it's done.

http://guru.mameworld.info/guruvskubuntu.html

 

no need to format if installing ubuntu. it has its own partitioner, gparted and it will do it all for you if you wish

 

neat little guide. need to be updated. 7.10 is long in the tooth. grab 8.04 LTS or 9.04

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Another one - clean the damn fans, had one of my wifes mates ask me to take a look at her PC which was running like a dog. Turns out there was half a bloody dog inside the machine, clogged full of fluff, dust and pet hair. P4 2.8Ghz do not like not having their heatsink blocked and fan limping round. The CPU clocks back when its too hot to stop it overheating and this heatsink was very hot to the touch.

 

Every PC the comes to my place gets hit with 100psi in and out before I even look at fixing any problems they have. The what do you know most issues are fixed after a good clean out :D. Oh and I hate working on a PC covered in god knows what.

 

I also use Avast over AVG I find it less in your face with update and the like. The doing the reg thing is not so bad. I have also found the Avast picked up more stuff that AVG was missing.

 

There is some good info in this thread to. good one :D...

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  • 5 years later...
Man why are you dredging up old threads like this? It's five years old!

 

C'mon mate. He gave us a pro tip on disk defragmentation :)

 

More importantly, what happened to @lien_Zed ?

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