Geritol for the Computer

[martha]

My computer has been sluggish and doing odd things so I'm trying to get rid of everything on here that I don't use and don't need. I've been through the add/remove software and deleted tons of stuff (hopefully nothing necessary). Now I'm looking for other places to get rid of garbage. In Windows, there is a folder named Temp that has a zillion files in it. Can all of these be safely deleted or am I misinterpretting the meaning of "Temp"? Any other suggestions would also be appreciated.

Thanks!

[philquad36]

should be ok to delete it.
theres a "prefetch" folder in window too, empty that
temp internet files/cookies
do disk cleanup and defrag.

go/ run/msconfig/ selective startup/ startup tab
untick unneccesary programs(all except antivirus)
apply/reboot
stops all programs starting up wen not needed.

[martha]

Thanks. Where are the temp internet files and cookies?

[PN]

Hi, Martha. To get rid of your cookies along with your internet history, do the following:

Right click on I.E.
Left click on "Properties"
Go to the "General Tabs"
Delete "Cookies" and then "Clear History"

If you're using Windows XP, then do the following:

Left click on "My Computer"
Right click on "Local Disk C"
Left click on "Properties"
Go to the "Tools Tab" and left click on "Check now"
Check "Automatically fix file system errors"
Check "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors"
Left click on "Start"

For more detailed information, go to the Microsoft Knowledge Base (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315265#XSLTH3124121123120121120120).

[CapnGimp]

My personal preference for any windows os is to do a complete reload. Then you have a spiffy clean registry.
I learned a looong time ago when repairing others troubles, to reload rather than try to polish a tUrd, it is, once again, my personal preference.
If you have ever saw all the trash left behind in the registry, you will know why I say RELOAD.

[bob clark]

Every year or so I'll reformat my hard drive and clean install Windows. I don't know if this is what CapnGimp meant by doing a complete "reload" or not. But reformatting your hard drive will completely wipe (overwrite) everything from your hard drive. So if there are things you want to save like emails, addresses, passwords, Favorites etc you need to back them up onto floppies or CDRs or wherever. I always "partition" my hard drive so I have an area on my hard drive to backup and store things like the ones I mentioned plus I keep all my mp3s and videos etc on a partition other than C:/ too. Remember, EVERYTHING on your active C:/ partition or drive will be lost.

You'll be amazed at how much junk and gunk you collect over a year or two time span. And how much faster and responsive your computer will be after a format and clean install. It gets rid of all spyware and viruses and/or parts of viruses that you thought you got rid of too. It'll be as fast as the day you first bought it.

But you'll need copies of all your programs, utilities, applications and games etc on their CDs so you can reinstall them. And perhaps your motherboard CD too. And of course a CD copy of your Operating System and its Product Code/Serial Number.

To clean up your Registry you can download free programs to do this with. I use RegCleaner (http://www.worldstart.com/weekly-download/archives/reg-cleaner4.3.htm) and run it once a week or so. It is amazing how many useless traces of programs are left behind in the registry when you uninstall them. There's always a chance of cleaning some registry entries that you may want/need whenever you run a Registry Cleaning program. But the registry cleaner program should by default backup a copy of your registry. So if a program does get screwed up you just "reinstall" the backed up registry settings. Then write in the name of the program that got screwed up in the "Ignore" function of the registry cleaner and run it again. This only happened to me once with MS Speech Recognition software called "SpeechEngine". No big deal.

It takes about an hour or two to reformat and clean install an OS but can take many hours or even days to reinstall all your programs, utilities, applications and games etc and tweak everything back to how you like it. If you have a computer savvy friend it may be best to have them show you how to do it the first time. It can be a bit tricky to the novice.

[CapnGimp]

Yepper, Sp0t 0n B0B. I didn't go into multiple partitions, if you're lookin fer gerit0l, I save the g00d stUph for the party, ;)

[PN]

Every year or so I'll reformat my hard drive and clean install Windows. I don't know if this is what CapnGimp meant by doing a complete "reload" or not. But reformatting your hard drive will completely wipe (overwrite) everything from your hard drive. So if there are things you want to save like emails, addresses, passwords, Favorites etc you need to back them up onto floppies or CDRs or wherever.

Very good advice/suggestion!

Spyware can slow to your computer down to a crawl. Make sure you're running the free version of AdAware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/), Spybot S&D (http://www.safer-networking.org/) (turn on the immunize feature), and Microsoft’s anti-Spyware program (http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/default.mspx) (turn on real-time protection).

In some cases you can speed up Windows by almost 20% by removing unnecessary start-up tasks. To see what programs are running you will want to go to "Start," "Run," type "msconfig," and click the startup tab. I would recommend going to System Info (http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php) to find out what each program is in your startup menu.

For more information:

Extreme Tips: Optimization Derby
By Andy Walker (http://www.g4techtv.ca/callforhelp/extremetips/0231A.shtml)-

What maintenance tweaks are the most effective?.

There are a few things you can do to tweak your system performance, but not all of them are as productive as you'd think. We took a few systems and did some of the typical optimizations to them to see if there was any increase in system performance when we ran a standard benchmarking program, Futuremark's PCMark 05.

Each system started in a lived-in condition, after months of typical usage. We benchmarked them first in that "lived-in" state, then again after each optimization.

[martha]

Thanks for the help! I didn't do the whole clean reload thing, but with the other suggestions I'm now running faster and even booting faster. I appreciate the help.
martha

[PN]

Martha: Glad to read that we were able to tune up your computer. What version of Windows are you running? Below is one more tip for speeding up Windows XP.

1. Open the Windows Control Panel
2. Double-click on System
3. Click on the Advanced Tab
4. Click on the Settings button in the Performance section
5. Place a check mark in the "Adjust for Best Performance" and click "Okay"

Windows will lose some of its eye-catching appeal but the bump in performance is noticeable

[Lewis]

What's the latest on disk imaging? Better than reformatting/reinstalling using individual programs and operating system? You guys recommend any programs commercial/free?

[CapnGimp]

I usually do one computer at a time, and as I seldom have groups of identical hardware on the networks I work on, I have never cloned a disc or disc image. Even the ones that are the same have different types of equipment hooked to them, so I treat them as individuals.
However, most hard drives bought new have the software on cd contained with them to do this.

You would find this a useful tool in the case of churing out multiple, like hardware, computers.
There is a slew of free software out there to do the various transfers you would be apt to do, if you don't like the hd supplied types.

If you are talking about just pulling an old failing drive from your computer and inserting a new one, I still would rather start with a fresh install. If you are just adding more storage and hate to deal with a reload, just add the drive and go, partitioning it as you wish.

more frEEEEbieZ...
http://www.sysresccd.org/
http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/backupandimage.shtml

[PN]

What's the latest on disk imaging? Better than reformatting/reinstalling using individual programs and operating system? You guys recommend any programs commercial/free?
Drive SnapShot (http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/index.htm) images while Windows is running. It is free to try for 30-days.