I wrote this article while building my site . First, I had planned all the stuff to be crammed into a single guide, but then I realised that I'd better do it in parts. This way it would be easier for users to follow. So, there are 4 sections to this guide, all covering different topics. You can get them all on my site.
In this guide I'll just tell about general good practices about working on a PC,while others are about tweaking registry, windows services, and the last one is about all the free software and web sites which are very useful.
Although I've checked every fact in this guide I really can't take any responsibility if you destroy your computer by doing something silly. Please contact me at [email protected] or [email protected] for any comments, suggestions or queries.Most of people don't realize how much vulnerable they can be on the internet. A good antivirus is necessary for the safe operation of a PC. Buying a good anti virus is a good investment for your PC. In case you are short with money ,here are some free antivirus software. These require registration by email which itself is free.
1.Avast Antivirus (Home): http://www.avast.com 1. Symantec's Online Scan: http://www.security2.norton.com/ Read the instructions before you do an online scan. You may need to disable your proxy or firewall to complete the scan successfully.
If an infected file is found you should delete it immediately. but if the file is important try the repair option. In some cases you may be able to recover some data.
http://securityreponse.symantec.com is a good place to go get specific virus removal tools. My PC was infected by Blaster worm few months ago. I downloaded a security fix from there and got rid of that infernal worm before it did much damage.
Also update your windows software as soon as new updates are released. These patches fix some serious security fixes. Visitwww.windowsupdate.microsoft.com to download updates.
2.. Trend Micro's free online (Housecall) virus scanner: http://www.housecall.trendmicro.com/
3.Panda ActiveScan Online Virus Scan: http://www.pandasoftware.com/active scan/
Some people might consider it just a waste of system resources but a good firewall can protect against malicious crackers and it also gives an idea about what application is trying to access the internet.
Windows XP users have a firewall built in. To enable it go to My Network Places. Then select your connection and select its properties by right-clicking it. Select the last tab Advanced and turn on your firewall from there. The blaster worm keeps on shutting down PC while the user is online. Turning on the firewall prevents the worm from shutting down the PC till the security fix can be downloaded.
Now that you have the best antivirus and firewall but still you pestered by little dialer programs which keep popping out every minute trying to connect to the internet without your permission. Some come with legitimate programs but some others get installed in your computer without your knowledge. When I said legitimate programs it did not meant you may like what info they might be collecting about you. Some spyware transmit your surfing habits, IP address and other computer data without your permission.
To get rid of spyware try Spybot Search & Destroy.
Its one of the best. But its really important that a spyware remover should be updated regularly like an antivirus. A good place for malicious programs to hide is temporary files folder. while you surf the net your browser caches the files in web pages and stores them on hard disk. This speeds up surfing to some extent as next time you visit those sites those files are not needed to be downloaded again.
Also when you install some programs some files remain on disk even after installation is over. Also some programs like antivirus, media players etc. sometimes generate files which are quite useless and remain in temp. files folder thereby consuming a lot of disk space.
Run disk cleanup from Start--->Accessories--->System Tools---->Disk Cleanup . Or you can select a disk's properties by right-clicking it and selecting disk cleanup from there. You may also want to delete cookies. Some cookies may contain spyware or other undesirable stuff. But some sites like Yahoo! and boards etc. use them to fill login prompts automatically for you so that the user doesn't need to remember each and every password.
A lot of users use auto-complete feature in windows if they have a lot of different passwords to remember. But that's as good as having no password at all. A lot of tools are freely available to get even the login passwords of windows. One such tool is available on my site too, so that you might check how safe your passwords are. (It works only on Win9x) That means you need to have some software in your own computer which does that for you. Some browsers like Opera and Mozilla store your passwords for you in an encrypted form. You need to remember only one password to log on to your account on the browser (i.e. if you have a multi-login account on PC). But sometimes you may need more than just passwords. You may need to fill forms regularly in addition to login screens, then you should have AI Roboform, Its freely downloadable from www.roboform.com
1.jv16 Powertools available at http://www.jv16.org . This is more than just a registry maintenance tool. It has a lots of powerful tools built into one program. Use this programs to flush temp. files, clean out your registry in a very safe manner and lots more. Best that I"ve ever used
2. Regsupreme: www.macecraft.com/. This registry cleaner is a shareware but still good.
3. RegScrubXP: www.freedownloadscenter.com/Reviews/r882.html
Anyway, before you do anything with registry first make its backup. If due to any reason you may need to restore the registry to its earlier state just double-click on the registry file.
To backup registry go to Start--->Run--->regedit. Then click on File and select Export. Then choose some location where you want the backup to be stored.
Some of you might not know that RAM also gets "fragmented" as data on a harddisk does. Thereby degrading performance.RAM freeing utilities force Windows to remove all the data that is not currently needed in the memory. This is useful because windows often neglects/fails to release RAM. Use the following utilties to free up precious RAM and you will see noticeable gain in performance in minutes.
1.MPower. A really good utility available at http://www.mpower.com
2.Also visit http://www.ams.as.ro/dc.php for another RAM freeing utility
3.FreeRAM XP Pro http://www.yourwaresolutions.com/.
Run ScanDisk regularly; at least once a month. Also do a thorough scan too once in a while to prevent data loss due to bad sectors.
To start scandisk go to Start --> Accessories --> System Tools --> "Scandisk.� Alternately go to Computer --> Right-click on drive to be scanned--> Then click "Properties" --> Then click the "Tools" tab at the top, and click "Scandisk."
When you choose scandisk, you may need to restart before you can, it may ask, "May scandisk run on next restart," allow it to and restart.
Defragmenting is a quite necessary process overlooked by many users. But unless you deal with very very miniscule amounts of data, not defragmenting your hard drive may result in noticeable performance loss.Volumes become fragmented as users create and delete files and folders, install new software, or download files from the Internet. Computers typically save files in the first contiguous free space that is large enough for the file. If a large enough free space is not available, the computer saves as much of the file as possible in the largest available space and then saves the remaining data in the next available free space, and so on. After a large portion of a volume has been used for file and folder storage, most of the new files are saved in pieces across the volume. When you delete files, the empty spaces left behind fill in randomly as you store new ones. The more fragmented the volume is, the slower the computer's file input/output performance will be. Windows has an inbuilt utility for defragmenting drives. To use it go to Start -->Programs -->Accessories-->System Tools-->Disk Defragmenter.
Take care not to shutdown your PC and adding or deleting files when defrag. is under process. If your drive has a large volume of fragmented files it may take a long time for the completion of the process. Also if the drive is completely full defrag may not work. You need to remove unnecessary files to free up disk space.
A lot of useless files and folders are left quite often on your hard drive which occupy a lot of disk space. To free your disk and also to prevent fragmentation of data use disk cleanup as I explained earlier. Also try the following tips: 1. System Restore: WindowsXP keeps backups system files in the �System Volume Information� folder. This can eat up valuable space on your hard drive. If you don't want Windows to back up your system files then do the following:
Open the Control Panel --> Double-click on System --> Click the System Restore tab --> Check "Turn off System Restore on all drives" --> Click Apply.
Please keep in mind that if you turn this off, you will not be able to reset mistakes that you have made. If you are new to computers I would recommend leaving this on. If you want to keep it on but still save disk space cleanup useless old restore points regularly from disk cleanup utility. It would clear all but the most recent restore point.
WindowsXP has this hibernation feature which takes up valuable resources, a large amount of RAM and also hard disk space. If you do not use hibernation then disable it by doing the following: Start --> Control Panel --> Performance and Maintenance --> Power Options --> Hibernate Tab --> and uncheck the �Enable Hibernation� box.
WindowsXP is a good looking But at the same time very resource hungry operating system. A lot of useless visual effects are kept enabled by default in XP. By disabling them you can gain a considerable boost in performance specially in PCs with low amount of RAM. Same goes if you are an avid gamer who requires last amount of RAM for his games or use memory intensive applications a lot.
Right-click your desktop then go to "Properties,� then the "Settings" tab. Lower your bit depth here. BUt keep in mind there is a lot of difference between 16 and 32 bit colour in terms of visual appeal.
In "Display Properties" window, select the "Appearance" tab, the "Effects". Uncheck what you don't really need like "Show shadows under menus" or "Show window contents while dragging" and select "Standard" screen fonts.
You should also disable the screen saver. Modern monitors don't really need screen savers. But that depends on users, some may need that to password protect their computer when they are away.
Now for the background. Every time you select a picture to be set as your background a copy of that image in bmp format is created and gets loaded into memory. Setting a blank background will save some of your RAM.
Now right-click "My Computer,� then "Properties.� Choose the "Advanced" tab. Under "Performance" click "Settings.� This is a click on "Adjust for best performance.� All the checked boxes will be cleared, and you're left with plain box. Personally, I have unchecked all but one box "Show common tasks in folders". This is not a visual effect. It only places some very useful shortcut menu in the left side of the explorer window.
Talking of themes, if you use some theme program like Window Blinds or Styles XP then disabling these visual effects would be a very good idea.
Disable all programs their options menu. MSN messenger, Winzip etc can be disabled from startup this way. NOw go to Start--->Run--->Type msconfig---> and go to the last tab Startup. There would be a lot of program entries . Disable all of those except which are windows system files. When you restart a message will ask that you've made some changes ..click on "Don't show this message again" and go on with your work. But the safest way of doing that is to use http://jv16 power tools
Keep in mind that removing the programs from start up won't remove them from your system. It merely prevents them form starting automatically.
Also take a look at the following link http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/ for a good list of what's the importance of each startup programs.
You should disable the startup and shutdown sounds. do nothing except slowing up your PC
Do do that click go to Control Panel --> Sound, Speech and Audio devices --> Sounds and Audio Devices --> Sounds.
Then under program events and the windows menu click on the "Exit Windows" sub-menu and highlight it. Now from sounds you can select, choose "none,� and then click Apply and lastly OK. While there you might also want to disable some sound events you really don't need.
Though many people overlook this, updating your drivers as soon as new updates are released is a good idea .Updating your drivers adds new functions, stability and security to your hardware. Microsoft releases updates of DirectX quite regularly at http://www.microsoft.com/directx. Updating DirectX does a good job in improving sound and video quality of your PC. But keep in mind DirectX once updated can't be uninstalled. If any problem arises you can only revert back to older drivers from the device manager.
You can update drivers of your graphics card, sound card, motherboard and other hardware present. But keep in mind updating BIOS should be done very carefully. Any mistake while updating BIOS can make motherboard useless. In case you don't know what's the make of your drivers visit http://majorgeeks.com/ for a utility which may help in knowing your driver's manufacturer.
Well, I think that's enough for now. Go to my homepage for some more tutorials on registry tweaking, best web sites and some cool downloads. Also check out some more fun stuff.
Any error report, comments etc. are welcome at [email protected]