Three Guaranteed Performance Killers Will Slow Computer Down

Making A Few Adjustments Can Help Speed Up Your Computer

If you plan to pack a laptop computer, keeping in mind these things may help you spend more of your vacation time enjoying the scenery and less time performing technical support on your computer.
Don’t Expect Much Out Of The Hotel’s Internet Connection Some hotels offer free in-room wireless connectivity but that doesn’t mean you’ll be blazing along as you might at home or work. Often, hotel connections are limited to 128K/s or less. Good for checking email and not good for much else. Also, you may need to create new network settings for your computer in order to get an IP address and DNS service.
Don’t assume that paying for a connection will get you … well… a better connection. Some hotels charge for Internet service, but the service they provide isn’t any better than what you’d get from a free wireless connection. Check the hotel’s information about guaranteed upload and download speeds, and whether or not the maximum advertised speed is guaranteed or not. Some hotels charge by the hour for Internet access, while others charge by the 24-hour period. If you can get away with paying for service by the hour, time your connections to the Internet carefully to minimize your out-of-pocket costs.
Turn Off What You Don’t Need If you can, turn off the network services you can’t use on the hotel network. This might include Bluetooth and wireless networking capabilities. If you can’t use these services but leave them on all the time, you’ll soon find that your battery is drained. The same is true for brightness and volume controls. Turn them down to conserve your battery life.
Check your A/V before you go Hotel networks and public networks may not be terribly secure. Check your A/V software and apply the latest virus and malware definitions before you leave. Avoid connecting to your bank and credit card accounts using a wireless network or the hotel’s public workstations, while you’re at it.
Defrag your hard disk and clean your registry . In preparation for your trip, defragment your laptop’s hard disk and clean out the registry. That should help speed up your computer, even when you’re working in trying circumstances!

Photo Credit: Jerzy Kociatkiewicz

Curing Slow Computer Performance

Slow Computer Performance Can Be Cured

If you haven’t already checked your system for viruses and malware. , that should be the first task you undertake. Don’t assume that you’re safe because you have a virus scanner or malware scanner running on your computer. Often users think they have the right software loaded on their computer and they don’t. Worse, they have the right software loaded on their computer and it’s never been configured or updated, or it’s been disabled.

Yes, there are viruses that work to disable anti-virus software. That’s why it’s exceptionally important to have the latest version of your virus definitions and software updates at all times. Computers often come loaded with a virus scanner, so people assume that they’re protected. What they may not understand is that their virus software may be a free, time-limited trial, or subscription that will expire at some point in the (usually) near future.

With PCs, you definitely need anti-virus and anti-malware software. You also need to keep this software updated, even if that means paying a subscription fee for updated virus or malware definitions.

Your anti-virus and anti-malware software should be running at all times. The software should be configured to perform regular scans on your computer, and should be configured to download updates on a regular interval. If you think you have a “set and forget” anti-virus software package installed or you never seem to have to do anything with your anti-virus or anti-malware software, sit down immediately and verify that your virus definitions are updated.

Once you know you have the latest virus definitions, scan your computer for viruses and malware. If your anti-virus software isn’t doing minimally this much, your performance problems could be the result of malware or viral activity that’s either robbing your system of processing power or redirecting your system to do something you don’t want it to do.

Viral and malware infections are often the first conclusion that users jump to, often without scanning their computers. A reasonably competent anti-virus program can usually find some evidence of infection. If you’ve run your anti-virus program and it’s coming up empty, there are a few reputable sites on the Internet that will scan your computer and give you some independent results. Be careful however. Some sites run fake anti-virus scanners in an effort to sell you products you don’t need.

Trend Micro, a well-known name in anti-viral products, has an online scanner you can use to check or double-check the results of your virus scan.

Photo Credit: Danny Thompson, via Flickr

Need To Speed Up Your Computer?

Three Things That Might Speed Up Your Computer

If speed and performance are your only considerations for a computer, you’ll want to work with a minimal set. Take a good look at your computer and remove absolutely everything except what you need to get your work done. This includes paring down to the basic desktop themes, removing old applications, updating your virus and malware scanners, cutting out all extras that will hog memory and slow your computer down. Use the Task Manager after you boot up to see what’s running. Certain programs may be configured to start up automatically. If you don’t run these programs every time you use the computer, there’s really no reason to let these programs load up. Get rid of as much stuff as you can.

Scan your computer for viruses and malware. These nasties can easily steal memory and disk space. They also leave behind an exceptional amount of trash. They often write their malfeasance to the registry, leaving a big mess to clean up. Get your virus definitions and your malware software up-to-date. Scan the daylights out of your system and remove anything you find. If your A/V scanner finds something and you don’t know what it is, do a little research. When you know what you’re dealing with, get rid of it. If you’ve found something that’s written itself to the registry, use a reputable registry cleaner like RegCure to mop up the leftovers this malware leaves behind.

Don’t upgrade your computer. At least not yet. Check your system carefully to find out what kind of performance improvement you can get from upgrading your OS. Depending upon what you’re running – hardware- and software-wise – an upgrade may not be in your best interest. Upgrades to hardware or software can require additional memory. If a memory upgrade isn’t part of your upgrade plan, installing new hardware or software might simply make your performance problems worse. Always check out hardware and software requirements carefully before committing to an upgrade of any kind.

Photo Credit: Blake Patterson, via Flickr

Windows 7 Will Speed Up Computer

Graphics Memory Handling

Windows 7 takes a different approach to managing graphics memory usage. In previous versions of Windows, the graphics memory allocated to a particular application was reserved, whether an application window was open on the desktop or minimized. With Windows 7, the only time graphics memory is allocated to an application is when an application window is active. By itself, that will speed up computer performance.

One “feature” of Windows 7 that may seriously impair performance is the Aero theme. Yes, the same Aero theme that made its appearance in Microsoft Vista is back in Windows 7, along with a few partners: Aero Peek, Aero Snap and Aero Shake. The Aero theme gained a reputation as a memory hog. That’s the desktop theme with the see-through Window frames. Aero Peek, which is enabled by default, will give you a thumbnail view of an application window you have open on the desktop when you mouse over its tab in the task bar. Peek will also make the previewed window active and fade out all other application windows when you mouse over its thumbnail.

Aero Snap allows you to neaten up your desktop by dragging and dropping unused windows to the screen corners. This will enable you to resize and reshape the Windows automatically. A window moved to the side of your screen will shrink by 50%. It will return to its normal size when you drag the window back to its original location.

Aero Shake is a new feature that will enable you to minimize all other open windows on the desktop by selecting one window, holding down the mouse button and shaking it. Only the window you’ve selected will remain open. To re-open the other application windows, grab the one open application window and shake it again.

On the surface, the Aero features seem like they could be useful, but they also have the potential to take up a lot of memory, unless Microsoft re-engineered Aero to be more efficient. On the other hand, Microsoft should be commended for taking some time to create features that users might actually like.

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Registry Cleaners: RegCure Scans and Fixes Registry Problems

Managing A RegCure Scan

When you set up RegCure to scan your computer, you can choose which types of problems RegCure looks for. If there are certain types of problems that you don’t want RegCure to scan for, you can customize the scan to select only those areas of the registry you want to examine. RegCure will leave all other areas of the registry alone.

Once you have RegCure set up to scan your registry, start the scan. RegCure will track the errors it finds and make a log of potential problems it spots. RegCure will show you an easy-to-follow progress indicator and specify the areas of the registry in which potential problems were found.

Once the scan is complete, there’s still more to do. You can examine each problem area and decide how RegCure should handle the error. RegCure may identify some problems that really aren’t problems at all.

For example, it’s not unusual for applications to create temporary files while they’re running and remove these files when they close. A path may exist that points to the location of the temporary file, even though no file exists t at the moment RegCure is scanning. This really isn’t an error, since the only time a temporary file would exist is when the application that creates it is actually running.

RegCure gives you the option of removing or not removing these entries, so you have control over what RegCure does at all times. You can also mark these items in a special way to indicate that RegCure should ignore these files in future scans. You can also manage the Ignore list, and indicate that items that had been ignored at one time should now be scanned and removed or corrected.

Aside from scanning and repairing or removing broken registry entries, you can also use RegCure to flag applications that should start automatically when Windows starts. This will allow you to keep track of applications that are starting when the computer starts but perhaps don’t need to. This “startup application overload” can cause performance problems when too many applications startup and remain running when your computer is turned on. Certain applications, like anti-virus and anti-spyware applications should remain in your startup items list.

Before making any changes, RegCure makes a complete backup of your registry, so you can always revert to your previous state if something goes amiss. This kind of security and peace of mind means that you can manage your registry like a pro, even if you’re new to computers!

Photo Credit: Kristen Brenemen