Increasing Your Computer’s Performance : Chapter 3

Chapter 3- Increasing Your Performance

System optimization and tweaks for Windows Vista/XP

Turn off Visual Effects (Vista)-Ask yourself this question…Do I want my computer to look great or run great. Visual effects can really bog down your system and it’s not like you can’t change it back if you don’t notice a difference.

Open Performance Information and Tools in your Control Panel and then click on Adjust visual effects.

Now select adjust for best performance. If you haven’t noticed yet you can manage your start up programs here with out hacking the Registry. You can also run Disk clean up

Adjusting for best performance in Windows XP-Click Start then Right click on My Computer select Properties then Advanced. Under performance click on the Setting buttons. Select the option to Adjust for best performance.

Make sure you have up to date drivers for your hardware. A driver is a software program that interfaces between your hardware and Windows. A bad or outdated driver can really slow you down. Find out what model of driver you have by Right Clicking on My Computer and selecting Device manager . Next find and open the device you are interested in. This should tell you the Brand and model name of your hardware. Visit your manufactures web site and download their latest drivers. If you need help try using  Driver Robot. Driver Robot software is designed to quickly locate the most current drivers specific to your computer system.  Download Driver Robot

Upgrade your memory- Buy more memory if you have less than 1 GB. Memory is cheap and easy to install and can make a huge difference. To find out how much memory you have Right Click on My Computer and choose Proper-ties.

Upgrade your hard drive- Open My Computer and right click on your C drive icon. If you don’t have at least a couple of Gigs of free space you might want to invest in a new hard drive

Increasing Your Computer’s Performance : Chapter 2-The Registry

 

The Windows Registry is the place where all your configuration settings are stored. The Registry is huge because every setting from the background of your desktop all the way to what programs load when your computer starts are stored there. The registry accounts for it all. Every time you install a new program it makes changes to your Windows Registry . The longer you have your computer the bigger your registry gets and the bigger your registry is the slower your system will run. It pays to thin it out a tad by deleting unnecessary data and defragging it (See Chapter 3 for defragging). It is also important to keep your Windows registry error free. Errors in your registry can cause your system to crash. Because of its size finding and eliminate all these items by hand can be a daunting task. This is why I strongly recommend you invest in a  Registry Repair Tool (See Charter 5). With that said I still think it is very important to have some basic knowledge on how to navigate and edit your Windows Registry.

Always create a system restore point before making any attempts to edit your Windows Registry.

Creating a System Restore Point- Windows Vista Users

Right Click on My Computer and select Properties. Now Click on System Protection in the tasks menu. Click the Create button

Creating System Restore Point- Windows XP Users

Find help and support in your start menu and type: system restore wizard. Find and run the system restore wizard under run tasks. From here it’s the same process as Vista

Exporting your Windows Registry (all versions)

Follow these steps for every version of Windows

Click start then run (search in Vista) Type in regedit

Now select file then export

Name your file appropriately and save

Now you have a system restore point as well as a copy of your registry.

If for some reason you delete or edit the wrong key you can simply repeat the exporting process But select import instead. In case importing the registry file doesn’t work you can always revert

to the system restore point.

Removing start-up items from your Windows Registry

Open the registry editor. Click Start then Run (search in Vista) type in Regedit Open hkey_local_machine by clicking the plus sign or triangle.

You should see several folders drop down. We are looking for the Software Key. Locate the software key and open it. Now you will see a huge list of folders drop down. Open the Microsoft folder .In the Microsoft folder find Win-dows. In the Windows Folder find Current Version. After opening Current Version find and highlight Run.

It’s very important to make sure you are in the right key because at this point we are going to start making some changes. Look at the contents in the right pane. It shows a column for Name, Type, and Data. If you need to expand the name column click on the divider and hold while pulling it to the right. From here just highlight the entry and simple press delete. You may want to keep programs such as Virus protections, firewall, and other vital software run-ning so choose carefully. Most of the time there is quite a bit of junk you don’t need in here so cleaning this key out most always significantly boosts performance. Check the Run Once key as well. Once you are done just close the re-gistry editor. These changes will take affect after a reboot.

Removing Start up Items from Hkey_Current_User

Using the same process as before; Run Regdit, Open Hkey_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Ver-sion\Run

Don’t forget the Run Once Key if applicable.

Removing Items from Context Menu

Run Regedit

Open hkey_Classes_Root\Folder\Shellex\ContextMenuHandlers

Too many programs will bog down your system

Delete the folders of the programs your rarely use

Depending on how many you delete you may experience a performance boost.

Using the Search Function to Delete Keys

Not all programs are responsible and clean up after themselves when you uninstall them. You can use the search function to find and delete these unnecessary registry entries.

This process is tedious and can be done a lot quicker and safer with a  Registry Cleaner (I will cover Registry Cleaners in Chapter 5.) but I do still think it is good to know how to use the search function. So let’s do a test run.

Run Regedit. Make sure you are highlighting Computer otherwise your search will be confined to the key you have selected. Now click on Edit then Find and type in Microsoft as your search term. You will be directed to the first Mi - crosoft entry in the registry. Press F3 to continue searching. This is a good exercise in learning how to find all entries related to a specific program and deleting them in the most efficient way.

Increasing Your Computer’s Performance the Easy Way : System Maintainance

Don’t be fooled you don’t need a super fast processor and tons of memory to surf the internet and do word processing. A properly maintained but out dated system will most always out perform a newer more modern system that is not properly maintained. Not knowing how to take care of your computer eventual leads to buying a new computer when it is not necessary. Invest either your time in learning how to maintain your system or your money in purchasing software to do the job for you. (See chapter 5)

Clean out the start up folder -Too many programs loading at start up is one of the most common causes of lackluster computer performance. Learn how to control what software is running on your computer behind the scenes. This is one of the places that control what programs load at start up.

In your Start Menu select Programs then Start up. Now Right Click and Delete each short cut.

Keep unnecessary services from loading at Start up-The services control panel dictates what services load at start up. Some services are required for Windows to run while others are 3^rd party applications that are not.

Hop on over to your Control Panel, Select Administrative Tools now click on Services

This is a complete list of all your services. Some are manual while others are automatic. You can change the start up type from automatic to manual by right clicking on an entry and choosing Properties. Look for a text box label Start Up Type. You can stop, start, disable or change the service from automatically loading to manually loading. In most cases you shouldn’t need to do much of anything here. But it doesn’t hurt to pay this screen a visit. You could find some unneeded items running and shut them down. Every little bit helps. Read the description carefully before doing any modifications though and if you are not sure what the service is leave it alone.

There is one more place I like to check for start up items and that is the Windows Registry. We will cover this topic in the next chapter.

Scan disk- Scan disk will find and repair data errors on your hard drive. Make sure to close all programs before starting. Right click on your C drive icon in My Computer and select tools. Click on check now.

Disk Defrag- Over time data stored on your hard drive gets scattered around. Windows needs a continuous block of free space to store data for fast access or in other words to cache from. You most likely noticed Disk Defrag in the same window as Scan Disk. Again make sure to close all programs before starting

I recommend running Scan Disk and Disk Defrag  at least every other month.