Putting Vista in the fast lane

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RE: "2 ways to keep windows running 'like new'"

Actually, here a better idea:

1) When you freshly install and setup your computer get Norton Ghost and a external Hard Drive and make a image.

2) Buy a 2nd hard drive and store your documents and so forth on it instead of your C Drive.

3) With you 2nd hard drive in hand set your swap file to the 2nd drive instead of the first. Divide the loading tasks among 2 drives instead of one

4) Use a 3 pack of tools to keep your computer clean of un-needed programs, un-needed files and defragmented. Use A) HiJackthis, B) use Crap Cleaner (CCleaner) and C) Disk Defragmenter

5) Most bottlenecks are an issue of memory. I find that 512 megs works great for XP Home Edition and 1 Gig of memory works great for XP Pro (why the huge difference? XP Pro loads up a bit more services then XP Home does)

6) As far as registry cleaners, I'm not a big fan of those, b/c some of them break programs. My suggestion for keeping your registry small? Take your old computer or a junky one and install programs on it to see what other things come with it. If it doesn't work, no big deal, it keeps your registry smaller on your main computer.

7) However, please note tho... Registry is not really the problem for slow boot ups, it's the amount of services and what priority they are set to. There are a whole bunch of articles that can better explain what services you don't need to be running on your computer but the most popular that should be disable are:

1) Error reporting service - Completely usless
2) Machine Debugger Manager - A Huge memory hog
If you use Norton A/V or Intenter Security:
1) Norton Unerase protection - Memory and disk space hog
If you use AOL 8.0 or higher:
1) AOL Top Speed Monitor
2) AOL Spyware protection

these services hog a lot of resourses.

""1) keep the registry lean and mean -- a tool such as MaceCraft's jv16 PowerTools regcleaner works wonders
2) Get a real disk I/O scheduler such as the *NIXes use (and that includes OSX since its BSD derived). These systems
a) over-allocate disk space for each file or blocks of files, and
b) schedule the read/write head jobs in a more efficient manner

The other means of slowing a Windows PC down have already been addressed: keep Norton off the system, keep the malware off, and clean out the accumulated crap (temp, cache, and cookies) on a regular basis.""

Posted by: ajapierce   Posted on: 08/08/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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