PC Fast Fix

Readyboost is the feature in Vista that allows you to add extra RAM with flash/USB drives. This is a useful feature if you have have maxed out your RAM already but still need some more. This usually works well with laptops that have more limited RAM capacities than desktop computers.

This is pretty easy, just do the following:

• Insert a flash drive or any other external memory device
• In the Removable Disk Properties click on the “ReadyBoost” tab
• Here you can select to use the device for system speed (note: You may receive a warning saying this device does not have the required performance characteristics for use in speeding up your system)
• It will now recommend how much space you should reserve for optimal performance (for example, a 512MB stick may recommend 430MB)
• Click apply
• Click OK

There you go, Windows Vista should now be faster.

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Fix Windows Vista and Optimize Your PC – Free Download

Tags: PC Speedup, Windows Vista by admin
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Here are a few more quick little tweaks that will help to speed up Windows XP. Don’t forget to read the tips in Speed up Windows XP Part 1 and Speed Up Windows XP Part 2.

OK, lets get started:

Speed Up Folder Browsing.

This one can get really annoying. You click on a folder and there is a delay before seeing the contents. Windows XP automatically tries to find network files and printers, hence the delay. To switch this off:

1) From Windows Explorer or My Computer, click on Tools -> Folder Options
2) Click on the “View” tab
3) Uncheck the box – “Automatically search for network folders and printers”. Click OK. Done!!

Disable Indexing

Windows Indexing service is used to make searching faster and easier. Windows runs a program that indexes folders and files and then uses this index to deliver faster search results. However, the indexing process can chew up a lot of RAM and slow things down quite considerably. Depending on how often you use Windows search, turning this feature off will most likely be beneficial.

1) Go to the Windows XP control panel. Click Start -> Control Panel
2) Open “Add or Remove Programs”
3) Click on “Add/Remove Windows Components” from the left menu
4) Uncheck the “Indexing Service”, then click “Next”, then click “Finish”

Optimize Your Display

Windows XP display options are not as resource intensive as Vista, but you can still improve performance with a few display tweaks. If you really are lacking performance in XP, then try turning off some of these settings to see if things improve.

1) Go to Windows XP control panel. Click Start -> Control Panel
2) Open “System”
3) Click on the “Advanced” tab
4) Click on the “Settings” button under the “Performance” heading
5) In the “Visual Effects” tab you can try turning off certain options. You can click the option “Adjust for best performance”. You can also choose your own custom options. This may take a bit of trial and error, but try it out for some performance gains.

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Speed Up Windows XP with our free scan and repair tool. Click here to download

Tags: PC Speedup, Windows by admin
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One of the biggest causes of a slow PC is spyware and adware. Having these on your system can bring things to a grinding halt and you probably wouldn’t even know about it.

Most users that have a system infected with malware don’t even realise there is a problem. They just end up blaming their PC hardware or software. Generally with adware, you will see extra pop-ups and other strange ads, so you will most likely know there is an infection. However, alot of spyware works secretly in the background, hogging PC resources and transmitting confidential data.

We have seen plenty of spyware that will hog upto 80% of the cpu. When this happens, you can forget about using your PC at all.

Scan for Spyware/Adware Often

To keep your PC in top shape, you really need to scan for adware and spyware on a very regular basis. At least once every 2 weeks. Having a firewall is not enough, this nasty malware can creep in from various sources.

It is also near impossible to do a manual scan for spyware and adware. There is just too much of it out there. You need to run a decent scan and removal program. These programs are well worth it.

You can try our free spyware and adware scan now – Click here 

Tags: Computer Security, PC Speedup by admin
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Lets look at 3 very quick ways that you can speed up your pc using some of the disk tools available in Windows XP Service Pack 2.  If you are using Windows XP, it is very likely that you have service pack 2 installed. If you don’t, then go and install it now.

Disk Cleanup

Cleaning up your disk should be done to improve PC performance and also to free up space on your hard drive. Over time, plenty of junk can build up on your hard drive and this slows everything down.

To do this, we use a tool called disk cleanup. This will remove temporary files, empty the recycle bin, remove temporary internet files and remove programs and components no longer being used.

1) Click start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Cleanup

2) If you have more than one hard drive, you will need to select the drive you wish to clean up, then click on ok.

3) When the disk cleanup begins, it will take a few minutes to analyse your disk. This will vary depending on disk size and the number of files.

 4) On the disk cleanup menu, you can now select which items to remove. It will also provide a calculation of how much disk space will be gained.

5) If you wish to clean up Windows components and programs, click on the more options tab. You can then remove programs/components by clicking the Clean up button and selecting which programs/components to remove.

Disk Defragmentation

Files stored on your computer are often fragmented, with parts of the file stored separately on the hard drive. Over time this can make data access quite slow.

By running the disk defragmentation tool, it attempts to store the files in one piece, which makes data access faster and improves overall PC performance

To defragment your hard drive:

1) Click start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter

2) You will then see your hard drives and the capacity, free space, etc. You can then choose which hard drive to fragment and click Defragment.  The Analyze button will give an estimate of how long the defragment process will take. Sometimes it can take quite a while, so you may want to click the Analyze button before performing the defrag.

After the defragmentation is done, you can view a report. When you are done, click close.

After you cleanup and defrag your disk, you should notice a decent improvement in PC performance. It is important to do this on a regular basis to keep your PC in top condition. Once a month should be enough to keep your PC nice and fast.

Remember, you can try our free scan to improve speed and fix errors.

Tags: PC Optimization, PC Speedup by admin
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If you have been using Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) you may or may not have experienced slow performance, this will really depend on your current hardware setup and on the other software you have installed/running. However, by implementing these quick speed tweaks, you should notice performance gains on any setup.

IE7 Tweaks

1) Disable the anti-phising filter.
Click on Tools -> Phishing Filter. Click  Turn off automatic Phishing Filter

You should definitely notice an increase in performance after disabling the ie7 anti-phising filter.  This has always been quite slow and has even been patched by Microsoft, but their patches don’t always work.

The phishing filter is to protect users from fake sites that pose as a real website, eg: fake websites setup to look like PayPal, for the purpose of capturing user login details.  Generally people are only lured to phishing sites from email links, but if you are worried about this, then you can leave the phishing filter on.

2) Turn off clear type
Click on Tools – > Internet Options. Under the Advanced tab, uncheck the box Always use ClearType for HTML*

Thats it. Those very basic tweaks should add some extra performance to IE7. We will explore some of the other tweaks later on.

You can also fix Internet Explorer and improve PC speed with this free download and scan.

Tags: Internet Browsers, PC Speedup by admin
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With Windows Vista you need some pretty decent hardware, otherwise it can be as slow as molasses in January. For those that are running Vista with just the minimum requirements, then these interface tweaks should make quite a noticeable improvement on the speed and performance.

Windows Vista Interface Tweaks

Turn off Aero:

• Right click your desktop
• Click personalize
• Click windows color and appearance
•  If the appearance setting box shows up you are probably not running Aero (but you can check this from the list)
• If you see the windows color and appearance box then click the open classic appearance link
• In the color scheme drop down click windows vista basic or Windows standard
• Click apply (could take a few seconds)
• Now click OK and you are done

Get Rid of Transparency:

• Right click your desktop
• Click personalize
• Click windows color and appearance
• Uncheck enable transparency
• Click OK

Remove the Sidebar

• Right-click the Sidebar
• Click on Properties
• Uncheck Start Sidebar When Windows Starts
• Click OK
• You can then remove the sidebar by right-clicking on it and select close sidebar

Turn Off Visual Effects

• Goto the control panel
• Click on Performance and System Tools
• In the Visual Effects tab you can turn off any unwanted and unnecessary that may be tying up system resources

Depending on your system, you might notice some decent speed increases just by turning off Aero and some of the other effects. But if things are still running slow then you can try removing the sidebar, transparency, etc.  

Speedup Windows Vista – Free Download

Tags: PC Speedup, Windows Vista by admin
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By now you should have a system that starts up pretty fast, so lets look at how you can speed up shutdown times.

Speed Up Windows XP Shutdown

Note: These cool tweaks will require the Windows Registry to be edited and should only be performed if you know what you are doing. All edits to the Registry are at your own risk.

1) Don’t Clear the Paging File 

Everytime XP shuts down it clears the paging file. This can take a bit of time, so if this is switched on, here is how you can turn it off.

goto: start->run, then type: regedit

Browse to the following location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

Double click on ClearPageFileAtShutdown, and set the value to 0. Close the registry editor and reboot.

2) Kill Open Applications Faster on Shutdown

When XP shuts down it can take a hell of a long time to close applications. By changing these settings, you can speed that up quite a bit.

In the registry editor, goto: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

Change the following values (set them to something much lower, eg: 2000):
WaitToKillAppTimeout
HungAppTimeout

Now also change those same values in:
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop

3) Kill Services Faster on Shutdown

This will reduce the amount of time XP waits to kill services during shutdown.

In your registry editor, goto:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control

Edit the value, WaitToKillServiceTimeout, and set it to something much lower, eg: 2000.

Thats it. Now you should have a super fast XP shutdown.

Tags: PC Optimization, PC Speedup by admin
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There are a ton of cool little tweaks that can get Windows XP running alot faster than it is right now. A fresh install is generally fairly fast, but over time it gets bogged down with all kinds of software, adware, spyware, registry entries and other junk. So lets look at some quick ways to get more speed without doing a re-install.

Speed Up Windows XP Startup

If your system is anything like mine, it has a ton of useless software installed and startup can take forever. Well there are luckily two little tweaks that can dramatically increase startup/bootup times on XP.

1) This is a powerful little tool that allows you to control items that load during startup. Click start->run, then type in msconfig, click ok
2) Click on the startup tab and then select the programs you don’t want to run on startup. Be careful here. We recommend doing only 1 or 2 at a time, and only select programs that you know. As you can see, i have turned off Skype during startup.

3) After you are done, click ok. After reboot you will get a message saying that startup items have changed. You can just ignore that.

Cleaning up the Startup Folder 

Windows XP also has a startup folder in your profile and cleaning this up is another tweak that should see some increased performance.

The startup folder contains a bunch of shortcuts that run on startup. They are only shortcuts, so you won’t be removing the actual program. It just wont start on startup every time.

Goto:

c:\Documents and Settings\username\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
note: username will be your Windows XP username.

Once you are in the correct location, remove shortcuts for any programs that you dont want to run on startup.

Thats it, now you have a fast starting Windows XP. For more performance try the free download of Regcure

Tags: PC Optimization, PC Speedup by admin
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Personally I am trying to avoid the upgrade to Vista for as long as possible, but here is some quick info on the speed comparisons of XP and Vista.

With all the tests we have run in the office, Vista has not shown any improvement over XP performance.  The first problem is that Vista requires more powerful hardware. So by the time you upgrade your hardware and install Vista, you will have a system that ran as fast as your old hardware with XP…Doesn’t seem all that great, especially since we haven’t seen any groundbreaking improvements in Vista that warrant the need to upgrade.

However, if you run Vista on decent hardware, it is better than XP at multi tasking on dual-core PCs. You will also need decent RAM and graphics processing capabilities if you want to keep Aero switched on.

Overall, the majority of users will probably find much more enjoyment in using Windows XP on decent hardware.  In our office space, we are upgrading all of our hardware and just opting for no OS, and then happily throwing on XP.  The performance is pretty damn good.

Tags: PC Optimization, PC Speedup, Windows by admin
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You know the story. You need to do something on your computer but it’s not switched on. Ouch. You’re probably in for a long wait whilst Windows gets everything in order. So just how do you make windows boot faster?

Short of holding a gun to the head of someone in Seattle, there are things you can do to speed up things, at least a bit. Part of the trouble is that Windows is now such a big operating system that it needs to go through lots of things before it can safely start up. Sure, it’s been through these things tens or hundreds of times before on your computer. But at the end of the day, it’s just being cautious.

You might have changed something whilst its back was turned – added a new piece of hardware, installed some software that really, really needs to start up every time Windows starts. That kind of thing.

Start by checking what starts up whenever Windows starts.

You can do this by running a program called Msconfig: in XP, select Start, Run, type msconfig, and press Enter. In Vista, select Start, type msconfig into the Search box, and press Enter.

The Startup tab will tell you what runs every time you boot up your machine. If there are programs there that don’t need to be there, you can stop them from running the next time you switch your computer on.

Just be careful to make sure that you don’t disable anything critical. If necessary, copy the command line from Msconfig and see what the program actually does as the startup item name doesn’t always mean much.

Whatever you do, set a System Restore point before you mess about with your startup programs. Then if things don’t go to plan you can use the Windows restore option to get your computer back to how it was before.

Tags: PC Speedup by admin
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