Keeping your computer running smooth

Alright seeing as i'm extremely bored, I thought I'd share some of my daily routines what I do to keep my computer running as it was the day I reformatted it.

Task 1:
Remove old unused / trial / expired software / downloads not used / all temporary files used by browsers.

Use shift and delete to delete the files this will skip right past the recycling bin.

Use CCleaner(Crap Cleaner) to remove all your temporary files quickly.

http://www.ccleaner.com/download

Task 2:
Defragment your hard drives!

When your hard drive saves your files they don't go into a contiguous order, instead they tend to be scattered around the hard drive, which means that your hard drive will search the File Allocation Table and then go off to find a piece of data, transfer it to memory for temporary storage, then head back in ask the FAT table where to get the next piece and so on and so forth, which means that it will take a longer amount of time for your hard drive to pull one file into memory. When this happens it's called fragmentation. Defragmenting your hard drives will put all these files back into a contiguous order making it easier for the hard drive to pull data up and send it to your memory.

Defrag Guide:

Alright for most people using just the standard defragment tool in windows xp will work, it will put your files in a somewhat orderly fashion. For windows vista users I suggest downloading Dirms, it's a free 100% defrag tool, it works exceptionally well. Link: http://www.dirms.com/home/download/sendfile_dirms_s.asp

Task 3: Startup programs:

Alright this part is a bit advanced only because a lot of times helpful programs startup with your computer but a lot of times they can slow down your login time / boot time.

An easy way to find out what programs you can disable at start up is to type msconfig at run, go under the startup tab, disable things one by one, use the system for a while to see if anything important is missing, if so enable it in msconfig and reboot, if not leave the box unchecked.

Task 4: Virus / Spyware / Malware:

This part of the guide is almost unneeded, have a virus scanner, typically most manufactures are programming them to scan for spyware and other things now, but it can always be handy to have a spyware searcher just in case such as Spybot Search and Destroy.

Free Virus Scanners:
AVG : free.grisoft.com
Avast! : http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html (What I use)
There are literally like 30 more of these for free.

Task 5 : Services

This section will cover a large part of services and will let you know which it is safe to disable, and what it does. If your not using the function provided by the service than disable it.

Instead of recreating this portion of this guide, I'm going to provide a decent services list from tweakhound : http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks6.htm

Task 6 : Tweaking Tools

XSetup 6.6(Freeware Version)
http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware ... etup66.zip

This program has a bunch of different options to create some unique tweaks, such as speeding up start menu display, speeding up boot and other nifty little tools.

Bootvis
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=664

Bootvis is a program from Microsoft designed to benchmark your boot time and then another function it has is to try to optimize this time.
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I hope to add onto this tonight when I get home, feel free to comment on how crappy and vague this guide is for now

You aren't very confident in yourself.

Heres my tip and what I do,
Build Pc
install xp pro
load most current drivers
load windows updates
load steam
load hl2dm and a few other steam games
play
defrag once a month or so and get new drivers as I see fit
never use for anything other than game, no net browsing nothing!
use older pc for everything else
no anti virus
runs just like the day I put it together

L2k wrote:no net browsing nothing!
use older pc for everything else

Not even sexay pr0n? I like to watch pr0n as if I were in an FPS, my keyboard shortcuts are usually WASD for tab control and page up and down, shift is save link as, ctrl is fullscreen mode, various others include close tab, add to faves, etc. It just doesn't feel the same on a non-gaming computer.

to each their own I guess

lol esp not porn, thats the best way to f up your game rig ever lol
driveby malware ect lol, no thanks

We should get a guide done....
This is good for the basics, but you can do much more
CC (Crap cleaner) is a good free program.
Tune Up Utilities is really good too (not free though)
Also type services.msc for a long list of services windows rans. You can disable a lot to boost your pc's performance, just be sure to read in the internet what is each service for. You don't want to disable windows managment Instrumentation for instance, you will end fucking up all your pc.
You can also disable sounds, use bootvis for a faster boot, etc etc.

Yea, I plan to add a lot more to this today, i'm going to add a bit more now, and a bit more later.

My PC is average at best but it runs great and games great....until recently. I installed Source SDK so I could run Hammer and start building maps. Ever since my Hammer endeavor my system will randomly crash out of deathmatch and back to my desktop with the good 'ol internal driver error. Sometimes I'll be playing and all of a sudden one area of a map will go completely dark, then more, then eventually crash and burn!! It usually requires a complete reboot. Anyone else have this? I'm probably going to wipe my whole drive and start over and see what happens!!

For you youngsters that want a good clean system....stay off the pern and don't visit sites that are completely unfamiliar to you!!

Or just keep an up-to-date antivirus / anti-spyware, and then theres also a good web browser like the great fox of fire ^_^.

Some nice tips there.

Spyware i use:
Spybot
Adblock plus firefox plugin https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865
No script Firefox plugin https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722

As Coke says NOD32 For the win. It stops those pesky pr0n trojans dead, submits them to ESET for analysis then deletes the file automatically.

Here is a list of free softwares., enjoy
FREE STUFF

I only have one computer. Dont have the space to keep 2 and I dont want to freaking have to upgrade each every 2-3 years. It runs fine, plays games great and it will be easily upgradable for a while. But yea I defrag it often (especially the game drive), keep all antivirus, etc up to date. I have CA Antivirus software (includes virus, spyware, and firewall) and its like fort knox, blocks a lot of crap. You even have to set it up so you can get out to the internet, and select only those programs that need to get out.