How to Rejuvenate Your Home PC

Is your Windows machine slowing down? Getting to where you are tearing at your hair? Getting old and creaky? Here are some tips and tricks to rejuvenate your machine and bring it back to life. Before you start, however, remember to take a backup particularly your documents, pictures, data and email.

Stop the Autoloaders

Autoloading programs, which start every time you boot Windows, cause much PC trouble. You may be amazed at just how many of the programs you install load automatically at Windows boot-up and then run in the background as you work. Take a look at the tiny icons in your system tray, at the bottom right of your screen next to the clock. These icons represent your auto loading apps, which suck up resources. Each of these programs uses memory and other resources, which might even cause a crash of the system. Worse still some of these programs don't even show up but they still run and cause memory glitches.

To view your list of auto start apps:

Select Start
Type in Run and press Enter. The System Configuration utility will open. (Win 2000 does not have this utility.
Look under startup and you will see all the items which startup with windows.
Uncheck items you do not need to startup.
You can always go back and check them again if you need to.

Mike Lin's free startup Control Panel is an excellent utility that works in a similar fashion both on XP and 2000 machines. Double click the icon after you download and install and uncheck the items as needed.

Determining which of the program you want to auto start requires some work. You can usually figure out what application put the entry in your start-up list by reading the information in the Startup tab's Command column. For instance, if you see that the loading file is located in the Nero folder, it's a good bet that the entry is a Nero program which you probably don't want to auto start. HP puts in a whole list of items with its printers and scanners which you probably don't need. You can also use Google search to find out the source of the programs by searching the file name.

Keep checked any listing related to your firewall or your anti-virus program to make sure they're always running in the background.

Unfortunately some unchecked programs have a way of reappearing checked and autoloaded, even though you just unchecked them If this happens to you, launch the application and explore its menus, looking for a "load at startup" option under tools or preferences.. If you can't do it ask an expert to help you out.

De-program

Uninstall all unneeded programs. A new pc usually ships with demo software that we rarely use. As we use the pc more and more we add programs that we end up not using at all. At times software is installed without our knowledge. Getting rid of all the applications on your PC that you no longer use is a good idea. The Add/remove applet in the control panel is the usual route but it seldom removes everything. The program's own uninstall routine is the best place to start the removal process. You might find a shortcut to the uninstaller on the program's Start menu entry. If not, use the Add/remove applet in the control panel. But wait. You haven't really gotten rid of the program yet. Reopen the System Configuration utility to see whether the uninstalled application still auto loads anything; if it does, follow the steps in "Stop the Autoloads" above. Next, open Windows Explorer and delete the program's folder inside the C:\Program Files directory (if it's still there). And if a shortcut to the program is still on the Start menu, right-click the item and then select Delete.

To reassign any file associations that the uninstalled program may have claimed, open Windows Explorer.
Select Tools
Click Folder Options
Click the File Types tab
Click the File Types header under 'Registered file types' to sort the list of file types by program
Check the list for any extensions associated with the uninstalled program.

If you find one, click Change and select a new program to open that file type. For example, if you uninstall an image editor, you can reassociate .bmp files with Windows' Paint utility. You'll also want to clean the program out of the Windows Registry. (See "Cleaning the registry below).

Check out Malware

Malware is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's informed consent. It includes both adware and spyware. Regardless of whether Windows is behaving oddly or not, you need to check for malware regularly. I recommend three spyware removal programs: (1) Windows Defender; (2) Spybot Search and Destroy; (3) Ad-Aware.

No single anti-spyware program finds all the miscreants, so you should run more than one scanner. Please note however that Ad-aware sometimes recognizes Spybot as spyware and can cause the problems with its functioning. Amongst the paid ones Spysweeper (http://www.webroot.com/consumer/products/spysweeper/) or Spyware doctor (http://www.pctools.com/spyware-doctor/) are recommended.

SpywareGuide provides valuable information on malicious software from a database covering many known spyware programs.

Update your drivers

If your PC is running well, there's no reason to update your drivers. But if you're having trouble, a driver update can be a free and relatively easy solution. First, open Windows' Device Manager by right-clicking My Computer and selecting Properties. In Windows XP and 2000, click Hardware then Device Manager.

Look for entries with yellow question marks or red exclamation points: The question mark indicates that Windows is using a generic driver for that device instead of one designed for it or not working properly, and an exclamation point means that the device is not working.

To update a driver, double-click the component listing and choose Driver then Update Driver in the product's Properties dialogue box. The Hardware Update Wizard will search for an updated driver on your local drives as well as on Microsoft's Windows Update site(provided you are connected to the internet), and it will install the driver if it finds one.

TouchStone Software's Driver Updates page is an excellent resource to find outdated drivers .The site, scans your hard drive and gives you a reasonably accurate list of your outdated drivers. Once you know that a driver needs updating, you can look for it on the vendor's Web site. Every hardware manufacturer offers driver updates as free downloads. Alternatively you can subscribe to TouchStone's paid service and download the drivers directly from the scan-result list.

Updating a driver could make things worse, however. In Windows XP, click Roll Back Driver under the Driver tab in the Properties dialogue box to return to the previous version.

Cleaning the Windows Registry

The Windows Registry is in fact a large repository of references of hardware and software installed on your system. It is vital to the smooth running of your computer. On your new machine or on a freshly formatted hard drive, the Registry is clean. However when you install software, change hardware, or download something from the Web, the registry grows by leaps and bounds.

Once installed a program leaves its fingerprint in various places in the Registry. One would think that uninstalling it from the Add/Remove applet in the control program would remove it thoroughly even from the registry. Not so. Traces will still remain. The dedicated uninstall options provided by many are normally rather better at cleaning up after themselves, although even these have a habit of leaving a few invalid references behind. Simple tasks like changing the name of a folder or moving a file can leave a lot of useless data or links. Cleaning out the registry thus can make a difference in Windows' performance.

Before you start, make sure you can restore the Registry to its previous state should you delete the wrong key or such. Windows XP's System Restore automatically backs up the Registry and other important Windows files, but the program is not altogether reliable (and Windows 2000 lacks the utility altogether).

Select Start
Click All Programs
Click Accessories
Then System Tools
System Restore
Create a restore point, and then follow the prompts.

Lars Hederer's free Emergency Recovery Utility NT (ERUNT) is one of the best free utilities to back up a registry. After downloading and installing the program, XP users should create an initial ERUNT backup when their PC is running just the way they want it. Download it). There you will also find the NTREGOPT utility. This optimizes the registry files by removing slack space left by modified or deleted entries, and can compact them significantly without changing any of the data within. As always, when you use such programs there is a risk involved, but I've found them to be useful and reliable.

There are several good registry cleaning tools. The $ 30 Reg Organizer, which gives you a conventional Registry editor, helps you examine all of your startup applications, file types, and other specific trouble spots. The program also has an excellent search-and-replace function. Manual or automatic cleanup is supported. And here's another nice feature: If you've just uninstalled a program, click the utility's Search and Replace icon to finish the job. Here you can delete all listings containing the removed program's name. Registry Medic, from Iomatic is a shareware utility that scans the registry to find invalid references, repairs those where a file or folder has been simply moved, and removes others where the file or software has been deleted, including invalid Start menu entries. In addition it kills Trojan viruses that use the registry. It runs on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 and XP. A free alternative is ToniArts' EasyCleaner which does a reasonable job.

Defrag your hard drive

Over time your hard drive becomes cluttered and the files fragmented. What this means is that the files are broken up and stored at different places in the hard drive. They are still there and still complete but just fragmented or split up. This means that Windows has to work extremely hard reading the file from its different locations. You can use the Windows defragmenter to defragment your hard drive as follows:
Open My Computer
Right click on C drive
Click on properties
Click on Tools
Click on Defragment Now
Select the C-Drive
De-fragment.

If there are 2 drives you can defragment both. This can take some time depending on the level of defragmentation. Commercially Diskeeper is an excellent product that works far better than the free windows utility.

Clean out your internet files

Temporary internet files and cookies are stored on your computer every time you surf the internet. It's important to delete the cached files from time to time.
Open your browser(Internet Explorer)
Click on tools
Click on internet options
General tab
Settings, to reduce the space allocated, and delete Files

Clean out the cobwebs

Windows has a disk cleanup function to empty recycle bin, delete temporary and working files, etc.
Open My Computer
Right Click C Drive
Click on Properties
Click on Disk Cleanup
Check all boxes,
Click OK and Yes

Is the problem with Windows or Memory?

As time goes on and you upgrade your software or install new programs you will notce you need more memory. To effectively work today one need upward of 512 MB Ram though you still see computers with less. Scan your memory requirements at (http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.asp?imodule=BL2KIT6464AA1005&cpe=AFC-2D4S68503543).

Start anew in Windows

Sometimes there is little you can do but start afresh. Your Windows is beyond recovery, and all you can do is have a clean install. This has to be the last course of action. The last resort is to wipe Windows clean only when you have to.