• Shutdown PC
• Get rid of temporary Internet files
• Cookies?
• Empty Recycle Bin
• Defragment

Why is My Computer Slow?
Slowdown culprits can include screen savers and custom cursors. Both can interfere with your system performance.

Don't forget to shut your PC down every once in while. It will clean itself during the shutdown. Another step that will make your PC run faster is defragmenting your hard drive when it needs it.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Get rid of temporary Internet files

Select Tools (at the top of your screen)
then Internet Options

Click on the Delete Files button. (You can also delete cookies here but wait for the next step if you aren't sure.)

2. Cookies

Cookies aren't all bad. They store your userids and passwords and help sites identify you. If you delete all of your cookies you may have to enter your userid and password again when you go back to a Web Site. Cookies don't generally store any secure information. You can view and delete cookies.

Select Tools (at the top of your screen)
then Internet Options

Or, copy and paste (or type) this location in the address bar at the top of your screen. You will see all of your cookies and can selectively delete the cookies you don't want stored on your PC.

More Cookies

More cookies may be stored in your temporary files. Copy and paste (or type) this location in the address bar.

Since we just cleaned out all of the temporary files the only files we see right now are dated today so we're not deleting these cookies.

3. Get rid of PC Junk

Delete the temporary files from your PC. Look for a directory named TEMP. It's usually in c:\temp.

You can go to "Run" and type in %temp% and it will bring up the temp files to erase.

 
Click Start
      Run
      %temp%

Hit "select all" and then delete. You can usually safely delete all of the files but don't delete any system folders. If it says "this is a system folder" don't delete it.

4. Recycle Bin

Empty your recycle bin.

The Recycle bin icon is on your desktop. 
Click on the Recycle bin. 
Select File
   Empty Recycle bin

5. Get Rid of Gator and Spyware

• Kill the Gator If you have the Gator you will want to Kill the Gator. You'll know if you have it or any other Adware or Spyware. They hijack your PC and serve you popup advertisements. Removing the Gator or other Adware or Spyware will take a few minutes. You might want to Kill the Gator last.

• Yahoo free download Yahoo has a toolbar that checks for spyware and adware. Spyware gets downloaded without you knowing it and it tracks your keystrokes. Adware is attached to some programs that you download. It's the thing that gives you all of the popups. The Yahoo Toolbar with Anti-Spy is available as a Yahoo free download.

• Download Google Toolbar Prefer Google? The Google toolbar eliminates annoying pop-up ads. Download Google Toolbar

6. Defragment

Reorganizing Your Hard Disk to Improve Speed

System running slow? Time to do a defrag. Over time as you write to your hard disk the data gets fragmented, broken into separate pieces. You can optimize your hard drive by defragmenting. It may take an hour or more to run if you haven't defragmented your drive in a while.

If the defrag takes a long time (more than an hour) that's a good thing. It means your PC needed to be defragmented. This is where you can really speed up your PC. A fragmented drive runs slow. We usually Defrag every few days. You might need it more often or less depending on how much you use your PC.

Close or quit all other programs before running the defrag.

 
Click Start
 Programs
  Accessories
    System Tools 
      Disk Defragmenter

Or...

Double-click on your desktop MyComputer.
Right-click on the C:
Right-click on Properties
Select the Tools tab

Now you can select Defragment Now....
We usually check both boxes Rearrange and Check drive for errors.

Defragment never finishes?

Hold down the Ctrl key while restarting. 
Release the Ctrl key when it says it's running in Safe Mode. 
Now try to run the Disk Defragmenter. It might work

"Take good care of your PC, and it will take good care of you."

It's a nice sentiment, but reality is more like "Take good care of your PC, and it won't crash, lose your data, and cost you your job--probably." Follow these steps to stop PC problems before they stop you.

Your PC's two mortal enemies are heat and moisture. Excess heat accelerates the deterioration of the delicate circuits in your system. The most common causes of overheating are dust and dirt: Clogged vents and CPU cooling fans can keep heat-dissipating air from moving through the case, and even a thin coating of dust or dirt can raise the temperature of your machine's components.

Any grime, but especially the residue of cigarette smoke, can corrode exposed metal contacts. That's why it pays to keep your system clean, inside and out.

If your PC resides in a relatively clean, climate-controlled environment, an annual cleaning should be sufficient. But in most real-world locations, such as dusty offices or shop floors, your system may need a cleaning every few months.

All you need are lint-free wipes, a can of compressed air, a few drops of a mild cleaning solution such as Formula 409 or Simple Green in a bowl of water, and an antistatic wrist strap to protect your system when you clean inside the case.

Think Outside the Box

Before you get started cleaning, check around your PC for anything nearby that could raise its temperature (such as a heating duct or sunshine coming through a window). Also clear away anything that might fall on it or make it dirty, such as a bookcase or houseplants.

Always turn off and unplug the system before you clean any of its components. Never apply any liquid directly to a component. Spray or pour the liquid on a lint-free cloth, and wipe the PC with the cloth.

Clean the case: Wipe the case and clear its ventilation ports of any obstructions. Compressed air is great for this, but don't blow dust into the PC or its optical and floppy drives. Keep all cables firmly attached to their connectors on the case.

Maintain your mechanical mouse: When a nonoptical mouse gets dirty, the pointer moves erratically. Unscrew the ring on the bottom of the unit and remove the ball. Then scrape the accumulated gunk off the two plastic rollers that are set 90 degrees apart inside the ball's housing.

Keep a neat keyboard: Turn the keyboard upside down and shake it to clear the crumbs from between the keys. If that doesn't suffice, blast it (briefly) with compressed air. If your keys stick or your keyboard is really dirty, pry the keys off for easier cleaning. Computer shops have special tools for removing keys, but you can also pop them off by using two pencils with broken tips as jumbo tweezers--just be sure to use a soft touch.

Make your monitor sparkle: Wipe the monitor case and clear its vents of obstructions, without pushing dust into the unit. Clean the screen with a standard glass cleaner and a lint-free cloth. If your monitor has a degauss button (look for a small magnet icon), push it to clear magnetic interference. Many LCDs can be cleaned with isopropyl alcohol; check with your LCD manufacturer. Wipe your LCD lightly: The underlying glass is fragile.

Check your power protection: Reseat the cables plugged into your surge protector. Check the unit's warning indicator, if it has one. Surge protectors may power your PC even after being compromised by a voltage spike (making your system susceptible to a second spike). If your power protector doesn't have a warning indicator and your area suffers frequent power outages, replace it with one that has such an indicator and is UL 1449 certified.

Swipe your CD and DVD media: Gently wipe each disc with a moistened, soft cloth. Use a motion that starts at the center of the disc and then moves outward toward the edge. Never wipe a disc in a circular motion.

Inside the Box

Before cracking open the case, turn off the power and unplug your PC. Ground yourself before you touch anything inside to avoid destroying your circuitry with a static charge. If you don't have a grounding wrist strap, you can ground yourself by touching any of various household objects, such as a water pipe, a lamp, or another grounded electrical device. Be sure to unplug the power cord before you open the case.

Use antistatic wipes to remove dust from inside the case. Avoid touching any circuit-board surfaces. Pay close attention to the power-supply fan, as well as to the case and to CPU fans, if you have them. Spray these components with a blast of compressed air to loosen dust; but to remove the dust rather than rearrange it, you should use a small vacuum like the $12 Belkin MiniVak.

If your PC is more than four years old, or if the expansion cards plugged into its motherboard are exceptionally dirty, remove each card, clean its contacts with isopropyl alcohol, and reseat it. If your system is less than a couple years old, however, just make sure each card is firmly seated by pressing gently downward on its top edge while not touching its face. Likewise, check your power connectors, EIDE connectors, and other internal cables for a snug fit.

While you have the case open, familiarize yourself with the CMOS battery on the motherboard (see FIGURE 1). For its location, check the motherboard manual. If your PC is more than four or five years old, the CMOS battery may need to be replaced. (A system clock that loses time is one indicator of a dying CMOS battery.)

Look for Trouble

Give your PC a periodic checkup with a good hardware diagnostic utility. Two excellent choices are Sandra Standard from SiSoftware and #1-TuffTest-Lite from #1-PC Diagnostics. Go to PC World's download page to download the free version of Sandra (the full version of the application costs $35) or to download #1-TuffTest-Lite (the fully functional version is $10).

Adding and removing system components leaves orphaned entries in the Windows Registry. This can increase the time your PC takes to boot and can slow system performance. Many shareware utilities are designed to clean the Registry, but my favorite is Registry Drill from Easy Desk Software. The program is free to try and $40 to keep. Go to PC World's download page to download a trial copy of Registry Drill.

Windows stores files on a hard drive in rows of contiguous segments, but over time the disk fills and segments become scattered, so they take longer to access. To keep your drive shipshape, run Windows' Disk Defragmenter utility. Click Start, Programs (All Programs in XP), Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter. If your drive is heavily fragmented, you could boost performance (see FIGURE 2). Defragging may take hours, however. Disable your screen saver and other automatic programs beforehand to keep the defrag from restarting every few minutes.

Disk Defragmenter won't defragment the file on your hard drive that holds overflow data from system memory (also known as the swap file). Since the swap file is frequently accessed, defragmenting it can give your PC more pep. You can defragment your swap file by using a utility such as the SpeedDisk program included with Norton SystemWorks 2004, but there's a way to reset it in Windows.

In Windows XP, right-click My Computer and choose Properties. Click Advanced, and then choose the Settings button under Performance. Click Advanced again and the Change button under Virtual Memory. Select another drive or partition, set your swap file size, and click OK. Visit "Hardware Tips: Jog Your Memory for Faster PC Performance" for instructions on moving your swap file in other versions of Windows. If you have only one partition and no way to create a second one, and you have at least 256MB of RAM, disable the swap file rather than moving it: Select No paging file in the Virtual Memory settings (see FIGURE 3). If you have trouble booting, start Windows in Safe Mode and re-enable this option.

Hard-Drive Checkup

Windows XP offers a rudimentary evaluation of your hard disk's health with its error-checking utility: Right-click the drive's icon in Windows Explorer and select Properties, Tools, Check Now. (Windows can fix errors and recover bad sectors automatically if you wish.) If the check discovers a few file errors, don't worry, but if it comes up with hundreds of errors, the drive could be in trouble.

To conduct a more thorough examination, go to PC World's download page and download Panterasoft's free HDD Health utility, which monitors hard-drive performance and warns of impending disaster (see FIGURE 4). The program works only with drives that support S.M.A.R.T technology, but nearly all drives released since 2000 are S.M.A.R.T.-compliant.

Many hardware and software designers humbly assume you want their program running on your PC all the time, so they tell Windows to load the application at startup (hence, the ever-growing string of icons in your system tray). These programs eat up system resources and make hardware conflicts and compatibility problems more likely. To prevent them from launching, just click Start, Run, type msconfig, and press Enter. The programs listed under the Startup tab are set to start along with Windows. Uncheck the box at the left of each undesirable program to prevent it from starting automatically.

PC Maintenance: Four Tips for Longer PC Life

1. Keep your PC in a smoke-free environment. Tobacco smoke can damage delicate contacts and circuits.

2. Leave your PC running. Powering up from a cold state is one of the most stressful things you can do to your system's components. If you don't want to leave your PC running all the time, use Windows' Power Management settings to put your machine into hibernation rather than completely shutting down. In Windows XP, right-click the desktop and select Properties. Click the Screen Saver tab and select the Power button. Choose the Hibernate tab to ensure that hibernation is enabled, and then select a time beneath 'System hibernates' under the Power Schemes tab. (Note that this option is not available on all PCs.) Computers running older versions of Windows may or may not provide similar power-management features. Look under the Power Management icon (Power Options in Windows 2000) in Control Panel to evaluate your machine's capabilities.

While our "Busting the Biggest PC Myths" feature says that turning your PC off "does more good than harm," I find that my PCs last longer when I keep them in hibernation.

3. Don't leave your monitor running. The best way to extend your display's life is to shut it off when it's not in use.

4. Avoid jostling the PC. Whenever you move your system, even if it's just across the desktop, make sure the machine is shut down and unplugged

Busting the Biggest PC Myths -
We expose the bad advice that wastes your time and money.

Magnets zap your data.

Photograph: Chip Simons

For venerable floppies, this statement holds true. We placed a 99-cent magnet on a 3.5-inch floppy for a few seconds. The magnet stuck to the disk and ruined its data.

Fortunately, most modern storage devices, such as SD and CompactFlash memory cards, are immune to magnetic fields. "There's nothing magnetic in flash memory, so [a magnet] won't do anything," says Bill Frank, executive director of the CompactFlash Association. "A magnet powerful enough to disturb the electrons in flash would be powerful enough to suck the iron out of your blood cells," says Frank.

 

The same goes for hard drives. The only magnets powerful enough to scrub data from a drive platter are laboratory degaussers or those used by government agencies to wipe bits off media. "In the real world, people are not losing data from magnets," says Bill Rudock, a tech-support engineer with hard-drive maker Seagate. "In every disk," notes Rudock, "there's one heck of a magnet that swings the head."

Want to erase data from a hard drive you plan to toss? Don't bother with a magnet. Overwrite the data that is stored on the media instead. For flash, fill up the drive with anything, like pictures of your beloved dachshund. Unlike with magnetic media, from which experts can usually recover at least some overwritten data, once new data is written to flash media, the old data is gone forever. To overwrite the contents of a hard drive, try Eraser from Heidi Computers.

Using a cell phone on a plane interferes with the navigation and communications systems of the aircraft.

"I've never experienced a navigational problem that could be traced to a cell phone," says one veteran pilot who didn't want his identity revealed. "From everything I've read, cell phones and most avionics shouldn't conflict."

So why do flight attendants make you put away your gear before takeoffs and landings? "That's more for making sure [we] have people's attention and for [individual] safety," he says. "If I have to hit the brakes and abort a takeoff, I don't want a laptop flying across the cabin."

The Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates cell phone use in a plane, has a different view: "The concern is that cell phones would conflict with onboard avionics," says Paul Takemoto, the FAA's electronics guru.

Is there scientific proof that cell phones can make planes go haywire? Some. In 2003 the Civil Aviation Authority--the FAA of the United Kingdom--ran tests using simulated cell phone signals in a chamber (not in an actual aircraft) and found problems. In some cases, the compass froze, some instruments displayed errors, and audio communications were difficult to hear due to interference.

Until additional tests prove otherwise, Takemoto says, the FAA prefers to err on the side of caution.

If you don't 'stop' a USB device before unplugging it from a PC, you'll screw things up.

When you unplug a USB device without first "stopping" it in Windows (accomplished by clicking the Remove Hardware icon in the taskbar), your PC makes a bing-bong sound and usually pops up a message scolding you for the move or warning that what you just did can delete data saved on USB storage devices or damage hardware.

We're cautious about unplugging a device while it's still writing data (an action USB flash-drive makers always warn against) because doing so can cause major damage. Case in point: One PC World editor unplugged an external USB hard drive that was doing some activity in the background; he lost all his data and damaged the drive itself.

If you wait until the device stops writing data and then pull the drive out, you're unlikely to experience serious problems. Although Windows takes you to task for such rashness, even Microsoft downplays the peril. The company told us that any damage will "depend on the USB device, but in general [unplugging a USB peripheral] shouldn't affect the system."

To see if the task has negative effects, we unplugged and plugged a bunch of USB devices, including a camera, a printer, a USB flash drive, and a scanner, without first "stopping" them in Windows. The only problem was Windows' failure to recognize our USB flash drive after we had unplugged it and then immediately plugged it in again. If that happens to you, wait a few seconds between unplugging and plugging. If that doesn't work, reboot Windows. And if that doesn't work, run the Add Hardware wizard from the Control Panel to make Windows "see" the USB device. For more on USB devices, visit USBMan.

94506 94507 94509 94511 94513 94514 94517 94518 94519 94520 94521 94522 94523 94524 94526 94527 94528 94529 94531 94540 94541 94542 94543 94544 94545 94546 94546 94549 94550 94551 94552 94553 94556 94557 94561 94563 94565 94566 94568 94568 94570 94575 94577 94578 94579 94582 94583 94588 94595 94596 94597 94598

Alamo, Antioch, Benicia, Berkeley, Brentwood, Castro Valley, Clayton, Concord, Danville, Dublin, Hayward, Lafayette, Livermore, Martinez, Oakland, Oakley, Pacheco, Pittsburg, Pleasant Hill Pleasanton, Orinda, San Leandro, San Ramon, San Francisco, Walnut Creek