Over the last 20 plus years I have learned a few things about computers. One of them is that you need to “rotate the tires”. By this I mean general servicing of a computer. Most of this is not that hard and really is never talked about. It is like some dark secret that “they” never want you to never know.
So here are a few things you can do to make your computer run slightly better. And can be done overnight while you sleep.
Defrag the hard drive.
Defragmentation of files on your computer can improve your performance. What happens with computer use is that multiple files are always be written to the hard drive at the same time. And the system just uses the first available slot that it can find to store part of a file in. Then jumps to the next free space and so on and so forth until the file is completely written to the hard drive. In some extreme cases a 10MB file might have the first 3 megabytes on the first 25% of drive. Then the rest of file might be dispersed over the rest of the drive.
It is like when you read a newspaper or magazine and they tell you that the story is continued elsewhere. That is kind of annoying. To read something, store it in memory, then jump to page 34 to read more of it. Then find out that you now that to jump to page 40 to finish. But, what if you could defrag the story into one set of pages and be able to read it straight through? Would that not save time from having to flip pages and locate where the story continues from?
Well that is what programs would like to have done. Have all the files needed in the same general area without having get them from all over the hard drive and not have to piece them back together.
Here are few defragging programs that I use periodically to speed up my program loading and file access. You can download more than one. I mainly run two of them. One, Defragger allow you to not only defrag the whole hard drive. But, also just a single file if needed. This is handy on large file like VM images and ISO files that are a few gigabytes in size. The Second, defrag program is Smart Defrag. This one does a cool thing. It will reorder programs based on the usage. This helps if you are using the same program(s) all the time.
There are tons of other defrag programs on the market. Each does things a little different. You will need to read up on them to see if one is better for you. You can do that at CNET.
Uninstall programs
Somewhere on your computer there is at least one program that is installed that you have not used in months. Do you still need it? How much space is it using?
Some games can use a few hundred megabytes. Maybe you should get rid of it. Not just to save hard drive space. But, to increase performance.
How is that done you ask. Well, by removing an application from the system you delete references to is in the system registry and on the hard drive. Then the computer does not have to remember where it was stored or the settings that were stored in registry. And, in some cases that application or part of the application is running in background even if you never run it.
Use the Control Panel to select Programs and Features. You should then see a list of all the programs that can be uninstalled. Select the one you want and click uninstall.
Please note three things. One, some programs require other programs to run correctly. iTunes has several helper programs. Apple Application Support, Software Update, Bonjour, and QuickTime. Be careful which ones you decide to remove. The second thing is that it might be best to shut down your computer for a minute or two after uninstall some programs like trial version of Microsoft Office. This helped in the old days by forcing items in memory to be released and shut down services that might be running still on a restart. The third thing you might want to do is defrag the hard drive after removal and clean the system registry.
Clean the registry
The registry is used to keep track of where and what applications do. I can store default settings for an application and remember on what monitor you last used an application.
Over time the system registry can grow from a few hundred megabytes to several gigabytes. The larger the file the longer the read time. Thus slowing the system down.
So, from time to time you need back up and defrag the registry. Removing old pointers and setting for applications that are no longer on your system.
Two of the products that I used to do this is Wise Cleaner and SpyBot Search & Destroy. WiseCleaner will also defrag the registration file.
It is important to note that in some cases touching the registry might be a bad thing. In some cases it can lead to strange behavior issues with the operating system. I always back up the registry file before performing any changes to it. And playing with it should only be done at your own risk!
Lighthouse Knowledge 