Every once in a while, it acts like it is dragging an anchor. Specifically, internet throughput slows to where some tasks time out. I use Spybot and AdAware regularly. What else should I be doing? A disk cleaner? (The one supplied by Windows hangs.) A registry cleaner? How do I avoid really fouling things up if I use one?
Anything else recommended by the safe and sanitary Dopers?
Ccleaneris a safe and easy way to clean your hard drive of unnecessary temporary files and other schmutz that slows it down; it also has a safe registry cleaner.
Adaware and Spybot are not bad, but MalwareBytes AntiMalware is the new sheriff in town for cleaning spyware and adware; it gets what the others can’t.
Finish up with Diskeeper Lite, a defragmenter that is more efficient than the Windows defragger.
Find out which, if any, programs have decided on their own that they need to start up when you start your computer and use your computer resources to help them run in the background. These are not necessarily adware or spyware or viruses.
There are many helpful sites for this.
Here: http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_index.htm for example.
Is it only the internet? While spyware is a likely culprit, the problem may actually not be on your end.
The Windows defragger is a very early version of Diskeeper Lite.
Are you using Firefox? It has a memory leak that gobbles up system resources and slows your entire computer down after a while. Install this memory optimizer which cuts the memory requirement to a fraction.
since I started using it, my computer doesn’t slow down any more. At least not due to Firefox, anyway.
That was in version 2.0 of Firefox, released circa 2006. Since version 3.0 this past June, such memory leaks have been nearly eliminated.
I have heard and read many bad things about Firefox Ultimate Optimizer. Not least of which is that it is a trojan.
As t-bonham@scc.net pointed out, Firefox 3 plugged up those memory leaks. At best, I would wager that FUO simply hides them, perhaps by using a page file.
Are you sure it’s your PC that’s the issue? If it’s just internet access, then maybe your ISP’s link is getting soaked.
I have CCleaner. It scares me a little because of all the things you can do with it. I usually only use it to clean up temporary files. Thanks for the tips on the other two.
Follow up: after a thorough delousing, my computer seems noticeably faster. Thanks for the tips.
You might want to try turning off some of the more useless Windows Services, too.
Thanks guys.
I’m getting some of these, but waiting till I’ve done the last 2.8k of my nano and verified the word count before running anything new. I’ve mainly just replied to subscribe.
Okay, new question,
Really Not All That Bright’s link to blackviper, mentions this Microsoft Security bulletin.
I’m not making much sense of it - can anyone translate to exhausted non-tech for me please? It looks panic inducing.
Could you explain this a little, maybe give an example of something that could be turned off, and how one actually turns them off? 2000 Pro here.