What are the best software programs for maintenance for a new computer? I always here that Norton isn’t very good but not sure why. I do know it has a habit of invading every aspect of my computing experience and that drives me nuts. I play alot of games so I want my Systray as clutter free as possible. Besides scanning and defragging every 3 weeks or so what are some good maintenance things to do? On this current computer I have so many files I think are defunct but not sure so I just leave them. It gives me a feeling of computer constipation. 
Hmm. I personally use the Fix-It Utilties: defragger, virus scanner, registry cleaner-outer, hardware testing tools, tool to restore anything it has done, etc., etc. It’s not the absolutely best money can buy, but it is perhaps the best bang for your buck. For what it does, it also has an amazingly small footprint on the hard drive.
Besides the defragging (which doesn’t need to be done that often, unless you do a lot of file creation/modification/deletion/rearranging), I’d use the registry cleaner-outer tool occasionally.
For physical maintenance, I’d also do a occasional popping off of the cover and cleaning out the guts of the computer. Get the dust and gunk removed from the fans, and the like, and it’ll help things last longer.
(I can’t comment on Norton, since I haven’t used their stuff since… er… mid 80’s.)
<< There is no spoon. >>
How does a clogged register slow down performance? Isn’t it a relatively small thing to read?
I use Windows’ built-in Disk Cleanup, Defrag and ScanDisk utilities. I use Disk Cleanup and ScanDisk’s standard setting every night, Defrag every 3 days, and ScanDisk thorough setting every week (scheduling handled by the built-in scheduling thingy). I also run McAfee VirusScan every night, using it’s scheduling thingy.
When in doubt about whether a file is really needed, zip it up. Download WinZip, compress the files or folders you think you don’t really need and move them somewhere else (be sure to use WinZip’s “move” function when you zip them up, or you’ll just wind up leaving the originals behind). If after a few weeks of normal use you haven’t missed anything or had any unusual errors related to those files, you’re free to do with them as you will.
Maintaining a new computer? It’s not the software you should maintain, it is the hardware. Software is just bits stored in memory and does not require maintenance at all.
If you are referring to keeping your Wintel box running relatively smooth and clean, the best thing to do is not to install stuff you don’t need. You need to periodically reinstall Windows anyway, anywhere from 6 months to 18 months.
KidCharlemagne & what computer is that? What operating system?
I use registry defrag on my machines. Usually when things slow down . At that point my registry (Me operating system) is usually about 3 megs & defrag makes it about 1.5 megs.
You don’t need to periodically reinstall Windows if you don’t abuse your system. I have machines here that are 5+ years old, I’ve never reinstalled Windows, and they run just fine.
From my experience, the number one rule to keeping your computer running well is DO NOT DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL CRAP FROM THE WEB. That cute lil’ thing that makes your cursor into an angel? Get rid of it. That nifty program that puts animations on your email? Keep it off your machine.
A corollary to the above is DO NOT EVER INSTALL ANYTHING FROM KAZAA OR GATOR.
These little pieces of fetid software are written badly, don’t uninstall cleanly, and, at best, bog down your computer. At worst, they provide a means of spreading viruses and worms. Many of them gather information about your computer usage and upload it to marketing databases.
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I’m so #!@#!@ pissed off at my family, who insist upon buying the cheapest POS computers they can find, installing every piece of RealPlayer, Gator, and Kaazaa crap on their computers, then call me when the #!#@ thing doesn’t boot and expect ME to give up my day to go fix it. MY computers NEVER die. Why? Because I DON’T #@@# DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL CRAP OFF THE WEB. The software I run is name brand and trusted; I don’t have superflous crap making my registry three times as big as it should be and loading up at startup. I don’t have viruses or spyware.
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Run an antivirus program once a week. Run Ad-Aware once a week. When either of those programs find stuff, delete the stuff they find.
DO NOT INSTALL CRAP FROM THE WEB ON YOUR COMPUTER!
Personally, I think the absolute bare minimum of software is the way to go.
I have never used a virus scanner that constantly runs in the background. I absolutely despise software that deems itself so important that it forces itself to load up and use resources everytime you boot your computer. I’m thinking of Real-player and most instant messangers. The most awful of these are ones that refuse to allow you to disable this “feature” even if you take them off of the startup list in MSCONFIG. GAH!
Less crap running=best performance and less chance of a crash.
With the registry, all sorts of crap can be left in there: most of it’s fairly harmless, but sometimes a newly installed program can see one of the outdated registry entries and think it should use that one without updating it to reflect new values. Or, a program you’ve uninstalled might leave some stuff in the registry, etc. Keeping the registry cleaned up isn’t going to improve system performance to a noticable extent (unless there is a LOT of junk in there), but it can help prevent problems from programs trying to use invalid entries.
To sum up (too late!): most of the time you aren’t going to notice a real difference. The one time I did was after I did some major cleaning up of the hard drive, noticed it was still a bit sluggish, and found 300+ invalid entries in the registry. (Most of them were related to Windows update items.)
Ill be using Windows XP. I have to admitted I’ve download every game demo, deleted folders rather than uninstall, get stuff from questionable sources and never once had a virus or system problem that couldn’t be fixed by rebooting. I’ve had this system for 4 years so I must’ve been lucky. Is Norton good for cleaning registry?
Oh, yeah, Athena’s post reminds me: I run Adaware and Spybot Search & Destroy periodically.
I use Norton SystemWorks and don’t have any real complaints about it. I didn’t install everything, though - I omitted whichever component it is that constantly monitors your system to ostensibly prevent crashes (I think), because it was a POS in previous versions and resulted in more crashes than it prevented.
But, yeah, it cleans my registry once a week and nothing’s broke yet.
A factor you should consider is if you have other people, especially children, using the computer. One of the main reasons I’m running Win2K now is the ability to easily enforce a “no installation” rule. While you may be good at keeping junk software off your computer, other users may not know or care about bad software.
Also, physical cleaning of the machine is a must. Every month or so, vacuum the dust from the case and power supply. Dust easily leads to overheating and premature component failure.
Unless you do not actually use those Wintel boxes, my experience is that it is not possible not reinstalling.
Patches, updates, BIOS flashes, they eventually interact and the system goes fubar. Sometimes, Wintel boxes just go belly up spontaneously - critical files would be missing. Some other times, Wintel boxes would start fubaring, then revert to normal a short period of time later.
I don’t think even Bill knows what’s going on anymore.
Urban Ranger, have you used a “wintel” product since Windows 98? You might want to look into the stability of win 2k (and in theory XP, although its a bloated pig compared to 2k). I ran win2k under pretty harsh conditions non-stop for 2+years. I installed every demo I could get my hands on, a bunch of crap from Kazaa/morpheus/assorted warez sites/etc, I was running either Seti or the cancer curing thing for most of those 2 years and I smoked next to it and never cleaned it out. And it was a BIOSTAR motherboard. Never reinstalled and the only issues I ever had that could be blamed on windows was my video card driver issues the first 6 months windows 2k was out. After that got settled I never had any issues. The myth that all “wintel” boxes need to have there OS reinstalled every 6 months is a left over from the 98/ME days. Yes, I was reinstalling 98SE every couple of months before I upgraded to 2k, but that was almost 3 years ago.
Norton Systemworks
Lavasoft Ad-Aware
Clean out your recycle bin, and your internet history daily.
Running these programs/actions will greatly enhance the ability of your computer to not suck.
One of the computers I speak about is a Win98 machine that Mr. Athena bought in, lesseee… Christmas 1997. He’s a programmer, and uses it daily for work, Web surfing, etc. etc. He has never reinstalled Windows.
I bought a laptop at the same time, a WinBook. Think it had Win98 on it. I used it as my primary home machine until almost 2 years ago, at which time I gave it to my then-14 year old niece. She uses it all the time even now. Never reinstalled the OS.
I replaced that machine with a Dell Inspiron laptop, running WinME. It’s almost 2 years old now, and starting January of last year it was my primary work machine, used for work, Web surfing, gaming, etc. 8-14 hours a day. I use it now as my backup machine, and have it on most days 8-10 hours a day. Have never reinstalled the OS.
My current machine has been running since July. It’s as fast now as it was the day I opened the box. I’m not now, and do not plan on, reinstalling the OS.
I’ve also worked many years as either an IT hack or doing software engineering. At best, I got a new work computer once every year and half. At worst, it was every 3-4 years. These computers were mainly used for heavy duty software design, 8-10 hours a day, 5+ days a week. I never reinstalled the OS of my work computers. Ever.
In fact, I regret to say, I don’t even have backups of most of my stuff. I know I should (hell, I worked in the storage industry for many years! I KNOW how important it is) but I just don’t. I’ve never lost a damn thing, either.
(of course, saying that will now cause every computer in my house to go belly up…)
Urban Ranger, if your Wintel box is going “belly up” spontaneously, losing critical files, something is going on. Windows is not a perfect OS, but it does NOT spontaneously delete files. Trust me on that one, I designed and wrote Windows storage software for many years. I’m not saying Windows doesn’t have it’s quirks, but if it spontaneously deleted files there’s no way on earth it would have EVER become as popular and widespread of an OS as it is.
Same thing with the whole OS reinstall thing. YOU may have the time and energy to reinstall the OS every 6-18 months, but believe me, the IT guys who maintain businesses that have hundreds or thousands of computers do NOT go around reinstalling the OS every few months. There is no way a business could support that kind of downtime and overhead, and there’s no way they’d trust critical business tasks and/or data to an OS that was so flaky that it required a complete reinstall periodically, or one that deleted files. Windows is bad, but it ain’t THAT bad.
I think I’d just buy a new computer if I had to reinstall windows. What do you people do with all the stuff installed?
I couldn’t agree more!
Unless, of course, it happens to be Kazaa Lite.