HOWTO: Speedup a Windows Computer
The procedures below are for Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems
Make sure there is only one Antivirus applications or Software Firewall installed
- Antivirus: Only use one antivirus application, uninstall all others. This does not mean online scanners. It only refers to full antivirus applications like AntiVir, Avast, AVG, Kaspersky, McAfee, Symantec, etc.
- Firewall: Only use one software firewall, uninstall all others. A software firewall can be run in addition to a hardware firewall but is not necessary
Basic Computer Maintenance
Remove programs that are no longer used:
Go to Control Panel, Add\Remove programs and uninstall programs that are no longer used. Also remove any toolbars you are unaware of!
Clean the hard drive of unwanted files:
Download and install CCleaner (CrapCleaner)
Install and then open CCleaner, and the cleaner section should open
Click run cleaner
Remove invalid registry entries:
Next up is the registry which can contain many invalid references. The registry is not an area for even the average computer user to be playing around in. The good news is CCleaner has a safe registry cleaner built in, so let it clean out invalid entries?
Click the issues button
Click scan for issues
Click fix selected issues
Startup items:
All the icons in the lower right corner of the screen load at startup together with over 500 other programs and libraries! (Quicktime, AOL and RealPlayer are examples of items that do not need to be loaded)
Autoruns can be found on the Sysinternals website and once run it will display all startup items. The best way of identifying unwanted startup programs is to look at all publishers other than Microsoft and remove the unwanted ones
Defragment the hard drive
Use the builtin Disk Defragmenter to defragment the hard disk drive
If the above procedures did not resolve the slow PC problem then continue to the next section
HOWTO: REMOVE MALWARE FROM A WINDOWS COMPUTER
Enable viewing of hidden files, system files and file extensions
Some programs hide themselves by making their files invisible in normal Windows settings. Run the steps in the link below to make them easier to find. (Not doing this will allow file extensions commonly used by trojans and spyware to be hidden, for example a file ending in .exe or dll making manually finding it, if needed, difficult to impossible)
Removing and Updating Programs
- Uninstall Malware using Add/Remove Programs
- Update Windows
- Uninstall ALL old Sun Java versions by downloading and running JavaRa
- Msconfig must be set for Normal Startup mode
- Empty ALL Quarantine type folders for antivirus and antispyware applications
- Empty the Recycle Bin
- Empty Norton Nprotect folder - If you are a Symantec/Norton user make sure you empty their Norton Nprotect folder guarding the Recycle Bin
- Download and install CCleaner (CrapCleaner)
- Now run Ccleaner with the default options (that means don’t change anything) to clean out temporary files
- Only use the default settings on the Windows Tab and select Run Cleaner. Do not run any other options from other tabs
- Also it is highly recommended to login to all other User Accounts on the PC including the Administrator account (on Win2K,XP and Vista) which will only show when you boot in safe mode
- Run CCleaner on each account. This can greatly reduce scan time and log sizes from the later scanning you will do below
- If you don’t see Ccleaner’s link when logging into the other accounts, just goto the C:\Program Files\Ccleaner folder and double click on the ccleaner.exe file to run it. You can also create a shortcut to the file on the Desktop of your other user accounts to make it easier to run in the future
- If you booted into safe mode to clean the Adminstrator account, be sure to reboot in normal mode before continue on with the below instructions
Step 3: Select and run the all steps in the cleaning link below based on your Windows Operating System
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