Originally posted by sonhouseI'm being sincere. You can either take the advice, or sulk about it and go on breaking your computer every five minutes because you don't know what you're doing. It's up to you.
Don't worry, I won't be bothering your precious time ever again. I get the point. Sorry I woke you up.
Originally posted by Daemon SinThis problem always happens to me on older machines and removing start-up programs or defragging only seems to help minimally...
I doubt its anything to do with viruses.
My money's on a combination of an excessively large profile, too many startup programs, large prefetch folder, fragged harddrive and messy registry.
How do I check the profile and size of prefetch folder?
Does the registry tool of CCleaner help a messy register? If not, what will?
Originally posted by PalynkaYup, I definitely recommend CCleaner. It will tidy up of all the old, unused and bad registry entries for you.
This problem always happens to me on older machines and removing start-up programs or defragging only seems to help minimally...
How do I check the profile and size of prefetch folder?
Does the registry tool of CCleaner help a messy register? If not, what will?
Assuming you're on Windows XP...
Prefetch Folder - C:\Windows\Prefetch
To be honest, unless the folder is stuffed full of hundreds and hundreds of files you might be better off leaving it alone. However, if it is a bit bulky just delete everything inside the folder and Windows will re-index everything and re-build the necessary files when it restarts.
Profile
Hold the Start Key and hit Pause Break. Select the Advanced tab and click Settings under the User Profiles section. It might take a while to load depending on the size of the profiles on your machine. You'll see the size of all the profiles listed. Generally, I'd aim to keep your profile under around 700Mb. If you need to reduce the size steps would be emptying temporary internet folders (CCleaner can do that for you), move any files and folders on your Desktop to your harddrive (use shortcuts instead) and try and decrease the amount of stuff in My Documents.
Originally posted by Daemon SinThanks for the help. I actually do follow this kind of instruction.
Yup, I definitely recommend CCleaner. It will tidy up of all the old, unused and bad registry entries for you.
Assuming you're on Windows XP...
[b]Prefetch Folder - C:\Windows\Prefetch
To be honest, unless the folder is stuffed full of hundreds and hundreds of files you might be better off leaving it alone. However, if it is a bit bulky just de ...[text shortened]... harddrive (use shortcuts instead) and try and decrease the amount of stuff in My Documents.[/b]
Originally posted by Daemon SinWell you learn something new every day. Noted.
Yup, I definitely recommend CCleaner. It will tidy up of all the old, unused and bad registry entries for you.
Assuming you're on Windows XP...
[b]Prefetch Folder - C:\Windows\Prefetch
To be honest, unless the folder is stuffed full of hundreds and hundreds of files you might be better off leaving it alone. However, if it is a bit bulky just de ...[text shortened]... harddrive (use shortcuts instead) and try and decrease the amount of stuff in My Documents.[/b]
Originally posted by sonhouseOh boo-hoo!
Don't worry, I won't be bothering your precious time ever again. I get the point. Sorry I woke you up.
If you all had on your plate what I have going on here you would maybe be a bit more sensitive.
Did you go and look at what I posted in the previous thread?
I may be sarcastic, but I will always try to help.
Originally posted by CrowleyWhen I said I have a lot on my plate right now I was being serious not asking for pity.
Oh boo-hoo!
Did you go and look at what I posted in the previous thread?
I may be sarcastic, but I will always try to help.
In the general forum posts get buried pretty fast. I just tried CCleaner on another comp, it seems to work really well. The comp I have been having trouble with is running diskeeper right now so I won't have a chance to run it today but will tomorrow. I don't want to go into all my troubles right now, just suffice it to say I am overwhelmed right now. I wasn't asking anyone to solve my computer problems, I just wanted to know if there was a program that would show all the hidden CPU calls that don't get included in the performance tab of the task manager, apparently there is no such thing. That's all I was after.
I was able to run CCleaner and it cleaned out over a gig of crap. I also had already gotten rid of a bunch of registry cleaner stuff and so forth even before I posted here. I think the comp is back on track now. My next test is to see how much faster XP reboots. Not today however. If the gist of my question is there is no programs that show everything going on with the CPU, what about Sysinternals program 'process viewer'. Does anyone here have experience with that or anything else from Sysinternals?
Originally posted by sonhouseHoly Mac-n-Chee!
I was able to run CCleaner and it cleaned out over a gig of crap. I also had already gotten rid of a bunch of registry cleaner stuff and so forth even before I posted here. I think the comp is back on track now. My next test is to see how much faster XP reboots. Not today however. If the gist of my question is there is no programs that show everything goin ...[text shortened]... rocess viewer'. Does anyone here have experience with that or anything else from Sysinternals?
First time I ran CCleaner it got 80 megs.
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Originally posted by PhlabibitThe 'problem' with this particular comp (I have 5 or 6 floating around for various purposes, one for recording music, one for my amateur radio stuff, a couple of laptops, and my wife's graphics machine and this family machine, which has a half dozen logins for some of my kids and their gf's and such so I never know just what kind of crap gets downloaded. I just killed the apple stuff, they won't be able to crap up the comp from there now. So it got rid of 1.3 gigs of junk. I also deleted over 2 gigs of useless programs like a cracked version of mathematica, 1.4 gigs but the crack repaired itself🙂 and asked for a key, the bastards🙂 So now this comp is acting more or less normal.
Holy Mac-n-Chee!
First time I ran CCleaner it got 80 megs.
Originally posted by sonhousemathematica what a great programme 🙂
The 'problem' with this particular comp (I have 5 or 6 floating around for various purposes, one for recording music, one for my amateur radio stuff, a couple of laptops, and my wife's graphics machine and this family machine, which has a half dozen logins for some of my kids and their gf's and such so I never know just what kind of crap gets downloaded. I ...[text shortened]... tself🙂 and asked for a key, the bastards🙂 So now this comp is acting more or less normal.
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Originally posted by sonhouseWhatever, this would be a crappy place to look for pity and I wasn't giving you any...
When I said I have a lot on my plate right now I was being serious not asking for pity.
In the general forum posts get buried pretty fast. I just tried CCleaner on another comp, it seems to work really well. The comp I have been having trouble with is running diskeeper right now so I won't have a chance to run it today but will tomorrow. I don't want to go ormance tab of the task manager, apparently there is no such thing. That's all I was after.
Get a program called Revo Uninstaller when you start cleaning out programs. It helps with the uninstall and deletes the leftovers for you.
My PC is also running much smoother since I canned AVG and started using MS Security Essentials.
Regular use of CCleaner will do you a world of good, and the odd defrag once a quarter too. No more is probably necessary.
The next step is to kill startup memory hogs. Don't worry about CPU cycles for now, memory hogs are your problem. Trust me.
CCleaner->Tools->Startup
Just disable EVERYTHING there, except ctfmon.exe and your anti-virus. This should speed up your boot time appreciably. If something "important" was disabled that you actually need, just re-enable it in CCleaner.
Then go find the thread that I posted, or search on the net for Windows XP services you can safely disable. This makes a huge difference on under-specced or under-performing PCs.
The first one I'd do would be disabling themes. Start->Run->services.msc
Find Themes, double click it, Stop and set to Disabled, click OK.
There's a massive range of things that can affect your boot time, it can be anything from your basic hardware to your temp files and registry to even something like a USB gadget that doesn't behave like it should.
To check what loads when you start your computer use a program like CCleaner or go: Start -> Run -> enter "msconfig" -> Look at the Startup tab and deselect things that aren't important.
Also, if you want the best help then you should in future start off by saying what CPU/RAM/etc you have, then don't exaggerate. If your computer REALLY takes 20 minutes to boot up then everyone is going to tell you to reinstall Windows because that sounds like a lost cause.