Tweaking performance

I agree with you eye, which is why I said your advice was good, but incomplete (OK- I said bad- but that's what I meant) Of course my advice, earlier was also incomplete, and thus, bad. I suspect misconfiguration, and basic Win borkenness, rather than sabotage, in his case. So I am in no way invalidating what you are saying, or saying that it is wrong- but there is more to the story, and there will soon be lots more- first we'll take Seoul, then we'll take Berlin, as they say. (Did I mention that Leonard Cohen is a genius?- called it all out....)

But once sabotage comes into it, I think it is wise to point out how sophisticated sabotage has become recently, and how sophisticated it is likely to become soon. You shouldn't be running adaware anymore, really- if you are it means that you are exposing yourself to things that adaware won't catch.

Get rid of outlook. Reinstall your OS (my advice would be to replace it, but....) . Maybe that wasn't what was behind Boris' probems- I pointed out some other possible reasons myself, heat being the primary one- every summer there are a lot of complaints like this- laptops work better in the winter. Cause they're built to not melt...

But get ready- adaware is still worth running, but... not for much longer. The new stuif is a shadow of what's possible.. I've always prided myself on having a criminal mind, and not abusing it... I saw this coming a while back- it's here now... it's gonna get worse.

Of course there is stuff out there that adaware does not catch. But without adaware Boris will also set himself open to catch the stuff that adaware does catch. But refusing to use one sort of protection just because it is not complete is being computer integrity suicidal.
Boris needs protection on his laptop. I have offered an easy and free way of doing that.
But to say that it is wrong to use something just because it won't completely protect you is nuts. Not one of the biggest and so-called best anti-virus software are complete and can protect against all virii but that does not mean we shouldn't use them.

I am not disagreeing with you Mitiege, everything you have said is spot on. But all we are concerned with in this thread is to help Boris improve his performance and protection without having to worry about whether his laptop is contributing to the worldwide destruction of the internet.
But yes I do agree with everything you say, I play a big part in the role if Internet Security in my IT section of a large UK fiancial company so I am completely aware of all the types of threats that we will experience in the near future. But lets just deal with Boris's problem first before tackling worldwide computer security 🙂

One point of Mitiege's I didn't pick up on and totally agree with is avoid MS Outlook like the plague

wow,

first off all, thanks a lot to all of you...

I ain't too bad with computers. I def. know how to use the damn things, and am not afraid of fiddling with hardware... I am however very weak when it comes to programming or using the dos modus, etc.

I'll start going through the tips now that you have given me, and report back if anything got better ...


Just one question upfront ... Ain't 256mb ram enough (considering I only have a 1 giga-herz pentium III processor ?

Report to follow

Boris

errm- my point is that if my cpu usage was pegged, and I didn't know why... I'd want to. You, eye, seem to be following thattrack when you reommend adaware- in fatit was other people who first suggested sabotage.

All I am saying is that sabotage is a bit more sophisticated these days-adaware is not really all that useful anymore- rather it's useful, but... if you suspet that you have a problem adaware could solve, you should also suspet that your computer is being ued to serve pitures of underage Russian girls, and that adaware won't find that- one implies the other, these days.

If Solving Boris' tech problems involves adaware, it should also involve a warning. I didn't bring up sabotage- others did- my point is that once your machine is compromised, unless you are an expert, you should wipe and reinstall- I did not claim that he was compromised- but if adaware helped him, that would be proof that he was. In the Unix world we've been dealing with compromises for a while- got XP and broadband?- you're an honorary sysadmin now- look into it, please. That _is_ helping Boris.

As for outlook- outlook and IIS, taken together, or individually, _dwarf_ all other security problems in the history of computing. Dwarf them. You can argue about the reasons, but that is simply a fact- the vast bulk of all computer security problems _ever_ are due to one or the other.

Originally posted by The Slow Pawn
wow,

first off all, thanks a lot to all of you...

I ain't too bad with computers. I def. know how to use the damn things, and am not afraid of fiddling with hardware... I am however very weak when it comes to programming or using the dos modus, etc.

I'll start going through the tips now that you have given me, and report back if anything g ...[text shortened]... ugh (considering I only have a 1 giga-herz pentium III processor ?

Report to follow

Boris

And-I should add-I'm not really much of an MS basher- I was certainly aginst the anti-trust suit here inthe US, and I am aganst the EU suits as well... MS has done an enormous amount of good in spreading computing- and I don't think we're talking about the destruction of the internet- but this is serious stuff. It could mean personal destruction- and will for a few unlucky souls. Plus I find all the whacked IIS exploits in my logs annoying 🙂.

256 megs is more than enough, unless you have some proccess you are running that eats a lot of memory. If you had a desktop I'd say, add more memory- couldn't hurt, ad it's almost free. (I'll agree with eye that you can never have too much memory- but your system should run ok wih 256 MB). On a laptop it's pricier though- my laptop is- err, well it's a bit older than yours.

You mention Kazaa- what happens when you kill it? Does your memory usage drop? The big question here, is what is chowing your mem?
Now, you alsotalk about video playback- that may nothave too much to do with system memory, but instead with your system bus- (DVD video is way too big to fit into memory) if you want good video playback- well best to get a new machine with an 833 frontside..

Tweaking Performance


1.)I don’t use Norton – actually I don’t use (at my knowledge) a firewall at all) …
2.)I don’t use antivirus programmes – Should I? – Robbo and Michelle mentioned AVG from www.girosoft.com
3.)Adjust your vitual memory settings and set the pagefile to 64mb min and 512mb max.

Start – Settings – Control Panel – system – advanced – visual effects tick adjust for best performance – It was set Let Windows choose what’s best for my computer

Start – Settings – Control Panel – system – advanced – visual effects – advanced
(Was set 372mb initial size, 744mb maximum size) I have changed that according
to Robbo’s suggestion to (64mb initial size – 512mb maximum size)

4.)Start/Run and then type services.msc

Wow, long list there
a)Don’t have alerter service (only alerter, shall I disable that?)
b)Have disabled Error Reporting service (although am not too sure what I have done here, lol – Robbo I simply trust you here ;-)

5.)My computer, select properties, click advanced tab, in performance click settings button and then select for best performance – Done
6.)Lavasofts Adaware – Done a deep search of my c-drive – 18 objects found – deleted them.

7.)Michelle – Done what I could – I have left –
a)My speed touch modem (Icon)
b)Safely Remove Hardware (Icon)
c)BT Openworld Broadband (Icon)

Any of them in the way?

8.)Have a look in task manager with no programs open. You will probably see loads of stuff running in the processes which gobbles more resources than anything else running

Done that, but how do I (a) know what I can stop and what not and (b) how do I make sure that when I next start my aging beauty, these things are not coming back ?

9.)Keep it cool – it Stands on a solid desk – Not much more I can do ?
10.)Plug it in – My battery want totally flat a year ago anyway
11.)As a last resort install some flavor of Unix – No idea what you are talking about, sorry mate
12.)Defrag, done that a few weeks ago – will do again soon (Only problem is that I need 15% of my c-drive to be free, now common, who’s got a luxury like that ? I’m happy to have a gig free every now and again ;-)
13.)Cleaning my registry – No idea how to do that
14.)Mitigie – you wrote quite a lot of stuff about me potentially being the host for other people’s illegal things – The only thing I really understood there was me to learn about firewalls – So could you give me a quick lesson ?
15.)I don’t use outlook express – I would like to use Outlook (as I then conveniently could move messages that I like to keep in those little folders that I created – But if it endangers me I won’t – Further advice welcome
16.)Concerning ram – Robbo – I’d like to put in more ram – but am not sure I my laptop could work with more, also how would I know what sort of ram to order … Well that one I’ll have a look later when I unscrew my beauty (so if you don’t hear from the Slow Pawn from weeks you know I **** up, lol)


Thanks again for all your help, I feel the comp. has picked up on speed already and I have been made more aware of the dangers that are connected with the Internet …

Any further help is most certainly welcome

Regards
Boris

To add to this Boris, yes difinitely disable the 'Alerter' service in services.msc


Boris, I have to say you really need a firewall, get a free one from www.zonelabs.com

Make sure you do a windows update regularly too.

I will do a full list of basic tweaks for you that should improve your performance a lot further.

As Ed Mcmahon used to say- you are correct sir! As I said, you nailed, it, hit it on the head, pounded it, etc. Good luck with your futire career Mr Vila