Speed Up Your Pc

[squid]

Ok starting this to see what people use to

*Virus Protection
*Spywear/Adwear
*Hard Drive Defrager
*Registry Fixing

Any think you feel also speeds up windows :)

And to see if we can find best FREE and Paid for programme

IM using avg free / microsoft beta antispy and just got system mechainc 6 pro good but crashs alot and is slow to work ?_? maby coz i dint pay for it ..

[Blackstar]

*Virus Protection - AVG Free
*Spywear/Adwear - Ad-aware
*Hard Drive Defrager - Windows standard (runs overnight twice a week)
*Registry Fixing - er...

[putty_thing]

format/reinstall

[squid]

yer i used to use ad-aware till i found that that they were being paid to miss items for advertises also found that microsoft one found lots one ad-aware dint.

format/reinstal yer ok if you partition windows on your drive but lot things in windows you dont need.

[Blackstar]

Can't get the flippin' antispy beta, stupid genuine checks grr...Just waiting for my MSDN license from work :D mmm

[welshbloke]

AVG would get my thumbs up totally free and pretty reliable
Spyware products would not waste my money and the recent review in the PC Pro mag seems to back this up with 50% detection the norm and then only 50% clean up of that piss poor detection. I think only one product managed 70+.
Harddrive: I would suggest the defragger that comes with XP is more than sufficient. Do not believe the hype.
Registry: Error Nuker seems to do a half decent job but tbh they are about as useful as the spyware tools on the whole and like the spyware removal systems sometimes the cure is worse than the ailment.

The trick is to be careful and deligent in the first place. I have had my machine running XP now ever since I installed it a couple of years ago. It has gone through a SP1 and SP2 upgrade and still trundles along. Sometimes I want to just rebuild it just for the hell of it. Oh and yes I still use IE. Keep it patched and current ensure anything that needs updating such as the AVG package is actually updating. I was recently called round to remove a "Cool web Search" bugger from my mates machine and the reason his Norton suite had expired (well amongst other things). Turn off system restore and create your own restore points, system restore just compounds the problem once infected especially if you have not thought to turn it off.

Firewall/NAT router
Software Firewall (Zonealarm)
Only install what you actually need and read the EULA
Remove what you do not need.
Clean out all those files that clutter up the temp areas.
Do not let your brother on it becuase if we believe the bleetings they are accountable for 99% of all things wrong on the internet and peoples computers.

After saying all this you can bet your bottom dollar that I will get clobbered now.

[tuBBymAN]

well i agree with blackstar i do the same by just using AVG and ad-aware and i think it does ok

[(KKND)Solid Snake]

also get rid of all that porn its not good for you

[vale]

virus protection: McAfee Virus Scan v4.5.1 (it uses little resources and works in the background quietly, non of this norton pop up bullshit)

Spyware: Spybot S&D v1.4, tbh you cant beat this, it can search for spyware block known sites, it also has a registry monitor so it tells you if anything changes the registry and it also has a startup list editor so you can shut down all the wank you dont need.

Defrag: I do this when ever i notice the machine going slow, i just use windows one at the mo but apparently there are some nice free ones floating about.

To get my machine running sweet i just make sure i stay away from porn and spyware, and also watch what i install, i havnt formatted this machine for about 10 months!

[SGT_Snacks]

Virus Scanner - AVG Free
Spyware - Adaware SE, Spybot S&D, Microsoft Anti-Spyware
Defrag - Windows Standard
Registry fixing - Going in Manual ;)

[BirdofPrey]

*Virus Protection - Avast 64bit (even if there are bugger all win 64 viruses)
*Spywear/Adwear - Ad-aware/spybot
*Hard Drive Defrager - Windows standard
*Registry Fixing - F3, what im looking for, delete...

[SHimmer45]

Virus proctection: AVG Free
Spyware ect: Hijack this/Adaware SE / spybot 1.3 / windows task manager / checking run area of registry etc
HDD Defrag: windows one (not that i run it very often)
Reg fixing: system works / format c: /u (if it really bad always best to have a solid bas install)

[eaterofpies]

Virus checker: mcaffee Virus scan is the best ive come across avg misses a lot of stuff and sometimes wont heal / delete properly and norton/symantec are just arse. The only problem with mcaffee is that it takes up a lot of cpu cycles when you start accessing a lot of files. Oh and it costs of course.

Spyware: spybot gets most of the stuff and the MS tool sorts out the rest
and for removing cool web search CW shredder and spybot (spybot cleans up after cool web search installs a lot of shit). Oh and firefox (if i remember) last week i accidentally went browsing with ie and got cool web search :(
EDIT: forgot to say msconfig. its usefull for stopping stuff starting when your trying to remove it.


HDD defragging: the built in windows one works but ive tried a couple of paid products and they do work better. they usually require less free space to start with and you can tell some of them to run until its actually defragged where as the windows one runs through once and generally leaves a bunch of gaps but tbh i just cant be arsed to defrag it takes too long and im not sure ive ever noticed it being faster.

I dont bother with software firewalls as they just piss me off.

Regedit FTW

I reinstall a lot (once every 3 to 6 months) but thats usually due to a significant hardware change (changing graphics card manufacturer / new motherboard) or messed up codecs . . . or steam so usually something ive done to it not some evil software (steam counts as both).

I also dont install the rubbish you get with sound cards / graphics cards. examples of this are the eax software that comes with creative cards.
EAX is for games not for doing funky things to my music!

[Blackstar]

I dont bother with software firewalls as they just piss me off.Might want to take a look at this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4378186.stm):P

Having said that I don't bother with them either, they just take up way to much system resources. Most people will have no end of problems getting through NAT anyway!

[-=FCF=-BlueFear]

Antivirus = AVG Free, if u use it often enough youll stop pretty much anything coming through. I use it once every 3 days

Spyware = Spywareblaster, Adaware SE personal, Spybot S&D, They all find something that the others dont so good combo to have

Firewall = actuall one of the best ive used is the built in XP firewall with SP2 fully up to date. All the software ones caused warping in fps games, and lag spikes.

Reg = Well ive never stuck to 1, but either regfix or regclean seems to do the trick.

If all goes really bad I throw in Hijack this too.

[BirdofPrey]

Might want to take a look at this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4378186.stm):P

Having said that I don't bother with them either, they just take up way to much system resources. Most people will have no end of problems getting through NAT anyway!/me thinks what will be more secure, a hardware firewall, or some pap software one that can crash.

BBC news tech writing is pissing me off so much atm.

[Blackstar]

BBC news tech writing is pissing me off so much atm. Well quite!

[BirdofPrey]

Tune in next week, for the next unmissable episode of "what pisses BirdofPrey off!"

[SGT_Snacks]

/me thinks what will be more secure, a hardware firewall, or some pap software one that can crash.

BBC news tech writing is pissing me off so much atm.


YES! YES! THANK GOD I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE!!!!!111!111one

I mean how out of date can they get? I mean gee, about 16 months ago I was mentioning to a friend that Internet Security is going to be a must have, and someone's going to teach them somehow. Then it all happens. 1 year later the BBC mention it =\

I just don't bother with it anymore. There's no point in reading it, it's far too out of date.

[eaterofpies]

/me thinks what will be more secure, a hardware firewall, or some pap software one that can crash.

Exactly linux box wins! . . . well i would get a nice cisco firewall box but they cost a tad too much for me :( + you cant add stuff to them when they wont do exactly what you want.

[BirdofPrey]

Smoothwall boxes are great, and dead cheap!

[vale]

aye best way to go about it, i just find tht windows firewall is more trouble than its worth, one thing i did notice tho is that if you disable the firewall it notifies you that your unsafe until you reactivate it.

well you obviously stop this by unticking the notify box in the options but spybot actually picks up the file tht stops it from notifying you, as spyware. Bit of a pain :P

[SGT_Snacks]

McAfee picks anything Norton up as an "Unwanted program" :D

[vale]

thts because anything norton is a unwanted program, im running a corporate version of mcaffee and its years old and still gets the latest definitions, but it still out performs norton by miles.

the whole norton popup "HEY WANNA BLOCK THIS, no, GOOOO ON PLZ IM BORED, nah its ok i want it to run, OK ILL CHECK LATER THEN", thing pisses me off! my two house mates actually bought it so i just laugh at them :P

[SlyDave]

*Virus Protection - AVG AV Free
*Hard Drive Defrager - Windows Standard
*Spyware Protection - Windows Anti-Spyware Beta
*Registry Fixing - Regedit, or Recovery Console (depends how bad the problem is)

Never had any issues, but then my Windows is on its own partition so format/reinstall is always an option :)

[tuBBymAN]

Windows is on its own partition

yeah mine is too trouble is every program file i.e. mIRC and office and Firefox and everything is on their too so its a extensive reinstall, i do play about with the idea of a norton ghost image and doing it that way

[eaterofpies]

McAffee picks up a lot of stuff like nmap, super scanner as an unwanted program . . . appart from the McAffee tool itself.

DAMN THEM

[SlyDave]

Windows Anti-Spyware Beta 1 picked up windows as spyware before they released a "hotfix" heh :D

[tuBBymAN]

Windows Anti-Spyware Beta 1 picked up windows as spyware

maybe it was a freudian slip ;)