How can I get my computer to run faster?

Question

I just got DSL from SBC/Yahoo and before I put their crap on my computer, it was running fine... Now I put the stuff they told me to put on on it and it has slowed my computer way the heck down... It takes me about 3 minutes just to log in without the thing loading any programs... with the programs, it takes about 6 more minutes... I have plenty of space on there... So how can I make it faster?

I don't know how much ram I have... but I do know that I have over 3 gigs of free space... And the Stuff they had me put on was their browser and messenger... Also my computer had downloaded about 56 updates when I hooked it up... And I have about 4 actual programs that start up when I log on... and they are very important I think... They are: AVG Free Edition, Ewido 4.0, Zone Alarm firewall, And the yahoo messenger wich isn't that important...

I also have an Intel Celeron I think... But I am running a compaq with windows XP when it was made for 98... but ran fine until the internet...

Answer 1

click on start > run
type msconfig
press OK
click on STARTUP tab.
Uncheck as many entries as you can. Press OK. Reboot.
This will disable many programs scheduled to start at computer startup, thus make it faster. You can manually start any program form start > all programs, whenever you need. Moreover, the settings you change in msconfig are reversible.

Answer 2

So what all crap did they give you to load up??? I mean, it's your computer and sometimes you have to decide what should be there and what should not be. For ex, some ISPs used to put stuff on your computer that sent information back to the ISP. WHY??

After you've satisfied yourself about the virus and malware threats, look at what's loading and ask why? If it don't make sense, call your ISP helpdesk and find out. Get rid of the unnecessary.

Personal note: I spent good money on Spyware Doctor, but find that when it's running, my hard drive churns away and I can't find out why. All I know is, when I de-activate Spyware Doctor, the computer runs fine.

Answer 3

one remove any p2p sharing network software if you have that on pc , then do a full system scan for virus/ trojans/ spyware , add more pc ram , & try this for gettings pc to run at top speed

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Answer 4

run ur antivirus progam and spyware programs to make sure that there is no virus or spyware or adware that came with the software that they made u instal... if that is not the case.. contact yahoo and tell them your problem

Answer 5

you need to upgrade your memory capacity. minimum should be 512 meg, better to be over a gig. That speeds up everything.
Also processor speed is important

Answer 6

UN install there software, all you need is to create connection to get on the Internet.

Answer 7

I wrote a clolum on this and these are my notes (ask at "LiteraryMagic.com/forums.html which of these has been tested. Not ALL of these work):

Disabling the System Boot Screen
Creating the boot.ini File
This section will show you how to create a boot.ini file for your computer if you have just one operating system installed on your computer and you do not already have a boot.ini file in your drive root. To get started, let's go over what the boot.ini file looks like.

The boot.ini file that disables the boot screen looks like the following:
[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS [operating systems]multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /noguiboot

The above boot.ini file is all pretty much standard except for the adition of the /noguiboot to the last line of the file. That is the parameter that tells Windows to start up without using the graphical user interface boot screen. To get started, open up a copy of Notepad found in the Accessories menu of the All Programs entry in the Start Menu and follow the steps below:

Click on the File menu bar item and select Save As.
Type in Boot.ini in the File name box and change the Save as type to All Files.
Then, change the Save in directory to your drive root, which is usually Local Disk (CSmile.
Hit the save button and you are now finished.
You can now close Notepad. The next time that you reboot your computer, you will not see the boot screen.
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Disabling Unneeded Hardware Devices
To disable hardware devices, you will want to use the Device Manager. To get to the Device Manager, do the following:

Go to the Control Panel. go to System icon. Once the System Properties window has loaded, click on the Hardware tab. Under the Device Manager section, click the button that says Device Manager. Now that you are inside of the Device Manager, you can browse through your devices that are connected and currently running or disabled by browsing though the device type sections. To disable a device, right click on the device name, and then select disable.
To re-enable a device, right-click on the device name, and select Disable. This will remove the check from the menu and will re-enable the device.
Tip:
To quickly determine the status of a device, check out the icon next to its name. All devices that are disabled have a red X over the icon. All devices that have a question mark or an explanation point on them are not set up correctly or are having problems. All devices with none of the above additions to the icon are running—and doing so without any problems.
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What Hardware Devices Should I Disable?

Network Adapters: Especially on notebook computers, there are often more than one network device. Disabling the network devices that you do not use will definitely save you some booting time.
FireWire: If you have 1394 connections, otherwise known as fire wire, you might consider disabling them. Unless you are using your fire wire port to connect your digital video recorder to your computer, or have other external fire wire device, you have no need to have this device enabled.
Modems: Do you have a broadband connection? If so, then consider disabling your modem. If you rarely use it, disable it. If you ever need to use it again, just re-enable it again.
Multimedia devices: Your computer has lots of multimedia devices. Take a look at the "Sound, video, and game controllers" section in Device Manager. You will find a lot of device drivers that are loaded during your boot. Some are used by all users, but others will find a few that they do not use. For example, I do not use my game port or my MIDI device, so I disabled both of those.
PCMCIA: If you are a laptop user, consider disabling your PCMCIA card controller located under "PCMCIA adapters". The PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) slot is special expansion slot that is rarely used today on laptops except for wireless and wired network cards and card reader attachments for compact flash and other solid state memory cards. Most laptops now have built in network adapters and some even have built-in wireless adapters. If you do not use your PCMCIA adapter, it is yet another device that can be safely disabled.
Caution:
Do not disable any hardware devices that are located under the Disk Drives, Computer, Display Adapters, IDE Disk Controllers, and the System sections (except for the system speaker) since these hardware devices are critical to the operation of your comptuer.
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By going to services.msc
Disable the following services:

Background Intelligent Transfer Service
Distributed Link Tracking Client
Error Reporting Service
Fast User Switching Compatibility
Help and Support
Indexing Service
Messenger
Machine Debug Manager
Network Location Awareness (NLA)
Portable Media Serial Number Service
SSDP Discovery Service
Terminal Services
Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)
Wireless Zero Configuration (If you have a wireless network card, do not disable this one)
Windows Time
WebClient
Task Scheduler Continued...
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Hacking the Context Menu
---Removing items from the context menu
--Removing Entries that appear in all Context Menus

Start up the Registry Editor by clicking on the Start button and selecting Run. Then type regedit in the box and click OK.
When the Registry Editor appears, expand the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT folder. You will now see a list of every file type that is set up on your computer.
If the entry that you want to remove from the context menu appears in all context menus such as the Picozip example above, you will have to expand the * folder.
Now that you have the correct folder expanded, expand the Shellex and ContextMenuHandlers folders. Your registry path should look like HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers.
Look through the list until you find the entry that you want to remove. Right-click on the folder of the entry and select delete. You will find that identifying some of the programs is easy. For example, Picozip is labeled Picozip. However, you may run into some items that are listed using their application ID number or a vague name. If that is the case, copy (Control + C) the application ID, which is formatted like this—{XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX}—to the clipboard. You may have to expand the folder to see the ID. Then, once you have the ID copied to the clipboard, press Control + F to bring up the Search box in regedit and paste the ID in the box. Next, just click Find and you should be able to find some other references to that same ID in your registry that also might give you some clues to what it is. If that does not work, try doing a search on Google to see if that turns up anything.
Once you are finished removing all of the entries from your context menus, just close Registry Editor and you are finished. --Your changes will be in effect immediately.
Removing entries that appear only under certain file types
If you want to remove an entry on a Context menu that appears on just one type of file or a few different types of files, this section will show you how to easily remove it using the context editor in Folder Options.

Open up My Computer.
Click on the Tools menu, select Folder Options, and click on the File Types tab. Scroll though the list of file types and select the extension that you would like to modify. Click the Advanced button to bring up the Edit File Type window. This is where you will see a list of all of the different entries that will show up in the context menu, shown here:
Select the item that you want to remove and click Remove.
Click OK and you are finished.
If you ever want to revert back to your original context menus, you can just restore your computer to an earlier checkpoint. Or, if you didn't create a system restore checkpoint, you can just reinstall the app to take care of it. Continued...
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Adding Your own Items to the Context Menu

First, open up My Computer.
Click on the Tools menu bar item and select Folder Options.
Click on the File Types tab to expose all of the different file types on your computer.
Once you have the entry selected, click the Advanced button to bring up the Edit File type window.
Click the New button to add an entry.
In the Action box, type in the name that you want to appear on the menu. I typed in Send Attached to Message.
In the Application Used to Perform Action box, you will want to specify the application and any switches that you will want to use for this new entry. Click on the Browse button to easily browse to an executable file.
When you click OK, the path to the executable file will fill the box. Now you will want to add any application flags at the end of the line. The %L is a system variable that holds the name of the file that you are right-clicking on..
When you are finished editing your new entry, click OK to save it. You are now finished adding an entry to a specific File Types context menu. If you want to add the same entry on other file types, just repeat the previous directions by selecting a different file type in step 4. You can do even more things with the context menuOnce you know the %L variable, you can send the name of the file to any program, given that you know the correct switches with which to launch the program.
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Increasing network browsing speed
Does your computer slow down when you browse your local area network and connect to other computers that are sharing data? One of the most common causes of this slowdown is a feature of Windows Explorer that looks for scheduled tasks on remote computers. This effort can take some time on some computers and can really slow down your browsing. The window with which you are browsing the network may appear to freeze momentarily, as the system is waiting for a response from the remote computer.

Hacking Windows XP: Speeding Disk Access
Although this problem is a complex one, the solution is very simple. Instead of having to wait for the remote scheduled tasks, which is useless information to anyone who is not a system administrator remotely configuring scheduled tasks, you can disable this feature.

In order to do this, you will have to hack the System Registry and delete a reference to a key so that this feature will not be loaded. To do this, follow these steps:

Open up the Registry Editor by clicking the Start Menu and selecting Run. Then type regedit in the text box and click the OK button. Once the Registry Editor has loaded, expand: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/software/microsoft/windows/currentversion/explorer/remotecomputer/namespace
In the NameSpace folder you will find two entries. One is "{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}" which tells Explorer to show printers shared on the remote machine. The other, "{D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}," tells Explorer to show remote scheduled tasks. This is the one that you should delete. This can be done by right-clicking the name of the key and selecting Delete.
Tip: If you have no use for viewing remote shared printers and are really only interested in shared files, consider deleting the printers key, "{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}", as well. This will also boost your browsing speed.
Once you have deleted the key, you just need to restart and the changes will be in effect. Now your network computer browsing will be without needless delays.
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Disabling unneeded protocols
Viewing protocols on your network adapters
Viewing the protocols installed and active on your various network adapters is easy. Just follow these quick steps and you will be viewing them in no time:

Right-click the My Network Places icon on the desktop or in the Start Menu and select Properties. If the My Network Places icon is not in either of those locations, then go to the Control Panel and click the Network Connections icon that is shown under the Classic view. Next, right-click the network adapter with which you want to view the network protocols and select Properties. This will bring up a list of the protocols installed as well as active on your adapter, as Figure 11-11 shows. The protocols that are installed but not active are indicated by the absence of a check in the checkbox.

Hacking Windows XP: Speeding Disk Access
Disabling a specific protocol
Now that you have the list of installed and active protocols on your screen, you are ready to disable a protocol. To do so, just click the check box to remove the check. Then click the OK button and the protocol is no longer active on the network adapter.

I highly recommend that you disable all protocols except for the TCP/IP protocol (also referred to as the Internet Protocol). Doing so will optimize your adapter for speed and security.

Be aware that if you remove the Client for Microsoft Networks protocol and the file-sharing protocol, you will no longer be able to share your files. Additionally, you will no longer be able to connect to remote computers to view their shared files.

Also keep in mind that if you have multiple adapters in your machines, such as a wireless adapter, a wired network adapter, and a dialup modem, you will have to repeat the preceding instructions for each adapter.
Disabling unneeded protocols
With every computer comes programs installed that you do not need. As with extra programs taking up space, extra protocols are just wasting your network connection and can actually slow it down. How is this possible? By default, a few different protocols are installed on your computer to allow for maximum compatibility with other computers on a network; these protocols each require bandwidth to operate. Most users will not use too many protocols, and their computers will use up a portion of their connection as they respond and transmit information for these protocols.

Additionally, with extra protocols installed on your network adapter connected to the Internet, you increase your risk of security-related problems. One of the most common risks for broadband users is that they have the Client for Microsoft Networks networking protocol enabled on their connection. This protocol allows everyone in their neighborhood to connect to the users' computers and view any files that they may be sharing. This fact alone should be a good enough reason for you to turn off the extra protocols. But with them disabled, you will also save a little bandwidth as well.

Viewing protocols on your network adapters
Viewing the protocols installed and active on your various network adapters is easy. Just follow these quick steps and you will be viewing them in no time:

Right-click the My Network Places icon on the desktop or in the Start Menu and select Properties. If the My Network Places icon is not in either of those locations, then go to the Control Panel and click the Network Connections icon that is shown under the Classic view.
Next, right-click the network adapter with which you want to view the network protocols and select Properties.
This will bring up a list of the protocols installed as well as active on your adapter, as Figure 11-11 shows. The protocols that are installed but not active are indicated by the absence of a check in the checkbox.

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Sacrifice Graphics for Speed
XP is very graphic-intensive which results in a large consumption of RAM. Sometimes to squeeze in the nitty-gritty megs of memory can be, by sacrificing the pretty little bits and colors that are on your screen.

- For starters, reducing the color density and and bit display of your screen will ultimately increase speed to your computer.

1.)On your desktop, right click and go to PROPERTIES.
2.)In properties go to Settings, and set your color quality to the lowest bit-rating (most likely 15 bit). This will reduce color density, and icon quality, but will heavily boast system performance.

- If you really want to increase your system performance, new Windows themes are NOT the way to go, if you are ill-equipped with RAM.

1.) Go into Control Panel and into Performance and Maintenence (If you are using the "classic" view skip to step 2).
2.) Get into System and click on the Advanced tab.
3.) Now click on Performance
4.) Under your visual effects, select CHOOSE BEST PERFORMANCE.
5.) This will undoubtedly increase your system performance by returning XP into Classic Style and getting rid of the fancy-shmancy fading menus, shadows and whatnot.
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Shutdown XP Faster
Posted 8/26/2004 by TweakXP Member
1) Start - Run - Regedit, Navigate to the following Registry key: HKEY CURRENT USER\Control Panel\Desktop, Double click on the AutoEndTasks entry and replace the 0 with a 1 in the Value data text box

For the next two, if the dword value indicated does not exist, create it:
Double click on the WaitToKillAppTimeout entry in the right pane and change the Value data to 2000
Double click on the HungAppTimeout entry in the right pane and change the Value data to 1000
Reboot
If still having a problem, make the next change:
2) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
Right-click on WaitToKillServiceTimeout and change it to 2000
NOTE: The lowest value Windows will recognize is 1000 (1 second)
ADVISORY: While rare, the "WaitToKillService" tweak can cause problems. If an application is in the process of saving data and the associated service is stopped prematurely, the data will not be saved and may be
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How to Rename the Recycle Bin

To change the name of the Recycle Bin desktop icon, open Regedit and go to: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/CLSID/{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} and change the name "Recycle Bin" to whatever you want (don't type any quotes).
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Disable Attachment restrictions in Outlook from Office
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Office > 10.0 >Outlook > Security] "Level1Remove" = "exe;bat;vbs"
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Make Use Of Your Windows Key
Windows: Display the Start menu
Windows + D: Minimize or restore all windows
Windows + E: Display Windows Explorer
Windows + F: Display Search for files
Windows + Ctrl + F: Display Search for computer
Windows + F1: Display Help and Support Center
Windows + R: Display Run dialog box
Windows + break: Display System Properties dialog box
Windows + shift + M: Undo minimize all windows
Windows + L: Lock the workstation
Windows + U: Open Utility Manager
Windows + Q: Quick switching of users (Powertoys only)
Windows + Q: Hold Windows Key, then tap Q to scroll thru the different users on your PC
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Remove shortcut arrow from desktop icons

Here's how you can remove those shortcut arrows from your desktop icons in Windows XP.
1. Start regedit.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTlnkfile
3. Delete the IsShortcut registry value.
You may need to restart Windows XP.
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Change the text in Internet Explorers title bar to anything you want
In regedit navigate to this key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftInternet ExplorerMain

change the value of the string "Window Title" to whatever you want on the title bar of Internet Explorer - to have no title except the title of the web pages you are browsing do not enter anything for a value.
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3. You can lock your XP workstation with two clicks of the mouse. Create a new shortcut on your desktop using a right mouse click, and enter 'rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation' in the location field. Give the shortcut a name you like. That's it -- just double click on it and your computer will be locked. And if that's not easy enough, Windows key + L will do the same.
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8. XP will treat Zip files like folders, which is nice if you've got a fast machine. On slower machines, you can make XP leave zip files well alone by typing 'regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll' at the command line. If you change your mind later, you can put things back as they were by typing 'regsvr32 zipfldr.dll'.
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16. The Start Menu can be leisurely when it decides to appear, but you can speed things along by changing the registry entry HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/Desktop/MenuShowDelay from the default 400 to something a little snappier. Like 0.
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17. Stop the 'last access update' stamp
This process can be disabled through the registry:
Open REGEDIT - Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINES\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem.
Create a new DWORD value called 'NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate' and set the value to '1'
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19. Keep Windows operating data in main memory
Windows XP contains several tweakable memory settings in the registry, one of which is the DisablePagingExecutive registry key. This controls whether the operating system will transfer its essential driver and kernel files to the 'virtual memory' (the page file on the hard disk). It defaults to allowing this.

Obviously, transferring portions of the system to hard drive memory can considerably slow things down, and it appears that Windows XP does this periodically, whether or not the system is actually low on physical memory (RAM).

If you have 256MB of system memory or more, try this registry tweak to force Windows to keep its operating data in main memory:

Open Regedit. - Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management.

Select the DisablePagingExecutive value to '1'