Computers & Networking

[franksthomas77]

How to speed up my computer? Basic configuration is as below.

Intel Pentium Dual Core 2.5 GHz Processor

Ram: 2GB

HD: 350 GB

Mother Board: Giga Byte

OS: windows XP

I am using Office2007 in my PC. I have enable firewall. Can I disable it? If so, then how to protect my pc from virus attack?

[snum1fan]

There are a lot of different things you can do to speed up your PC.  First off, try to upgrade your ram,  You can Google your motherboard model to see how much and what kind it can hold.  Or go to www.crucial.com and run the analyzer that scans your system and tells you what kind and how much ram your PC can handle.  You can get ram dirt cheap these days especially if you order it online.

Next you should uninstall any unwanted or unused programs, there is a very good uninstaller called Revo uninstaller, it is free.  It removes programs and then scans for registry and other left over files from the PC.  Or you can just go to control panel---add or remove programs and do it from there.  And while your there you can go to add or remove windows components and disable anything that you don't use.

Click start click run the type "msconfig" (without the "") under the startup tab uncheck anything that is not necessary to run at startup.  This will make your PC boot faster.

If you go to  www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm  they have a complete guide to disabling unneeded services on a 32 bit windows XP PC.  There are a lot of services that you will never need or do not use.  Make sure you click on each service you are thinking about disabling and read what it is first.  You don't want to disable anything you need on accident.

I use CCleaner to clean, defrag and compress the registry.  There are other free and paid programs out there to tidy up your registry which gets a lot of errors and unnecessary entries in it every time you use your PC.

When you store a files on your PC they get fragmented and this slows your system down.  Again there are a lot of free programs to defrag your hard drive.  I use Ultimate Defrag.  With this program you can place your most used files(windows files etc) on the outer rows of your hard drive (fastest part) and the least used files or archive files on the inner rings.  It gives you many options to defrag as well as just simple defrag.

I would keep the firewall on or get a third party one.  I don't know what anti virus you use but there are numerous reviews and guides online as to which ones are the fastest and have the lightest footprint.  I use Esset, but there are a few good free ones also.  If you think you have a problem with a virus or malware download and run superantispyware pr malwarebytes, and use it alongside of your anti virus.

Go to your local bookstore and look at the PC magazines.  A lot of them have good tips to make your PC run faster and some come with free CDs that have a lot of freeware/shareware programs on them.

Hope this helps

[Drew-Intel]

+1 to snum1fan's post.

upgrading the amount of ram in your computer will help the OS become more snappy.

making sure that only the programs you want installed are present (and not more than that) helps to save drive space and system resources. a program called TweakXP helps to facilitate the process of removing unwanted programs, and also for managing startup programs and enabling/disabling certain system services.

cleaning and organizing the registry is another highly-beneficial regular maintenance routine. as mentioned, CCleaner does this well, and Defraggler (also free like CCleaner) works to keep your drives defragged and speedy.

i would recommend having some form of virus protection and firewall. AVG is a free anti-virus, anti-spyware solution you can check out, and avast! home edition is also a free program you can check. i've tried both and been impressed.

[Miranda]

Will this work on any computer? Or just ones running XP?

I've been looking for ways to speed up my home computer. It's ancient (5 years old! ), and I already know that we only have about half the RAM the computer will support. It's just a matter of ordering it off of new egg. We just don't have the money to go out and buy a whole new system.

We already run CCleaner regularly, we've removed quite a few programs that we never use....so, yeah...defrag often (I think my bf runs the defragger at least once a week while I'm at work, but I don't know for sure)....But Revo uninstaller...I'll have to take a look at that and the blackviper site.

Okay...Guess what I'm doing when I get home.

[Drew-Intel]

i run 64-bit vista, and CCleaner/Defraggler/avast! (and AVG) all work well for me. no experience with Revo Uninstaller or BlackViper site, though.

TweakXP doesn't work on vista, but they have a newer version called TweakVI that does.

[Miranda]

Yeah, we've got XP and have CCleaner, Defraggler and AVG on there that we run, but I'm wondering more about the Revo and BlackViper.

[Drew-Intel]

in addition to xp ... 

BlackViper seems to work with 2000, vista, and windows 7: http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm

Revo seems to work with 2000 and vista: http://www.revouninstaller.com/revo_uninstaller_windows_tools.html

[snum1fan]

www.revouninstaller.com/index.html

Revo works with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista.

It says 64 bit OS are not supported but I am using it on Windows Vista and 7 64 bit.

www.blackviper.com is a web site that has tweaks for many versions of windows. They have OS guides for

Windows 2000 Professional and Server
Windows 2003 Enterprise Server
Windows 7
Windows Me
Windows Vista
Windows XP Home
Windows XP Professional

gaming info, a forum, and many other resources to make your system faster.  They seem to pretty popular also.  I have saw them recognized on many websites and forums.