Jatex’s Weblog

1. Partition Your Hard Drive If You Haven’t Already

Often times when we purchase a new computer the hard drive is formatted as one huge continuous partition known as drive C:. The problem with this is that Windows and other operating systems often read and write huge amounts of data to what are called “Page Files” when you are using your computer.

Certain programs like Adobe Photoshop also use what are called “Scratch Disks” which are similar to “Page Files”. If you store your personal data such as photos, music, games, etc on the same partition as the Page File, very soon all your personal data is going to become fragmented.

So what we must do is separate the slow-moving Personal Data from the fast-moving Page File. Fragmentation of files makes it much harder for your computer to open a file, as now it has to hunt around the hard drive to piece together the “fragments”. This is witnessed in slow read and write times as well as a lot of hard drive churning. T

he solution is to partition your hard drive into 2 parts. For instance, if you have a 120GB hard drive, you might want to divide it into 40GB and 80GB respectively. Keep Windows and all your programs on the smaller 40GB partition and keep all your precious data on the 80GB partition. This also helps if you’ve suffered an operating system failure/corruption as your data will be safe on the 80GB partition whilst you reformat/recover the 40GB partition to repair the OS. In a desktop computer, you may choose to keep your important files on a separate hard drive altogether.

Here are several useful hard drive partitioning tools you can use

1. Windows XP Installer Disk – Installation media for Windows XP
2. GNU Parted – An open source disk partitioning utility, does FAT32/NTFS/Ext3 and many more
3. Acronis True Image – Hard disk cloning and backup tool
4. PowerQuest Partition Magic – A user friendly, Windows Based Tool

2. Run a Lean Mean Operating System

It is important to choose an operating system that meets your needs. For instance, not all of us can run Linux or Mac OS X. But then what do we do about slow and buggy Windows? The solution is to use a customized version of Windows such as TinyXP. Such distributions of Windows take up less disk space and often times utilize less RAM on your machine, freeing it to perform other more important tasks. In fact, using your legitimate copy of Windows, you can make a slimmed-down version via a software called nLite.

Customized Operating Systems & Open Source Alternatives:

1. TinyXP – A slim version of XP. Uses about 400MB of disk space and 40-200MB of RAM
2. nLite Windows XP – Software to help you slim-down Windows XP and customize it
3. Fedora 9 – Runs well along side Windows, it can even detect Windows Installations allowing you to perform dual-booting of both OSes. My personal favorite of the Linux bunch.
4. Ubuntu – An easy to use Linux with lots of features right out of the box. Does not play nicely with Windows though, dual-booting is difficult.
5. DSL Linux – A very tiny 120MB version of Linux using the Fluxbox interface, for more advanced users.
6. Windows 2000 – If all else fails or you’re running legacy hardware, it is pretty fast though. Don’t belittle it.

3. Ensure that Your Basic Hardware is Running Right

Hardware drivers are yet another speed limiting factor. A faulty driver can cause massive disruptions to your work, causing crashes, hangups and slowdowns. After installing the Operating System, begin installing the latest versions of drivers for your hardware.

The most important driver set of all, is your motherboard drivers (Also known as Windows INFs). Without a fully functioning motherboard, don’t expect any performance at all. Check your motherboard drivers and BIOS version using CPU-Z or PC Wizard. When you’ve figured out your hardware vendor, go to their website and download the latest drivers.

First ensure that you’ve installed the latest and greatest drivers for your motherboard, sound card, graphics card, etc. Then you may proceed to install the latest drives for your peripherals such as a webcam, a printer or a scanner.

Use These Tools to Run Hardware Diagnostics:

1. CPUID – Checks CPU type and RAM refresh rates
2. PC Wizard – Checks the type and version of hardware in your computer

4. Avoid Bloatware from Peripherals

Many webcams come with tons of unecessary applications and features. Scanners and printers also come packaged with lots of add-on helper programs that run in the background and suck up precious resources.

When installing a new device such as a webcam or printer, try installing just the driver, without the associated helper programs. Windows XP is advanced enough to handle your peripherals with inbuilt programs such as the Microsoft Scanner and Camera Wizard without having to resort to additional 3rd party applications. Old peripheral drivers can also cause problems, check that you have the latest ones.

Also, read the system requirements before you purchase a new peripheral. If your computer is not up to the task, that shiny new gadget can be a source of much woe and slowness.

5. Kill Bad Background Processes

Running too many background processes can also slow down your machine. Check out how many you’re running by going to Task Manager and click on the Processes Tab.

If your computer is behaving really slowly, it could be because of a background process using up >60% of your CPU time. Once you’ve found the offending program, you can often search for it on your hard drive, e.g. search for “<program name>.exe”. If you don’t need it, delete it. However do ensure that its not a legitimate part of Windows. If it is, then you might have a hardware driver problem.

Other process problems can be harder to track down. For instance, programs that use up a small amount of CPU time <10%, can also slow down your computer if they frequently demand it from your CPU. One example is the Google Sidebar. Those little gadgets are constantly fetching information from the web, and each time they do that, the CPU usage spikes (5% every 2 seconds). Though not a problem in itself, the constant “shift of attention” from you to the Gadgets can produce awkward random pauses and slowdowns on an older machine. The final problem is with viruses and spyware which also run in the background. You can use a free program called Hijackthis.exe to find any bad processes. Submit the log file to www.hijackthis.de for the lowdown on who’s naughty or nice.

Use These Tools to Analyze Your Running Processes:

1. HiJackThis – Scans background processes to look for evil ones such as malware or spyware. Dumps a log file.
2. HijackThis Log File Analyser – Gives you a threat assessment of your processes to tell you what might be harmful
3. Ad-Aware – Spyware and Adware detector and remover

6. Optimize Your Windows Settings

These tips can be commonly found on the Internet, so I’ll just gloss over them here.

Here are a Few Standard Things You Can Do to Make Windows Run Faster:

1. Turn off System Restore – Go to the System Control Panel and click on the “System Restore” tab, turn off system restore for all drives.
2. Reduce the number of Window Animations – System Control Panel, “Advanced” Tab, Performance settings.
3. Msconfig – Go to start, then run. Type in “msconfig” and then go the the “Startup” tab. Disable unnecessary boot items to quicken Windows booting times.
4. Services – Turn off unnecessary Services from the “Services” control panel, under Administrative Tools.

For more tips, refer to TweakHound (Long Guide).

7. Optimize Your Registry Hive

The registry hive is another source of malfunctions and slow downs. Bad registry entries can produce driver-like errors and program crashes. For instance, an erroneous entry could point to a non-existent file.

If a program unwittingly reads that entry, it will crash as it can’t find the file. Thus if you’ve uninstalled a program recently or are experiencing odd slow downs and crashes, be sure to use a registry cleaner like RegVac to clean up the unused/bad entries. Having a small and tidy registry hive makes program access easier for your computer. RegVac also sports a “Optimization” feature that performs several registry modifications to Windows to help it run faster.

This is a Good Tool for Registry Maintenance:

1. Regvac – A free registry cleaning and optimization utility

8. Check Your Antivirus & Firewall Settings

Being paranoid is good, but being too paranoid is no good. I once had a friend who was so worried about virus and hacker intrusions that he had installed 2 Firewalls and 2 Anti-Virus softwares on his computer. Then later he asked me why performance was so poor… This is also a common problem in the office, where I often witness laptops and PCs with a huge array of defense software from Firewalls to Anti-Virus to Cryptography to VPN. The end is result is a sluggish machine which leaves bosses frustrated and wondering why his new IT system is not improving the productivity of his workers. Solutions for the Personal User:

1. Use a NAT Router as a Hardware Firewall – Never ever connect your PC directly to the Internet, purchase a router such as a Linksys/Netgear that provides a Firewall & Network Address Translation (NAT). Keeping your machines on a private network helps reduce the possibility of an inbound assault from hackers and viruses in the Internet.
2. AVG AntiVirus – Personally, I’ve found this to be the fastest running of all Anti-Virus Programs and its free too. From my experience, Norton AntiVirus is the most bloated AV client ever. And those Internet Protection Packages are also just as bad. Using a good AV program reduces the possibility of an outbound assault where a virus/trojan on your machine contacts a hacker on the Internet or a situation where it is used to spam other computers.
3. Windows Firewall/Zone Alarm – If you use a laptop and are constantly roaming about Public WiFi Networks, a hardware firewall is probably not a possibility. In such situations ensure that the Windows Firewall is turned on at all times. If you are even more paranoid, use ZoneAlarm, a free firewall program that can also keep track of important personal data and warn you if it is being divulged to an external website.
4. Hamachi Peer-to-Peer VPN – This nifty program is useful for secure communications to trusted parties and computers. If you’re surfing in a Public WiFi Hotspot and need to access files on your PC at home, use Hamachi to create a secure Peer-to-Peer LAN network. It is similar in principle to the way VPN functions, but is easy enough for a beginner to deploy. Just install Hamachi on both your PC and your laptop and connect them to the same “Secure Group”, that is passworded of course. Being on a secure Virtual LAN with the other party enables you to do lots of things such as file transfers, chats and even LAN gaming =)

9. Speed Up Web Surfing & Chatting

There are many reasons for a slow connection, not many however are within our control (Unless you are the CEO of a large ISP). There are however somethings apart from upgrading your connection that you can do to speed up web surfing.

The first is to use a faster browser other than Internet Explorer. In fact, switching to another web browser is also safer as IE is vulnerable to many kinds of browser-exploits (websites which download malicious code through IE into your computer). Alternatives include Firefox, Opera, Mozilla and many more.

The second is to install a local DNS server, such as Treewalk DNS. A local Domain Name Server fetches the table of important domain-name to IP conversions. Such as www.apple.com is actually the IP address 17.112.152.32. Often times, contacting an external DNS server may be slow and prone to error if the network is saturated with traffic. Thus its always better to store the DNS conversion table on your own computer, fast-tracking your surfing experience.

The third issue which many people have been complaining about is the sluggishness of Windows Live Messenger. To fix that, you can look for the A-Patch. It is a program that enables you to customize Live Messenger whilst also removing unwanted ads and features that add to the overall bloat.

Great Alternative Web Browsers:

1. Firefox – Currently the most popular
2. Opera – A user friendly browser with some nifty features

Live Messenger Patches:

1. A-Patch – Removes unwanted ads and features, nice GUI
2. Mess Patch – Does about the same thing, harder to use.

Local DNS Servers:

1. TreeWalk DNS – Runs a local loopback DNS server at 127.0.0.1, easy to setup and install. Fetches Domain names directly from ICANN, IANA, etc and stores them locally.