Contents
● Intro
● Increasing Monitor Life
● Extend Your Computer's Warranty!
● Get Rid of Adware & Spyware!
● Windows Utility: Scan Disk
● Windows Utility: Disk Defragmenter
● System Configuration Utility
● Clean Out Dust!
● RAM
Intro
In order for you to have the best vg emulation experience on your computer
as possible, it's always important to make sure your computer is running at
its peak in speed and efficiency. To do so, you need to make use of the
utilities that come with windows. And, of course, the almighty dollar can
buy speed and efficiency for your computer.
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Increasing Monitor Life
Monitors, flat screen monitors, and laptop LCD screens darken as they get old. Increasing its life is easy, simply turn it off when you're not using it. Don't even bother with screen savers. I recommend setting your monitor to turn off after 5 minutes. To do so:
1. Click on Start then Control Panel (on Win98/ME it's Start > Settings > Control Panel).
2. Double-click on the Power Options icon.
3. You'll arrive here. As where the red arrow points, change it to 5 minutes.
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Extend Your Computer's Warranty!
You must do this if you haven't already! It is extremely important to extend
your computer's warranty - especially if you have a laptop. A computer
warranty is like a car warranty, it can save you hundreds, sometimes even
thousands of dollars. DO NOT purchase warranty through the store where you
purchased your computer. They are not the experts on your computer. Your
computer's warranty must be through its manufacturer.
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Get
Rid of Adware & Spyware!
Adware and spyware are files that save onto your computer secretly without your
permission. They can track your surfing habits, abuse your Internet
connection by sending this data to a third party, profile your shopping
preferences, hijack your browser start page or pages, alter important system
files, and make pop-up ads randomly appear out of nowhere. What does this
have to do with your computer's performance? Well, the real nasty adware/spyware
sucks up your computer's resources, causing it to lag and sometimes even
lock up. What can you do about it? Download Ad-aware!
● Ad-aware
Ad-aware is considered the best by most people for removing adware and
spyware from your computer.
1. Go to the Ad-aware homepage, then to their
Downloads section to download Ad-aware.
2. After installing Ad-aware, make sure
to check for updates first.
3. Run the scan.
4. When the scan is done, click Next and you'll see a list of everything it found.
5. Right-click and go to Select All.
6. Click Next and choose Yes to delete it
all.
● Ditch Internet Explorer!
Another thing you can do to prevent getting adware/spyware is to stop using
Internet Explorer. It's the most used internet browser worldwide. Because of
that, all the spammers out there know about IE's weaknesses and have designed
their spyware/adware to be easily susceptible to it. I highly recommend
switching to Mozilla Firefox. It has
the same compatibility as IE, so by switching to Firefox you're not
switching to a less quality browser. It's actually a whole lot better than
IE. In addition to the fact that it hardly contracts adware/spyware: it
saves your passwords, you can browse multiple sites in the same window via
tabs, it loads all your favorites from IE, there's a Google search box built
into it, and more!
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Windows Utility: Scan Disk
What is Scan Disk?
Scan Disk is like bringing your hard drive over to your doctor for a basic
checkup. It scans for hard drive errors and attempts to fix them if it comes
across any.
• If you have Win98 or WinME you *must* run scan disk before you
run disk defragmenter.
• If you have WinXP it's not
really necessary for you to run scan disk, but it wouldn't hurt to run it
every now and then to make sure everything's okay.
Running scan disk on WinXP
1. Close all open programs..
2. Click on the Start button then My Computer.
3. Right-click Local Disk (C:) then left-click on Properties.
4. Click on the Tools tab.
5. Under "Error-checking", click on Check Now, which is right here.
6. In the new little window that pops up, put a check next to "Automatically fix file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors", then click on the Start button.
7. A message will pop up saying something about disk check needs important Windows files available to perform blah blah, just choose yes to perform disk check when your computer restarts. Go ahead and restart the computer.
Running scan disk on Win98/ME
1. Close all open programs..
2. Click on Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Scan Disk.
3. Click on drive C then Start. It can take
from 30 minutes to 2 hours to finish; depends on how fast your computer is
and how big your hard drive is.
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Windows Utility: Disk Defragmenter
What is Disk Defragmenter?
Picture your hard drive as a chalk board. Each time you save something onto
your hard drive, you put marks on the chalk board. Small files take up a
couple marks while larger files take up more marks. Lets say you're typing
up more pages to a research paper in Microsoft Word, and then you save it.
That Word file is now larger than it was before. You need to put its new,
extra marks somewhere else on the board. Now let's say you want to delete
that Word file. You need to remove all its marks from the board. Now space
is opened up for more files. But if the next file you add is larger than the
file you just deleted, then the marks that don't fit have to be put
somewhere else on the board. If you continue to regularly save and delete
files, you'll end up having their marks in all sorts of different places
across the board. It will take longer for your computer to find all the
marks that belong to a single file you want opened. What Disk Defragmenter
does is collect all the scattered marks of each file on the board and puts
them together as a whole. Your computer will then have no problem opening up
files, because they're all conveniently in one place on the board.
Running Disk Defragmenter
1. Close all open programs.
2. Click on Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter.
3. Click on Drive C then Defragment. It can take from 45 minutes to 4 hours to finish; depends on how fast your computer is and how big your hard drive is.
*You should run Disk Defragmenter at least once a month. If you use your computer often, then run Disk Defragmenter once every couple weeks.
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● Automatic
defragmenters
Many places on the net strongly suggest that 'automatic defragmenting' is
the way to go. They claim that (when the decision is up to you)
defragmenting your hard drive too soon or too late can damage it over a long
period of time. Windows doesn't offer a utility that tells you exactly when
you should defragment your hard drive, so there's no telling if the times
you choose to defragment are correct or not. Automatic defragmenters solve
this problem by automatically defragmenting when it's necessary. They keep
track of your computer usage to determine when to turn on and which parts of
the hard drive need to be corrected. You no longer need to worry about
defragmenting once you get one of these babies. Most people seem to prefer
Diskeeper (it's $20).
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System Configuration Utility (msconfig)
What is System Configuration Utility?
The system configuration utility is the list of programs that are
automatically running in the background of your computer. You don't see
these programs; they're playing hide-and-seek. See those shortcuts next to
the time? All the way on the lower-right of your screen. Those are some of
the programs of the system configuration utility running in the background.
Those shortcuts were added when you installed those programs.
• On Windows 98 and ME these msconfig programs can cause all sorts of
chaos: lock-ups, lagging, crashes, you name it. So if you have Windows 98 or
ME, it's very important that you enter the configuration utility and turn
off all the programs you don't need running.
• On Windows XP they've done major improvement to msconfig, and now the
programs in it rarely cause problems. But it's still a good idea to enter
msconfig and turn off what you don't need running. But note that some
program shortcuts like Quicktime and Real Player can only be turned off
within the program's options.
Using System Configuration Utility
1. Close all open programs.
2. Click on Start then Run.
3. Type "msconfig" then click on OK.
4. Click on the Startup tab, and you'll arrive
here. You may or may not have
a ton of items listed here.
5. Remove the check from all the items that look like programs you've
installed. Although it would be best if you skimmed through the lists
on this
page first to see exactly what each program does, to prevent disabling a
program that you need to be running.
6. Click on Apply then OK, then choose Yes to restart.
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Clean Out Dust!
Believe it or not, a rather common thing that causes computers to slow down and even make more noise is accumulated dust.
The reason why it causes your computer to slow down is because it heats it
up too quickly, making it difficult for it to perform efficiently. This
problem is a lot more common among laptops, since their compartments are
much smaller than PCs. The best way to clean out the dust is with a
can of air. These things are available pretty much everywhere: Wal-mart,
Target, Radio Shack, drug stores, some super markets. They usually go for
$5-$10. Try to get one that comes with a thin tube, because you'll need it
to clean out the dust from tight places, like your processor. So yeah, if
you have a PC you'll need to open it up to clean it. With a laptop,
obviously, you won't be able to open it up. You'll have to use the canned
air on the side vents and do what you can to try not to blow the dust back
inside too much.
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RAM
Buying more RAM for your computer is
the cheapest way to make it go faster. Although getting the right RAM and
installing it properly could be tricky. I wouldn't recommend
buying/installing more RAM if you're not too computer literate. But if
you're willing to do it, then refer to
CyberWalker; look in the "Learn to
Upgrade" section. You could find some more helpful resources on
Google.
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