Computer help needed

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Monty

Monty

Group Buy Coordinator
Joined
Mar 4, 2005
Messages
8,587
Location
Pearland, Texas, USA.
My Dell desktop has become very slow loading programs and responding when logged on the internet through Fire Fox. I'm currently running Avast and Hitman Pro for virus and malware detection.
In my mind, the computer is being bogged down by so many updates since I got it that there are probably problems with the registry.
I'm a little leery about these "cleaner" programs I've seen advertised in TV. Has anyone had good results with them and which would your recommend?
 
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CCleaner is good. I have a few questions though before I give my opinion.
How old is the machine?
What is the OS?
When was the last time you had the OS reinstalled?
Have you run disk defrag and disk cleanup? (assuming you are running a Windows product)
 
Monty,
I would hazard a guess that you have alot of background processes running you are not aware of, including addons for your browser.

You didnt mention your operating system, but for vista/win 7

Click on the start button and in the search bar at the bottom type msconfig.exe and press enter.

A window will open, and you should click on the tab called startup.

I will imagine you will have alot of things here ticked? these are all the things which switch start by themselves when you switch your computer on.. as a rule you could untick absolutely everything here and you wouldnt break anything. you may find however that some things stop working and you would have to retick them in order for them to work as expected, so not a big deal if you accidentally untick the wrong one.

To give you a guide, in my list all i have is my anti virus, and my firewall. we obviously want them to switch on when i start my pc.

Read through yours one by one and if you are not sure what they are, google them to find out. remember things like adobe auto updater, and printer diagnostics and things like that can be unticked without causing you to lose any functionality on your PC. the less things ticked the better... be ruthless. I have 3 items.. see if you can beat it.


This is just one step, but its a very good one. Click on OK, and reboot your PC.. when its rebooted a ms configuration window will appear telling you , you have made changes to your computer. put a tick in the box saying dont show this again, and give your pc a spin.. think you will find its much better.

After this, check browser addons and tool bars which are in firefox... remove all of them if you dont use any of them
 
Monty; I will add before you do anything that alters the registry is--- BACK IT UP!!

Click on "Start", "Run", and type "regedit" in the line that comes up. If needed, scroll to the top and click on "Computer". Now click on "File", "Export", and select a file name. Like "C:\backup.reg". This will put the file in the root of the C drive. This will take a minute or two to complete.

Many browsers suffer from excessive cache space. You need only about 50 Megabytes of cache space. In Firefox, Click on "Tools", "Options", "Advanced", "Network". Check the value shown under "Cached Web Content". If it is much larger than 50 MB, put a check mark on the "Over-ride Automatic Cache Management" and put "50" in the "Limit Cache to __ MB of space"
 
Check the auto start programs that boot with your computer. Also look at Iobit.com I have used their programs for 2-3 years on my computer and have had no trouble. You might be having a problem with running 2 antivirus programs at once though.

Levi Woodard
Woodardwoodworks.com

Sent from my Galaxy player using Forum Runner
 
Agreeing with most of the above advice and questions. My tune-up utility of choice for the past couple years has been System Mechanic Pro from iolo Technologies. The price seems high online, but once on their mailing list you get all kinds of discount prices, and one license is good for all computers in the house.
 
I like Glary Utilities for things like this.. it will do backups before making
changes, so you can always undo them. It has a registry cleaner and
it will find orphaned files, help delete some of those programs that don't
want to un-install.. memory manager isn't great, but that's ok.
Plus, it's free. :biggrin:
 
parklandturner said:
I use CCleaner by Piriform. It's free for the basic version which has been adequate for me.

CCleaner - PC Optimization and Cleaning - Free Download

Ed
Click to expand...
I'll check it out.

DigBaddy72 said:
CCleaner is good. I have a few questions though before I give my opinion.
How old is the machine? At least 4-5 years old
What is the OS? Windows 7
When was the last time you had the OS reinstalled? Never
Have you run disk defrag and disk cleanup? (assuming you are running a Windows product)That's one of the first things I did
Click to expand...
See reply in blue
BradG said:
Monty,
I would hazard a guess that you have alot of background processes running you are not aware of, including addons for your browser.

You didnt mention your operating system, but for vista/win 7

Click on the start button and in the search bar at the bottom type msconfig.exe and press enter.

A window will open, and you should click on the tab called startup.

I will imagine you will have alot of things here ticked? these are all the things which switch start by themselves when you switch your computer on.. as a rule you could untick absolutely everything here and you wouldnt break anything. you may find however that some things stop working and you would have to retick them in order for them to work as expected, so not a big deal if you accidentally untick the wrong one. There are a lot of them, wasn't sure which one to uncheck. I'll try all.

To give you a guide, in my list all i have is my anti virus, and my firewall. we obviously want them to switch on when i start my pc.

Read through yours one by one and if you are not sure what they are, google them to find out. remember things like adobe auto updater, and printer diagnostics and things like that can be unticked without causing you to lose any functionality on your PC. the less things ticked the better... be ruthless. I have 3 items.. see if you can beat it.


This is just one step, but its a very good one. Click on OK, and reboot your PC.. when its rebooted a ms configuration window will appear telling you , you have made changes to your computer. put a tick in the box saying dont show this again, and give your pc a spin.. think you will find its much better.

After this, check browser addons and tool bars which are in firefox... remove all of them if you dont use any of them...only one or two, if any
Click to expand...
Answers in blue, will try the suggestions a little later this afternoon.

randyrls said:
Monty; I will add before you do anything that alters the registry is--- BACK IT UP!! That's the first thing I would do.

Click on "Start", "Run", and type "regedit" in the line that comes up. If needed, scroll to the top and click on "Computer". Now click on "File", "Export", and select a file name. Like "C:\backup.reg". This will put the file in the root of the C drive. This will take a minute or two to complete.

Many browsers suffer from excessive cache space. You need only about 50 Megabytes of cache space. In Firefox, Click on "Tools", "Options", "Advanced", "Network". Check the value shown under "Cached Web Content". If it is much larger than 50 MB, put a check mark on the "Over-ride Automatic Cache Management" and put "50" in the "Limit Cache to __ MB of space" It's set at the default of 350. I'll change it later if needed.
Click to expand...

PaulDoug said:
Why are you running two virus protections? "Avast and Hitman Pro" could they be conflicting with each other?
Click to expand...
The computer started doing this before I added Hitman several months ago. I added Hitman because of an article I read in the Houston Chronicle about root viruses that aren't detected by Avast.

Leatherman1998 said:
Check the auto start programs that boot with your computer. Also look at Iobit.com I have used their programs for 2-3 years on my computer and have had no trouble. You might be having a problem with running 2 antivirus programs at once though.

Levi Woodard
Woodardwoodworks.com

Sent from my Galaxy player using Forum Runner
Click to expand...
I'll look into Iobit, Thanks.

76winger said:
Agreeing with most of the above advice and questions. My tune-up utility of choice for the past couple years has been System Mechanic Pro from iolo Technologies. The price seems high online, but once on their mailing list you get all kinds of discount prices, and one license is good for all computers in the house.
Click to expand...
I'll keep it in mind also, Thanks.
 
Im kinda old school when it comes to cleaning. Once a year or so after backing up my data I would repartition the drive and reinstall from scratch. It's a pain in the butt and a weekend job when done correctly. Have had good luck with Norton's internet security and Malwarebytes to keep the system clean.
 
Monty said:
Many browsers suffer from excessive cache space. You need only about 50 Megabytes of cache space. In Firefox, Click on "Tools", "Options", "Advanced", "Network". Check the value shown under "Cached Web Content". If it is much larger than 50 MB, put a check mark on the "Over-ride Automatic Cache Management" and put "50" in the "Limit Cache to __ MB of space" It's set at the default of 350. I'll change it later if needed.
Click to expand...
[/quote]

Monty; 350 is far too high. The usual algorithm assign 10% of your free disk space to the cache. With a small HD that is about right, but in today's 100's of Gigabyte drives, it is too large. Reduce it and then clear the cache, Just the cache.
 
Made changes to my start up programs as Brad suggested, Changed my cache to 50 MB and ran the free portion of CCleaner and it seems to have helped.
We'll see what it does over the next few day.
Thanks to all who offered suggestions.
 
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