I downloaded both based on information from this forum as I get the impression there a number of posters here who know a great deal about computers.
Here are things to reguard in respect to speeding up your pc. They may vary a bit depending on if you are using XP/Vista/7. Currently, I am XP at the moment:
- Run CCleaner to clear your trash. No need to scan through it. Exit all web browsers first.
- Still in CCleaner, navigate to startup panel & disable all entries that you know are safe to not load at boot. Such as MSN/Yahoo/etc. DO NOT disable your antivirus.
- Under restore point control (if your computer is working correctly & you have a backup), disable all but the last restore point
- Under Uninstall tab, uninstall toolbars (Such as Ask toolbar, etc.) as well as any application you no longer need or use any more.
- Under tools/drive wiper, select free space only & allow it to wipe your MFT. When it starts to wipe free space, cancel out. This can improve performance a lot.
- Run Defraggler to defrag the drive & consolidate free space.
- Right-click/properties on my computer, & under advanced/settings, experiment with settings for performance VS appearance. In XP, leave only the bottom 6 checked, then uncheck the one that says "Use a background image for each folder type".
- Under task manager, you can disable floppy drives or any other drive you don't use (speed up computer boot/browsing files).
- Open My Computer & under tools/folder options/view, turn off "automatically search for network folders and printers". This speeds up boot.
- Use Nirsoft Startup Run to disable any BHO resident on your system. These load on startup & cause performance problems.
- If you are running XP, go to start/run/tasks & enter. Disable all tasks that you don't need running (usually none). These boot with windows & slow things down
- CTRL + ALT + DEL to bring up task manager. Check your commit charge vs your total RAM. If it is close, you really need to add more RAM to gain back your speed.
- Check what antivirus you are running. Some antivirus programs are resource hogs. AVG free generally does good.
- Use Firefox instead of internet explorer to surf the web. Internet explorer has a known Active-X drive by malware dump exploit that cripples computers completely if you visit certain maliciously crafted exploit based pages. You are much safer with Firfox/Chrome/Opera since these do not have this exploit. Opera is fastest but some websites do not work right. Chrome is next fastest, but when using it, bookmarks & other things just aren't like they are in Firefox. I prefer Firefox & think it is the best in terms of overall speed/safety/usability.
- Check your IE version on the PC. Update it to the latest version possible. The update can increase performance/fix connectivity issues with certain wifi connections. I assume that this is due to the newer versions supporting HTML5 or something that the older one can't. Whether you use it or not, it still helps to update it.
- Check your free space. If you have a ton of files you downloaded (pictures/videos/games/etc.), then windows does decrease in speed as you download more & more. I know that in XP, if you have a directory with over 5,000 files, it will take forever to view (if at all). You can use Locate32 to move files from a folder like this & trim it back down to around 3,500 or so, till it gets back to a useable state. NEVER make the mistake of zipping more than 4GB files into a zip folder. It will corrupt the contents (zip folder size limit). Use something like RAR format for this, which can take hundreds of GB with no problem. Also, be ware that if you have tons of compressed or zipped folders, it will slow directory browsing quite a bit. If you got a lot of files, use an external drive. Send your pictures/video/music to the drive & free up the space your using. If you had to do this, it would be wise to CClean again after your completed, being sure that you run the drive wiper to clean free space so you can wipe the MFT of invalid entries that no longer exist (cancel when it begins to wipe the drive if you wish). Then defrag & your performance should go back up.
- You can turn off file indexing if you use a program like Locate32 so that your drive won't waste drive life indexing files needlessly (helps performance too).
- If you have multiple users on a machine, it will run slightly better overall if you delete any users you do not need via control panel/user account control. If you do this, be sure to back up any files/settings (such as firefox profiles)/favorites etc, that you may need from that profile before erasing it.
* If the number of file items being found has steadily increased over the last several weeks, I would be cautious. It is well known that computer that become infected with root kits will unload tons of cookies/files/downloads/malware to either your Local or Network service (normally hidden from view). Even running Combofix may not fully clean such infections. You may want to manually navigate to the directories after opening My Computer/tools/folder options/view & click Show Hidden Files & Folders, as well as unchecking Hide Operating System Files & apply the changes. Then go to your windows installation drive (usually C:) & navigate to the Documents and Settings folder. Check your Local & Network folders. Branch out the temp/temporary internet files folders & branch out fully the ones for content.ie5. If those are filled with files, you are likely infected with a rootkit. If you have a rootkit, it is nothing to see hundreds, or even thousands of files here. A few files such as Desktop.ini are normal. But you should never see cookies/downloaders/etc in these unused user folders.
After verifying whether these folders are blank, re-trace your prior steps to re-hide the system files/folders. If they contain lots of files, it will also help explain your system slow down, & will only get worse till your system crashes/bluescreens. It almost always is the work of a hidden rootkit/malware if you do find these areas full of files. If you delete them, they always come back until you have eradicated the scripts/exe/com/dll files associated with these kits. They are a pain to get rid of. Especially Alureon or TDL4 variants. If they are blank, you may not have this problem. If you DO see this, go ahead & back up your system (all files/folders/settings) that are important, IMMEDIATELY & think of doing a reformat & reinstall of Windows. Back up your drivers with Double Driver or Driver Magician Lite. This will make restoring drivers easier. It is generally a good idea to run 2 driver backups, because there is the occasion that one will miss a few sound/video/lan files on backup & the other will contain what is missing. Windows will always let you know if something is missing when you are restoring, so this is no problem. Most of the time they work fine, but there are occasions...