puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

[rbh]

So every once in a while the old tower puter gets to draggin it's butt, so I clean out the temp files and cookies.
But one thing I noticed is when tryng to open outlook after I re boot the puter it is soooooooo slowwwwwww to open.

What am I missing

(easy to hard fixes first please)

thanks
rob

 

[Boomyal]

Re: puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

Have you run all the scans like SuperAntiSpyware, Malwarebytes and OneCare Live. You get loaded up with tracking cookies and other less than serious trojans and it will slow you way down.

 

[aspeck]

Re: puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

I'll tell you what worked for me ... back up all your data ... data only. Then format the hard drive. Complete wipe, not the quickie. Then reinstall your operating system and all your programs. Reinstall data.

You will be amazed at how fast the old girl will run! Did that on 2 machines. Need to do it on a couple more. It is a pain in the butt, but the results are worth it. Computer repair guy told me it was time to get a new laptop. I listened to him. Had nothing to lose, so I formated the old unit. Wife is using it now and happy as a clam that she has a laptop. It is almost as fast as my new one!

 

[rbh]

Re: puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

Thanks guys.

It is funny that my biggest issue is the time it takes for the actual microsoft programs to open.
usually the net is super fast.
What about clearing some in something called cache ????
As well defragging, I do not think I have ever done that on this puter???

 

[robert graham]

Re: puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

Try the System Restore feature to restore your system to a previous date and time, maybe a few weeks or months, really seems to help my old computer keep it's speed up. I think the restore actually sends your computer back to a time prior to it being hit with some kind of virus or fungus that's slowing it down, but then again, I ain't Bill Gates!....Good Luck!

 

[bruceb58]

Re: puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

You should defrag occasionally. I actually use a program that constantly defrags on the back ground called Diskeeper.

The advice of reinstalling the OS is a good one. I just did that myself and my computer is flying again. One thing I did this time was after I installed all my programs again, I created a disk image so that when I have to restore my drive again, it will be fast as I can just recreate my drive from the image.

 

[j_martin]

Re: puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

Just cleaned one up. Removed all the "free" programs and task bar junk, but the one that did the most good was removing Microsloths Windows Search 4.0. It takes a ton of memory. Machine went from durned near useless to pretty snappy.

My recovery sequence is this.
1. Scan from a recovery (CD loaded) scanner. I use Kaspersky rescue.
2. Note every infection found and it's file location. This may be needed for manual registry repairs later.
3. Boot up in safe mode and run Trend Micro's HiJackThis utility. If you don't know what it is, look up anything you want to delete before you do it. This is a powerful utility that can brick a system in a heartbeat.
4. Boot up regular and using program install, remove the "freebies". Remove unused printer utilities while you're at it. Windows Search, Ask Toolbar, Google Toolbar, etc. are all core hogs that slow you down.
5. Run HiJackThis again and remove task bars, browser helpers, and such that can't be removed with program install.
6. Be sure there's a good virus scanner mounted and that the "freebies" that get forced in are all cleanly removed. (Norton, Mcaffee, etc.) I use Kaspersky Trend Micro, Computer Associates for commercial versions. Avast for the penny pincher.

(edit) just noticed your last post. Deleting cache will give you disk space, but slow down the browser till it regenerates. Most of the icons, banners, pictures etc on pages are retrieved from cache at about 100 times download spead as you browse.

Defrag isn't nearly as big an issue as it once was when disk wasn't cached in memory and memory was like 64 K bytes.

What is an issue is available memory and TSR (resident and running) programs. Slow program loads happen because the system has to send some of the memory contents down to disk to make room for it. That's called paging, and the whole works, memory, disk memory image, and control program is called virtual memory. Paging operations are about 500 times slower than memory operations.

I use Bart's PE and it's utilities to check and defrag a disk if needed. If anything untoward at all happens when Microsloths utilities are running, it'll brick the system.

hope it helps
John

 

[rbh]

Re: puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

Thanks John-
The grey matter understood about 25%, so I guess I am doing alittle reading, or wait till the wife/mrs puter person gets home.

 

[aspeck]

Re: puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

I use Defraggler and CCleaner regularly to defrag the computer and to clean up registry files, etc. I recommend both programs (free, but you can give a donation if you like them) ... but only if you USE them at least once a month. It does help.

 

[waterinthefuel]

Re: puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

You should defrag occasionally. I actually use a program that constantly defrags on the back ground called Diskeeper.

The advice of reinstalling the OS is a good one. I just did that myself and my computer is flying again. One thing I did this time was after I installed all my programs again, I created a disk image so that when I have to restore my drive again, it will be fast as I can just recreate my drive from the image.

It makes sense and I've done it too.

No program can clean up a computers OS as clean as a clean install. That removes ALL the crap. I do mine occasionally just for ****s and giggles. It takes one day to reinstall all my software and games, and my computer is SMOKIN' hot for the first few weeks. Then it gets bogged down with crap and it needs it again.

It doesn't hurt a computer to reinstall the OS.

 

[eavega]

Re: puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

Do you have any network-mapped drives? These would be drives that you can only see when you are connected to a network. Do you store or work with documents on flash drives or other removable media?

Basically when you launch one of the MS Office apps, it tries to search for the last known location of the last few documents you opened. If that happens to be a drive that no longer exists (like a network drive that is unavailable or a USB drive that you have since removed) it takes little while for that search to time out and continue with opening the app. Work with documents on your local hard drive, then copy them over to whatever non-permanent media you have so that the apps don't keep searching these locations.

Rgds

 

[WIMUSKY]

Re: puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

John or anybody, what about JAVA updates? I have JAVA6 update 2, 3,5,7 and 17. Would I only need to keep 17, or, does one update need info from the previous?

Also, I have Microsoft .net framework 2.0 and 3.0 Service Pack 2. Do I just need 3.0, or again, does 3.0 need 2.0 also?

These are all large files.

I hope I'm not hijacking, RBH. Hopefully, the answers to my questions will help you too...

 

[rbh]

Re: puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

John or anybody, what about JAVA updates? I have JAVA6 update 2, 3,5,7 and 17. Would I only need to keep 17, or, does one update need info from the previous?

Also, I have Microsoft .net framework 2.0 and 3.0 Service Pack 2. Do I just need 3.0, or again, does 3.0 need 2.0 also?

These are all large files.

I hope I'm not hijacking, RBH. Hopefully, the answers to my questions will help you too...

AH, go for it.
One of these days your questions will be my questions anyways.

 

[jlinder]

Re: puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

1. Defrag is a good idea. I use one from Auslogics (do a google for it). Free and seems to work very well.

2. Then look at running scans for malware. I like Spybot S&D (careful, there is an imposter out there with a very similar name. If it ever says you need to buy the full version you have the wrong one). Spybot has a nice feature where you run it in advanced mode and you can look at all the programs that start when you boot. You will find a lot of crap there.

3. Now go to add and remove programs and look for stuff that got installed and you don't need. Toolbars are a good one, but also look for other garbage. If you don't use it and are sure it is not used by the system get rid of it.

 

[bruceb58]

Re: puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

Run msconfig and get rid of stuff that gets going at startup to the bare minimum that you need.

 

[j_martin]

Re: puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

John or anybody, what about JAVA updates? I have JAVA6 update 2, 3,5,7 and 17. Would I only need to keep 17, or, does one update need info from the previous?

Also, I have Microsoft .net framework 2.0 and 3.0 Service Pack 2. Do I just need 3.0, or again, does 3.0 need 2.0 also?

These are all large files.

I hope I'm not hijacking, RBH. Hopefully, the answers to my questions will help you too...

Some of them are built up in sequence, and some aren't. I think dot net needed it all till 4.0, then it started over. Not sure, just what I've seen in the last year or so.

I just tried to fix my daughter's laptop, after her backwoods husband, and my ham handed son tried to fix it. Got powned by a PRAGMA rootkit. Poison pill took out the root drive when I tried to excise the rootkit.

Flipped the thing over to get the install key and the label was torn off. AARGH

Managed to run Bart PE against it and scrape the software registry hive off onto a thumb drive, and recovered the key with magic jelly bean keyfinder on another computer.

Now to format it down and start over.

I'll bet my little blondie will keep it under lock and key from now on.

 

[CobiaXL]

Re: puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

Housetrend.micro you'll be surprised what ya find,dont forget to fix any issues before you close it.

 

[waterinthefuel]

Re: puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

Some of them are built up in sequence, and some aren't. I think dot net needed it all till 4.0, then it started over. Not sure, just what I've seen in the last year or so.

I just tried to fix my daughter's laptop, after her backwoods husband, and my ham handed son tried to fix it. Got powned by a PRAGMA rootkit. Poison pill took out the root drive when I tried to excise the rootkit.

Flipped the thing over to get the install key and the label was torn off. AARGH

Managed to run Bart PE against it and scrap the software registry hive off onto a thumb drive, and recovered the key with magic jelly bean keyfinder on another computer.

Now to format it down and start over.

I'll bet my little blondie will keep it under lock and key from now on.

Dude, I build computers and I have no clue what you are talking about with the bolded part.

 

[bruceb58]

Re: puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

Everything he said makes sense to me. Try google and you might see why.

 

[j_martin]

Re: puter dragin it's butt, what to clean up

Everything he said makes sense to me. Try google and you might see why.

As it turns out, the durned thumb drive is what was blue screening it. I figured that out just as I was about to pull the trigger on a format. I actually succeeded in the 3 page registry edit it took to get the root kit out. Learned a lot on this one.