Update

Where have I been? I realise I haven't updated in a while, so I thought I should make a short update to let you know I'm still alive.

It's the easter break at university and I've been very busy trying to finish my dissertation before the end of it. I also have that multi-hopping report I mentioned a little while ago to get on with - that's nearly finished, I just have to simulate my idea using the archaic GloMoSim (that was a real chore, turned out you specifically need Visual C++ version 6).

I don't currently have any ideas on posts to make about technology, keeping everything together is just about all I'm capable of at the moment. However, if like me you need to sit and calm down now and again, then try to catch the Comedy Gala before it's removed from 4oD.

Extend Your WiFi Router

This guy just went ahead and cut his open. What do you think?



I don't think I'd go for this, because I'm not a fan of soldering things back together. It might be good though if you need the extra range...

Delayed Shutdown

This little program allows you to easily shut down windows after a certain amount of time - perfect for when you leave something downloading over night. There are ways of doing this without using an application, like setting a scheduled task to execute a batch file at a certain time, but this application is quick and easy.

Give it a try, see what you think, and let me know if you have a better one.

Tune Up Your PC

This is probably the most frequent thing I demonstrate to people, and repeating it time and again was the thing that first got me thinking about writing a blog. Ironic then that it should take me several months of posts to get around to it, but there you go. This post will finally give you all the information you need to reduce your turn-on and shut-down speeds, and hopefully teach you a little something about how Windows works.

This post is broken down into several short posts that I have published separately for your ease of reference. All of this material will be included in my mythical "PC User Manual" that I occasionally refer to and will eventually complete.

This has truly been a mammoth task to properly document, and I hope you find it really useful!

Programs that run when you turn your computer on

Windows Services - more stuff that runs when you turn your computer on

Malicious Software

Even More Speed Tips for Windows

The Windows Registry

Please click any of the above links to view separate blog posts that detail what they are, and what you should do about them.

Malicious Software

While it is true that websites are fast becoming the number one source of security risks to the average user, viruses, worms, trojan horses and their friends are still out there to get. But shoving as much security software onto your computer as you can is not the solution; you need to understand what threats are there, and what you should do to protect yourself from them.

Viruses

Viruses can slow your computer down, steal private information from you, and damage your computer. Unfortunately, antivirus software has a reputation for slowing down your system, so apart from cost and effectiveness, you also have to look at the performance of an antivirus when you pick it.

Antivirus software can be broken down into two obvious categories: free and not free. I have not used an antivirus that you have to pay for since 2007 and I have not suffered a virus attack since. I was sent a virus at the start of the millennium that Norton at the time failed to stop; I also have a friend who around the same time got a virus that actually disabled Norton and thus held the door open for other viruses to come in. The only other virus I have suffered from was the blaster worm, which almost everyone got at the time.

I currently recommend Avast. In my own private benchmarks, my computer turned on faster when using Avast than it did using AVG, another popular antivirus that offers a free version.

If you do want to pay for your software, although that by no means ensures that it is more effective, then I recommend Sophos. I have had only bad experiences with Norton, but I have been informed that their latest version is an improvement.

I recommend keeping an antivirus installed and updated on your computer at all times and just swallowing the performance loss. If you are truly that concerned about performance, then try ClamWin, as it doesn't run in the background but can be used to run a full scan at any time, and updates daily.

Worms

Worms are similar to viruses, except that like real worms they can move around by themselves, and unlike computer viruses, don't need to attach themselves to existing files in order to infect PCs.

Apart from a good and up-to-date antivirus, the best protection from worms is to update your operating system whenever security updates are available.

Firewall

I used to run separate firewall software on Windows XP, but since Vista I have happily relied on the built-in firewall and not suffered for it. I don't recommend running separate firewall software for this reason as I don't believe it is worth the performance loss. If you are behind a router then it will be protecting you too.

Spyware

Spybot is the only dedicated anti-spyware software I have ever consistently used. If you disable the "teatimer" feature, then it will not run in the background consuming resources, but is still always available for you to run a system-scan whenever you like to ensure you haven't picked anything up on your travels. I am happy to report however that since using Avast, Spybot has never found a piece of spyware on my computer other than tracking cookies, which don't worry me.

UAC and other Windows security blemishes

Windows Vista and Windows 7 have two built-in security features that are worthless: User Account Control (UAC) and Windows Defender. According to Sophos, UAC has a 70% chance of not stopping a virus on your computer. So it really isn't worth the annoying pop-ups that it provides, and you should disable it. As for Windows Defender, running a good antivirus like Avast and using msconfig to control your startup programs makes this software essentially redundant, and you should disable this too, first from Control Panel, and then from the Services window, to increase system performance.

Hosts File

Before contacting a server to find out the IP address of a given link, Windows can check its own internal Hosts file to resolve the IP and save time. You can use this to your advantage however if you edit your hosts file to block the IPs of websites that will try to send you malicious software. Thankfully, you don't have to do this yourself; you can download a hosts file periodically from winhelp to avoid accessing websites that have been found by others to be harmful.

The hosts file can also be used to increase system performance; if you manually add all the IP addresses of your favourite websites, then Windows does not have to access any servers in order to resolve the URLs, although your web browser may cache these for you already.

The Windows Registry: Myths and Legends

Just incase you are unaware, the Registry is a small database built in to Windows. The Windows Registry used to be a "Hot Topic", as getting it clogged used to result in a lot of system performance degradation, but these days Windows does a good job of not letting it slow the whole system down.

Personally, I do not recommend any registry defrag or cleaning utilies for Windows Vista or Windows 7 - I have not noticed any system performance when using them, and I have had my registry hives corrupted by a registry defrag utility on Windows 7 64-Bit, which required a re-install to fix.

On Windows XP however I have noticed increased shutdown speeds when the registry is clean, and for this operating system only I recommend Auslogics Registry Cleaner. There are also free registry defrag utilities out there like the aptly named "Free Registry Defrag", but most you have to pay for. Defragmenting the registry might make an improvement for Vista and 7, but for a 64-Bit system, at the time of writing, it is not worth the risk.

Even More Speed Tips for Windows

Here we are; finally the end to optimising your installation of Windows. There are a few extra operations we can perform that don't deserve a page of their own, and so they are all bundled into this one and displayed below:

Windows Components

Open your Control Panel, click "Programs and Features" (or "Add or Remove Programs"), and then click "Turn Windows features on or off" (located to the left of the window); in Windows XP this is called "Add/Remove Windows Components". You should see a new window that looks like this:



From this list you can remove components that you don't use, like the Indexing Service (this indexes your hard drive to make searching faster, but you can still search without it, and you'll probably find that Windows uses system resources to index the drive more frequently than you actually run a search), and the Tablet PC component, unless you actually own a Tablet PC. Again, like when we were disabling startup programs using msconfig, the goal here is to remove as much as possible to increase system performance; mainly startup and shutdown speeds. If you're unsure about a component, then Google it first, but don't be afraid to experiment; you can always renable these components again.

Pagefile

The Pagefile is an area of the hard drive that is used like RAM. If you have two or more hard drives then you can increase system performance by moving the pagefile sector to a drive that is not being used for your operating system.

To do this, right-click My Computer, and click properties. Click "Advanced System Settings", which opens the System Properties window, and then via the Advanced tab on this, click the Settings button in the Performance section. The "Performance Options" window appears, click the advanced tab on this, then in the "Virtual Memory" section, click the Change button. You should see a window like this:



From this window, you can disable the pagefile on C drive, and create a manual area of pagefile on another hard drive. Ensure to set the "Initial Size" and "Maximum Size" values to the same, say 4GB, to prevent Windows from having to resize the pagefile sector at any time which momentarily reduces performance. After a restart, check this window again to make sure you did it right.

Network Folders

Windows XP allegedly automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. I've not noticed a difference, but to fix this, open a folder, click the Tools menu item, click Folder Options, and on the View tab, un-check the tickbox "Automatically search for network folders and printers", click Apply and OK, and restart your computer.

Defrag

Windows Vista and 7 automatically defrag the hard drive. Not only is the built-in Windows defrag utility rubbish, but the last thing you want is for Windows to start defragging the hard drive when you are trying to use it. Open the defrag utility via Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools, and disable automatic defragmentation. Run a defrag yourself now and again when you want to, and check the section below for a replacement utility.

Default Software

Foxit Reader is a PDF viewer that is faster than Adobe PDF reader, has a portable version available on PortableApps.com, and tkaes up hardly any hard drive space.

Google Chrome is a very fast and light web browser by Google that is an excellent replacement for the infamous Internet Explorer. If Chrome isn't your style, try Firefox.

Auslogics do a good free disk defrag utility that is much better than the Windows version.