Page 1 of Cleaning up / speeding up my PC

Sitting in the dentist last night, reading a PC mag.
Article about speeding up / cleaning up PC`s, using various programmes.
Trouble is, I can only remember one of the programmes mentioned, `Regclean`.
Not free though. :(
I seem to remember the word `craplet` being mentioned too.
Any ideas??

In all honesty, the best way to `clean up` a PC is to re-install everything from scratch.
Depending on where it comes from, it may have had a restore disc/partition available which makes the process easier. (e.g. Dell machines have these).
Using them puts them back to how they were when you first got the machine.

I tend to rebuild my Windows desktop machine about once every 3 months. (But then when I say rebuild - I simply restore the image that I`d taken when I did a `fresh` install the last time).

But none of that answers your question :D
There are a couple of free reg-cleaners (RegMaid, RegClean)
RegMaid -> support.microsoft.com/kb/q156078/
RegClean -> downloads.zdnet.com/abstract.aspx?assetid=881470&node=2094

But in my experience (from my support days) they can sometimes make matters worse!
So use them with caution.

"Build a man a fire, and he`ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he`ll be warm for the rest of his life."
-Terry Pratchett.

This item was edited on Thursday, 31st July 2008, 10:28

Rid of Vista and back to XP :), feckin hate Vista Ultimate, slow as a week in the pokie :(

Oh, I forgot to ask whether it was XP/Vista?

"Build a man a fire, and he`ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he`ll be warm for the rest of his life."
-Terry Pratchett.

We have XP.

Vista isn`t slow, it just shows up cheap or old hardware way more than XP ever did. Actually, XP did the same when it came out, as most people were trying to upgrade low end systems from Win98SE (or WinME if they were unlucky).


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Vista is slow, i got laptop stateside with Ultimate preinstalled, when it runs the checker thingie it shows my system at 4.8 out of 5 (i think from memory) so everything should be hunky dory but its as slow as a week in the pokie, i bought an external hard drive to put all my media files on and it speeded up a fraction but thats it

I would just do a backup of everything important and then reinstall windows from scratch.

You can spend longer cleaning up than doing a fresh install sometimes, just make sure you have all your drivers and install cds ready to go.

Partition the drive so you can have windows on a separate partition to all your documents, music, videos, photos etc and then next time you just have to wipe the windows partition instead of the whole drive.

Quote:
i got laptop stateside

Did you pay your tax?? :D

While I agree with Martin about it being the best method, reinstalling from scratch isn`t something everyone can do. But there are a few things that you can do to clean up.

1) go through the add/remove programs and uninstall anything you don`t want on there
2) use some tools to check for and remove spyware etc.
3) use msconfig to check what`s being launched at startup and uncheck any unwanted apps. That often helps performance.
4) run disk cleanup and remove unwanted temp files etc
5) ensure you run a defrag regularly

That`s all I can think of off the top of my head to be honest.

"Build a man a fire, and he`ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he`ll be warm for the rest of his life."
-Terry Pratchett.