There is such a thing as system hygiene. If you just finished doing virus and spyware scans that's a good start, but there's still more. I was just going to guide my friends through it that were having stalling/hanging/system lagging troubles and so on, but i figured I'd enlighten the n00b community for those that don't already know. Overall the following things just make your programs run faster.

First off there's the good old Disk Cleanup (Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Cleanup). Open it up and select your main drive containing your windows data (Default C:\ Drive). Click OK and it will calculate the possible disk space to clean. What I do once that's finished is just click all the boxes with numbers and click OK, the data deleted is negligent (old unused files) and won't affect your system. You can do this with any separate hard drives or partitions you may have as well, but will likely come up with next to nothing to clean up.
I like to do this at least once a week.

Secondly there's the Disk Defragmenter (Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Defragmenter). Use this to 'Defrag' your hard drives and partitions, I leave this on overnight. Again its best to start with C:\ drive and if you feel its necessary move to other hard drives and partitions. It keeps files of the same type together and will get rid of that "ERERRRRR" sound (dunno how to type it) your computer makes when searching for files because its organized. Overall faster navigating.
Using this once every month or two is a good idea.

In Mozilla Firefox go to Tools up top, (sorry i dont know where it is on other explorers) and click options. (The newest Mozilla will have a hotkey [CTRL+SHIFT+DELETE]) Go to Privacy and delete all Cache, Browsing History, Download History, Saved Form and Search History, (unless you need information saved in these), Cookies, (unless you've saved a game like Stick RPG on your browser) Saved Passwords, and Authenticated Sessions. (i left cookies and saved passwords alone). Plus mom or dad won't find all that porn you've been googling. Yellow_Flash_Colorz_PDT_37
Every week works.

Prefetching is something used to reduce loading up speed, but if you delete prefetches for services and programs you exit anyway, you're CS will run so much smoother. This sounds like a bad idea and i thought it would have been when I was told about it too, but navigate to your (default) C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch folder and press CTRL+A and hit delete. It didn't affect anything on my system (and it won't on yours either) at all except make Counter Strike and assorted other games run that much better. *NOTE: DOING THIS ANYWHERE FROM ONCE A WEEK AND LOWER MAY ACTUALLY CAUSE HARM RATHER THAN HELPING YOUR COMPUTER, WAIT UP TO 1 AND A HALF WEEKS TO 2 TO DO IT AGAIN.*

Now to prioritize certain programs and services in a way that will make them load up 5x faster you must: Right click the program/service icon and go down to properties. In the target field add /prefetch:1 to the end. If your computer is fast enough and you want this to be done with all programs, do the following.
Click start>run and type in regedit. Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters\EnablePrefetcher]
Then set the value to either 0-Disable, 1-App launch prefetch, 2-Boot Prefetch, 3-Both ("3" is recommended).
And next time you reboot it should decrease the boot time as well.

You can decrease boot up time EVEN MORE by clicking Start>Run and type in msconfig. (minus the period) Click the Startup tab and you may even do Disable All if you want a super duper fast boot up time, it won't hurt. But i left my Video Card Control Center to start up and MSN. Taking MSN off does not work as it will just keep coming back no matter what you do, i haven't found a way to get rid of it so just leave that be.
Do this every time you install something new.

HijackThis is a program that was left out in the Virus/Trojan Finder Program sticky. It is a very valuable Anti-Hijacking system. Once running do a system scan and save log file, once the log file pops up in notepad, copy it and paste it into the empty box seen here > http://www.hijackthis.de/ and press Analyze at the bottom. It will show you which things to delete and which you can keep, but note it may tell you sometimes to delete something that you know is safe, so don't delete it, such as StarDock for example. Most things you should delete though.
Download Here http://www.download.com/Trend-Micro-Hij ... ag=lst-0-1

I know i forgot something else so I will add it tommorow but I'm tired and I wanna go to bed. Yellow_Flash_Colorz_PDT_38

thx! thx alot! very helpful ! STICKAYYYY?

That's my hard drive.

I went to defrag since this post kind of made me think it's about time I did it. It can't defrag because there's not enough space on the drive.

Woo hoo.

I need a bigger hard drive.

LOLOLOLOLLOLOL



sorry =[

Thanks for the concern.

I've managed to find a copy of the Bob Dole virus though. It turns an old floppy drive in to a new hard drive. Ah heh heh heh.

148 gigs and you need a larger hard drive? Hit up your control panel and organize it by last used date. Delete the old shiznat that you don't use, and with 149 gigs full i doubt you use everything. I have an 80 gig and a 120 gig, i still have 115 gigs free.

LOL you cant disable msn but your given advice on how to tune up a computer.Start,control panel,administrative tools,services,stop messenger then disable.

And if you dont use disc keeper pro then you might as well not even defrag.

And Brand eats boogers.

SUPER.


There's an edit button.


Also, 150 gigs isn't enough when you try to regularly torrent 100+ gig files.

I wasn't talking about Messenger thats different than MSN. And if you disable through control panel can you still load it up after boot? What does disc keeper pro do and why not defrag?

And Kitten what the hell are you torrenting for 100+ gig files, thats insane.

Obviously government files, considering that Congress is looking in to regulating p2p because people could share government files even though they don't allow employees to install p2p software on their PCs.