K
Karen F
What programs and what do most of you do to keep your computer running
smooth and to get rid of old temp files, etc. Thanks.
Karen
smooth and to get rid of old temp files, etc. Thanks.
Karen
D
Don Phillipson
1. Reduce to the true essentials those apps that
load at boot.
2. Certain 3d-party housekeeping apps (e.g. Iolo
System Mechanic) report locations of clutter (browser
temporary files, Recycle bin etc.) Even without those
apps we can write a batch file to DELete all at reboot.
S
Stan Brown
Or you can run Cleanmgr, which is part of Windows.
T
tommyold
Hello, Each person has different needs.
I use CCleaner from www.piriform.com.
Follow that with the on board "disc clean up tool", everyday.
Check for program and application updates. I do this manually.
There is more but it is personalized for the way I use a computer.
K
Ken Blake
Most such programs are useless at best and often very dangerous.
You can get rid of temp files, etc. with the built-in Disk Cleanup, or
you can use a program like CCleaner.
If you use CCleaner, it's safe to use most of its functions, but be
sure to stay away from its Registry Cleaning capability (and all other
registry cleaners).
Registry cleaning programs are *all* snake oil. Cleaning of the
registry isn't needed and is dangerous. Leave the registry alone and
don't use any registry cleaner. Despite what many people think, and
what vendors of registry cleaning software try to convince you of,
having unused registry entries doesn't really hurt you.
The risk of a serious problem caused by a registry cleaner erroneously
removing an entry you need is far greater than any potential benefit
it may have.
Read http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000643.html
and http://aumha.net/viewtopic.php?t=28099
and also
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussin.../02/registry-junk-a-windows-fact-of-life.aspx
Let me point out that neither I nor anyone else who warns against the
use of registry cleaners has ever said that they always cause
problems. If they always caused problems, they would disappear from
the market almost immediately. Many people have used a registry
cleaner and never had a problem with it.
Rather, the problem with a registry cleaner is that it carries with it
the substantial *risk* of having a problem. And since there is no
benefit to using a registry cleaner, running that risk is a very bad
bargain.
R
ray
Nothing - but then I run Linux a lot.
E
Emrys Davies
Karen F said:
I use CCleaner. It is free, easy to setup and it does a really good job.
As Ken Blake says, it is not wise to clean the registry. Just leave it.
E
ElJerid
Karen F said:
1. Limit startup programs to minimum: I use Autoruns from Sysinternals.
2. Clean temp, cookies, etc: as mentioned by others: CCleaner (you can also
use Dclean as complement).
3. Defrag your hard disc(s): I prefer O&O Defrag (not applicable for SSDs).
4. Clean the registry: JV16 Power Tools. If you select the safe removal
level, there is no risk for accidental removals. I' ve used it for years and
never had a problem.
Frequency of the operations depends of your activity (internet surfing, new
program installs or remove, type of used programs, etc).
K
Ken Blake
The *number* of autostarting programs you have is irrelevant. What's
important is *which* programs they are. Some of them can hurt
performance severely, but others have no effect on performance.
I'm not against doing what you suggest, but nobody should expect that
doing that is likely to have a big effect on performance.
It's *highly* unlikely that defragging will have a big effect on
performance, since defragging is automatically done regularly by
Windows 7.
Then you've been lucky. That's very poor advice. Registry cleaning
programs are *all* snake oil. Cleaning of the registry isn't needed
and is dangerous. Leave the registry alone and don't use any registry
cleaner. Despite what many people think, and what vendors of registry
cleaning software try to convince you of, having unused registry
entries doesn't really hurt you.
The risk of a serious problem caused by a registry cleaner erroneously
removing an entry you need is far greater than any potential benefit
it may have.
Read http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000643.html
and http://aumha.net/viewtopic.php?t=28099
and also
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussin.../02/registry-junk-a-windows-fact-of-life.aspx
Let me point out that neither I nor anyone else who warns against the
use of registry cleaners has ever said that they always cause
problems. If they always caused problems, they would disappear from
the market almost immediately. Many people have used a registry
cleaner and never had a problem with it.
Rather, the problem with a registry cleaner is that it carries with it
the substantial *risk* of having a problem. And since there is no
benefit to using a registry cleaner, running that risk is a very bad
bargain.
S
Stan Brown
I didn't know that!
But even if it didn't, the benefits of defragging are dubious at
best. I occasionally defragged my Windows XP systems at home and at
work, and I never noticed any speedup. My boss had the same results
on his systems.
K
Ken Blake
And these days, when use of SSDs is becoming more common,
fragmentation has much less of a negative effect than it ever did
before.
P
Paul
Stan said:
There are two functions involved. Some commercial tools, in addition
to defragmenting, also re-arrange the location of files on the disk,
to reduce head movement. There are various strategies for "herding
files" that they use. Thus, when you compare defragmenting programs,
you may actually be observing the difference their relocation of
files is making, rather than just defragmentation as such.
Defragmenting may make more of a difference, if you do it on a FAT32
partition.
The Windows 7 defragmenter runs automatically, but unlike previous
tools, it doesn't defragment files larger than about 50MB. So if you
had a DVD image you copied, it might have hundreds of fragments and
the defragmenter wouldn't care. A third party defragmenter could
fix that. Microsoft's rationale is, accessing a large file like that,
defragmentation probably isn't a performance issue. So to make
their defragmenter more "lightweight" in terms of system
resources, they only defragment small files.
Third party defragmenters have other benefits that the built-in one
doesn't. In Windows 7 disk management, there is an option to
"shrink" a partition. But Windows 7 doesn't know how to move metadata
files out of the way, to maximize the amount of space that can be
saved. Raxco PerfectDisk knows how to do that. By doing it in stages,
and using the Eval version of PerfectDisk, I was able to shrink an over
200GB partition, down to 30GB. PerfectDisk is able to move the metadata
and push it towards the beginning of the partition, which allows the
shrink function to work better. But it took several passes (shrink, defrag,
shrink, defrag etc) to achieve the result I was after. After which, I
could uninstall the Eval version. (I have no plans to repeat this exercise
anytime soon.) I was changing the Win 7 laptop, from one large C: partition,
to a small C: and a large D: data partition.
Paul
C
Char Jackson
That reminds me of something. I had a question from a customer awhile
back who was using two 3rd party defrag programs, and running the
second one right after running the first one always resulted in a lot
of activity. Then, immediately going back to the first one resulted in
even more activity. His question was, why is there still work to do by
a second defragger after a first defragger has finished? I believe the
answer is contained in your post above - each defragger has its own
algorithm for 'herding' files. In his case, the first program was
putting files over here, the second was moving them over there, and
the first was bringing them back over here. Moral: it's probably best
to settle on a single tool of this type, but it's also probably
acceptable on NTFS systems to skip defragmenting completely.
I have to say I agree with Microsoft on this one. A DVD image can
safely remain fragmented without a real performance penalty.
FYI, in the interest of sharing knowledge of other (multiple) tools to
do a specific job, Acronis Disk Director can do your task in a single
pass. I wouldn't be without it, personally, and it's one of the first
tools I add to a new installation.
G
Gene E. Bloch
With today's fast computers, and today's fast and large drives, I do
none of the above.
Well, I do uninstall some to the manufacturer's crapware, but manually,
not with tools sold for the purpose.
For my usually modest needs, this approach is satisfactory for me.
I might get flamed for this, but I'm tough enough to handle it
P
Paul
Char said:
I think my reason for writing my last paragraph, is to mildly remind
Microsoft, that if they're going to add a "shrink" partition option
to their disk manager, it should work. Not "half" work and require
third party tools to do it right. If they didn't bother adding
a "shrink" option, I'd have had nothing to complain about and no
paragraph to write. I doubt anyone would have noticed, if it was
a missing feature.
Such behavior reminds me of how Corel used to write software.
Add a feature to get the "tiok box", customer goes to use it
and tool crashes. Feature works properly... if you're willing
to buy the next three or four versions of software while they
finish the design
I expect better than that from Microsoft.They could easily have added metadata manipulation, like their
competitors, if they really thought that shrink function was
worthwhile.
Paul
C
Char Jackson
I see your point and agree with it, but for me Microsoft can do what
they want with Disk Manager because all I use it for is to quickly
change drive letters, and you can imagine how infrequently I need that
task. For anything more complicated than that, I reach for Acronis.
Such behavior reminds me of how Corel used to write software.
Add a feature to get the "tiok box", customer goes to use it
and tool crashes. Feature works properly... if you're willing
to buy the next three or four versions of software while they
finish the design
They could easily have added metadata manipulation, like their
competitors, if they really thought that shrink function was
worthwhile.
I used to work for a company like that. :-/
G
Gene E. Bloch
Man, what a radical idea!
Thanks, your phrasing got a solid laugh out of me.
I rarely have need for such an operation, but I do have one of the free
bootable disks handy for the next time I do - the one I downloaded when
I did need to shrink a partition and discovered how well Microsoft's
tool works