[UPtimist]

My laptop is really clunky right now, and I think I need to do a rater thorough cleaning to it. Now, I've seen some programs like Defraggler and MyDefrag for defragging (or whatever you call it in English) and CCleaner and RegScrub for other types of cleaning, as well as a more overall Advanced SystemCare that does a number of these things.

Now, I was wondering if any of you have any experience on what to use or if there are better choices out there? Especially the defragging should be, aside from efficient, quite fast as it might be quite a while that it has to take. I've barely ever done it.

[Isak]

I've just defraged my laptop, last night, for the very first time. It must have taken several hours, because I started it an hour before I got to sleep, and when I checked just before going to sleep, it had barley done 20%.

If you have Windows, you can use it's default program, Disk Defrag. First, do an analysis (take about one minute) and the computer will tell you if you should defrag the computer... If it does, the just click "defrag".

You can only defrag one hd at the time, I think.

Another tip is to check what process that are running in the background. Like for example, I had "searchindexer.exe" running in the bg, which took a lot of CPU. Just pres ctrl+alt+delete and you'll see what programs that are running in the bg. Google them up and see if it's safe to turn them off.

Good luck!

[bulldog]

yes I agree with Isak, you can also use this site for worms and other things that may be hiding in your computer. http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
Use free tools. It will take about 30 minutes - 2hrs, depending on what is on your system. I love this site

[Elena]

I agree with what's been said.But,i've experienced my laptop being really slow after the installation of SP1 for Windows 7.
My brother suggested me a site, http://www.blackviper.com/,which has guides for windows 7 services or other OS and i made some changes based on these guides.It really helped and my laptop is even faster than before.
You might want to check it out.

[Giligan]

At the computer repair center I work at we routinely use CCleaner. It does a really good job of fixing up the registry issues, that I've seen. Might want to run some virus scans as well.

[UPtimist]

Thanks for the help.

The thing with defragging is that I've used Windows' own defragger and it's just awfully slow. I've also seen notions that there are other programs that are much faster and in some cases even do a better job (sometimes they say that almost any program is better).

[Elena]

I'm using Smart Defrag 2 from IObit.It's free and it's a really good program.
Also,you can use CEnhancer,which is a program that adds more options in the "Application" tab in CCleaner,but it's not an official add-on.

[UPtimist]

Well, after a whopping one comparative review, I'm getting MyDefrag. Apparently fast and efficient. And of course free.

It also said that Windows' defragger isn't actually that bad, and does its job quite fine.

Also I got CCleaner. I think I already have something like RegScrub there too but I'm not even sure what they all do at this point. I'll run CC then defrag and see how it goes. I'm sure I could also much streamline my startup and shutdown too. I've done that, but I'm always quite cautious and it's been a while so I suspect there's more useless stuff there again.

And I should just clear out stuff, but I'm not sure what to remove...

Anyways, thanks again for the help

[Intense Degree]

Originally Posted by UPtimist

It also said that Windows' defragger isn't actually that bad, and does its job

You have to take into account much of teh internetz anti m$ bias.

Also the fact that for every x glowing reviews of a product there will be one saying how the product caused their computer to disintegrate and was responsible for the death of the family pet.

[Marte]

I've used CCleaner for a long time now, and I'm very happy with it. My PCs rarely/never goes slow anymore atleast

[UPtimist]

Originally Posted by Intense Degree

You have to take into account much of teh internetz anti m$ bias.

Also the fact that for every x glowing reviews of a product there will be one saying how the product caused their computer to disintegrate and was responsible for the death of the family pet.

Yeah, that is the truth.

[marvio]

I wish I had caught this thread earlier...

The questions you have to ask yourself are:

1-How old is my install?

2- How much of a pain in the ass would be to re-install the apps I have now?

3- How much personal stuff do I have in my HD? Easy to back up?


Usually you'll find that a re-install of the Os really is the answer, dang, even MS tehmselves recommend you re-install windows every year, not kidding, it's actually one of the questions in their MCSE exam.

There are reasons why these progrma exist, although I would tell you that windows defrag really is all you neeed, Ccleaner is very good too, but these type of stuff are made for guys like me, who:

1- Don't know if somebody has everything they need to put back the machine to the same state (soft. personal files, etc)

2- When a machine has such specific config that re-installing would just take too long.

3- When you're administering 200+ clients, that even with an Image, would be silly to re-install for a performance issue.

But like I said, for a home user, you'll usually want to re-install, it really is the only sure way to get rid of everything.

PS> There's a big BUT here!!! How old is your machine? It may be that it's really just old, and by old I mean, couple of years, HD's, specially laptop HD's will start feeling their age by the 2 year mark, by 4 years you really need to replace it if you want to keep the computer...

[tsa]

Originally Posted by marvio

PS> There's a big BUT here!!! How old is your machine? It may be that it's really just old, and by old I mean, couple of years, HD's, specially laptop HD's will start feeling their age by the 2 year mark, by 4 years you really need to replace it if you want to keep the computer...

That is nonsense IMHO. I worked with a lot of old computers at work, and their harddrives are just as fast as when they were new. Maybe you have the impression that they get slower because new harddrives are faster. And in my experience drives just break down suddenly with (almost) no warning.

[marvio]

Originally Posted by tsa

That is nonsense IMHO. I worked with a lot of old computers at work, and their harddrives are just as fast as when they were new. Maybe you have the impression that they get slower because new harddrives are faster. And in my experience drives just break down suddenly with (almost) no warning.

Why? HD's are mechanical devices, still by in large, and they're prone to the same problems any other high performance mechanical device, not unlike a super car

This was actually mesured, on a pool of 2000 HD's, and a spreadsheet created on timeXperformance; 90% of HD's regardless of type, Scuzzi, IDE, SATA, SAS would typically loose 12% of their perfomance in read/write I/O by the end of its second year of use, and it just goes downhill form there, with some loosing as much as 50% of their original performance by the 4 year mark.

Yes, I spent quite a bit of time on this, yes I'm a geek with nothing better to do

It's nothing to brag about really, working for 15 years in IT should be something to be ashamed of!!

Here's a much more counter intuitive finding of mine, one that I had to think about for a while as to why it was happening.

CPU's loose their performance over time!

See if you can figure that one out

[tsa]

Wow I see that your are much more geeky than I am. I know about Google's research on harddrives but I didn't read the paper they published about it. I stand corrected!
And about those CPU's: I guess the fact that they get slower with time has something to do with diffusion, error correction and the fact that you will get more errors with time.

[marvio]

Originally Posted by tsa

Wow I see that your are much more geeky than I am. I know about Google's research on harddrives but I didn't read the paper they published about it. I stand corrected!
And about those CPU's: I guess the fact that they get slower with time has something to do with diffusion, error correction and the fact that you will get more errors with time.

Ah HA!

See you're smarter then I!

It took me a good week to come up with that answer!!

Older processors actually fair a lot better then newer ones, basically the smaller the dye size, the more performance you'll loose over time, because pathways just get, for the lack of a better term, "looser", so electrons jump from one pipe to the next, where the next ALU/ASU/SSE whaterver unit, doesn't know what to do with it, it then becomes an error bit which must be re-calculated, which is agrivated by the heavy reliance new CPU's put on branch prediction.

Oh man, I have to get out more!


PS> As a side note.. Do you know why dye sizes aren't getting any smaller, although we are capable of making them? And in turn, one of the reasons why we have Duo/Quad/Hex processors today?

[tsa]

I guess it has something to do with standard dye sizes and the fact that you have to wirebond them to the chip. The wirebonds take up space and can't be made smaller, and you need a certain amount of connections of the chip with its surroundings.

I've worked with semiconductors all my scientific life so I may have an advantage over you concerning this

[Oscar]

You should vacuum your pc regularly. I fill up my vacuum cleaner with dust from my pc every few weeks.

[Isak]

Originally Posted by Oscar

You should vacuum your pc regularly. I fill up my vacuum cleaner with dust from my pc every few weeks.

Do not do this pleaselstop with that at once, it could kill your fan, especially if you have a laptop. Instead, use a gas duster, which contains compressed air. They are made for cleaning electronics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_duster

[tsa]

I never clean my PC and lappie, and they are still never really dirty inside. And I have two bunnies hopping around and shedding hairs everywhere.