Perhaps your computer isn't acting right. Does it take forever to move the cursor? Does it lock up and crash? Is the hard drive constantly writing?
Here are some tips.
The first thing to check is your anti-virus software. Do you have an anti-virus program with recent updates?
I've always used McAfee. Other folks swear by Norton. I'd guess that they are about equally effective against viruses, Trojans, and worms.
We used to use the absolute best *free-ware* virus checker at work, AVG by Grisoft. AVG is a good alternative if you can't afford McAfee or Norton. We have since gone to McAfee because of a great rebate on tigerdirect.com. I highly recommend TigerDirect for anyone who is interested in getting seriously into computers, but doesn't have a lot of bucks. It's one of the five best discount computer sites on the web.
If your virus-checker is up to date, try a Google search for "Spybot" and "Ad-Aware", and run them to look for parasite programs.
I use
Lavasoft AdAware
specifically because of LavaSoft's stand against the objectionable actions of
COAST
(the Consortium of Anti-Spyware Technology Vendors).
I recommend AdAware above any other,
more agressively-named, spyware-removal tool.
You have to run the freeware version manually to check your computer.
The paid version will check your downloads and cookies in real time.
My techie friends recommend SpyBot-Search&Destroy, apparently because it sounds like a marauding army. I have since learned that no spyware remover finds all items. It may be necessary to run two (or more) spyware removal tools to remove everything.
Be careful of sound-alike spyware programs. Some of them allow paid advertisers' ads through. Others are spyware in themselves.
But whatever applications you choose, you *must* download the latest databases as soon as they become available. This means that you must check for updates for your virus checker and adware removal tool first thing in the morning before you open your email or read The New York Times. You must do this without fail.
My sister's computer was running really slow and as I went through the task
manager and terminated all the bogus processes, the system came back up to
speed.
So I downloaded and ran AdAware,
and it identified over 800 known items on her computer.
This includes tracking cookies and spyware.
Some of the spyware:
Remember that viruses, trojans and worms can get in through chat programs. Again... UPDATE THE DATABASES.
Cookies little files that web pages like amazon.com and eBay put on your computer so that they will remember what items are in your shopping cart. Very handy! But unscrupulous vendors can use something called "tracking cookies" to relate personal information from months of web surfing to provide spammers with detailed information about you. In Windows 2000 Professional cookies are located in C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Cookies. Most browsers allow you to refuse cookies, but be aware that many web sites - especially *shopping* sites - won't work without them. Poke around in there and see what kind of info they save inside the text files. Your email address, your real name, your home address, purchases, a huge trail of everywhere you've been. A favorite tactic is to assign you an account number to track your browsing and buying habits across dozens of web sites, then use that information to send you targeted ads. Of course, you've entered your email address in *some* site covered by that company, so they know how to contact you.
The system tray in Windows is at the lower right, with the clock.
Every program with an icon there is running.
This means it's using memory right this instant.
When you move your mouse over an icon,
a little thought bubble will come up and tell you what program it represents.
After I log in, I often exit items in the system tray that I won't be using that day.
Not using the web cam? Shut it off.
Too busy to chat? Shut down ICQ. You get the idea.
Then you also have to get something to remove unnecessary items from the
registry. This alone can speed up a windows machine.
The registry is a huge file containing
large amounts of data about each program on your computer.
The registry is loaded when Windows boots,
and all of that data stays in memory just in case
you happen to want to use one of the programs.
In the process of updating or uninstalling software over the years,
the registry can wind up holding a lot of unnecessary data.
This includes shortcuts to deleted files,
initialization info for programs that you deleted six months ago.
You can imagine how much faster your computer will run
when you remove all that unnecessary data.
I'm now using
Registry Mechanic
on two Windows 2000 computers.
I've also used
Registry Healer
by KSL software for over a year on Windows 98, 2000, and XP machines at work.
I'd recommend either of these programs.
A note about Linux: Linux is an *operating system* like windows except that you pretty much can leave it running forever and it hardly ever crashes. Or at least *I* hardly ever managed to crash it, even on an old slow computer with very little memory. I mention this only because Linux makes the hard drive run constantly, while Windows doesn't so much under normal (non-clogged) conditions. If your drive is "thrashing" you have too many things in memory.
Windows (and Linux) extends memory by swapping data in and out of a huge file on your hard drive called, oddly enough, a swap file. Think of it as a pocket that Windows puts things in when its hands get full. Disk drives run very slowly compared to the actual RAM, so the more often Windows has to swap, the slower your computer gets. Reducing the number of programs in memory really speeds up your computer. Also, a large swap file can slow your computer down more than a smaller swap file. Look at that system tray again!
Defrag and scandisk are system maintenance items.
Scandisk looks for bad data on the disk and repairs it if it can.
Defrag (defragment) rearranges the scattered bits of each file
from all over the disk and puts them physically close together.
The computer runs faster if it doesn't have to
jump all around the hard drive loading your programs.
:-)
It sounds rather complicated,
but the programs included with Windows do it automagically.
Just make sure the computer doesn't accidentally get shut off during the process.
They can take an hour or more to run depending on the size
and access time of your hard drive.
Some folks run these every week.
I recommend every couple of months.
You drive your car, you put gas and oil in it. If you don't, it stops running. Likewise, you use your computer, you run virus checkers and spyware removers and scandisk and defrag. If you don't, it stops running.
If you can't change your own oil you shouldn't be allowed to own a car. It should be part of the driver's test. Well, ok, I wouldn't go that far. But I will say that the people who don't maintain their computers with antivirus software and anti-spyware tools make it essential for the rest of us to be extra careful.