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re: One Simple Solution for a Smooth running PC. Monday, August 19, 2002 at 6:36 pm Posted by phantom (5661 messages posted) Glad you are happy with your computer. I don't have any problems. Never have had any really serious ones. I don't belive in anti virus, I had Norton and it screwed things up. I don't believe in firewalls. I am careful what I download and I wash my mail before I open it. I have been lucky so far I guess! And I use adware religously at least twice a week. Occasionally I will use Spider and Easy Cleaner. Wish me luck! (phantom) On Monday, August 19, 2002 at 2:56 pm, Don J. Engel wrote: >In the past three years I had enough computer grief to kill a wild bull elephant >in the field, trying to get and keep my PC running properly. I had to format-C about >a hundred times to erase whatever was progressively slowing it down. Eventually >I discovered that the "doubleclick" spy-trojan was mostly to blame for the slowness, >and some of the glitches. There were moments I felt like heaving the whole thing >right through the glass window. >Eventually I found "Window Washer" and "AdAware", dumped McAfee AVS for Norton AVS, >dumped "ZoneAlarm" for "NeoWatch", and opted to stay away from all those poorly developed >booster and registry downloads which only seriously MESS-UP the operating system. > I won't touch Kazza, Gozilla, triple-X and the like with a hundred foot pole. There >are some real sticky PC wrecking nasties in surfing triple-x web pages that you can't >easily get rid of without formatting-C, and pulling the battery and cards. >Finally, now All the pain is totally over. Those two softwares (WW & AA) clean All >the evils out of the PC, making it run at peak performance without any glitches what >so ever. I added McAfee's "Uninstaller" to safe clean the registry, and to give >me a powerful tool to clean out any unwanted garbage. I run "Uninstaller Quick Clean" >once a week. >All that, and I run "Scandisc" then "Defrag" twice a week. >This whole combination keeps 'er runnin' fresh and Samooothe! >Give it a trial shot, you will be megabytely amazed and relieved when all the pain >gets washed away with the PC's garbage. > [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: One Simple Solution for a Smooth running PC. Monday, August 19, 2002 at 8:48 pm Posted by br (387 messages posted) You're on the right track Don and surely you are proud of your accomplishments. Keeping a clean computer is a key to smooth performance and your new attitude will probably lead to even more things to further improvements. My solution is not as simple as yours because I have developed a system that has no need for Window Washer, AdAware, AVS, software firewalls, etc. But then, I am a performance freak and not a download junkie, so some of what I do would not be suitable for most people. However, I do use several utilities to keep a trim registry and I also do other housecleaning chores on a regular basis. Even then, I format C: more often than normal to get rid of a few cobwebs that cannot be prevented. I will also add that some of these reinstallations are due to radical experiments that a sane person would stay away from. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: One Simple Solution for a Smooth running PC. Monday, August 19, 2002 at 10:58 pm Posted by Don (8 messages posted) Br, It's good to hear that you've got a handle on it. Have you tried the WindowWasher trial download? The know everything guys, at the computer shop, tried WindowWasher at my request. It pulled out 150 megabytes of garbage, from 54000 files, off the hard drive of their counter-top store's PC. Then the clerk downloaded AdAware, and it pulled out the four most wicked spy trojans out there. Suddenly their computer was running fast like it was a born again PC. The clerk was trying to hide his huge grin, till he couldn't hide it any longer. He said, "This is eaxctly what my home computer needs to bring it back up to speed." If I ever got to where I could play in the registry like a pro, I'd still run Window Washer at least twice a day. There are some single web pages out there that can leave 400 Kb of active garbage permanently stored on your hard drive. Before I leave the PC, I always run WindowWasher. In just a couple seconds WW finds 90% of C's buried poop, and flushes it out of the PC. What WW does in a few seconds would probably take a computer super-wiz 10 to 20 minutes. WW just super charges cleanup. I agree that there things the novice shouldn't do, but that's how we learn. Like how I nuked eight, $10 to $40, garage-sale PC's, while trying to figure out what makes them tic, and finding out what not to do to a PC's mother board, cards, ram, fans, drives, power supplies, and operating systems. It was FUN! At times there were some pretty big sparks flying from the PC's. That was the fireworks part of the ride. Usually "fireworks" meant that I done gone and fried another one. I'd find a replacement the next Saturday at the garage sales, and here we go again. "Watchout compooder! Here I come ready or not!" At the local metal scrap yard the owner's son had ten 45 gallon drums full of ram, and about 30 boxes full of PC circuit boards. He sold complete towers for $5 each. Just to satisfy my curiosity I sliced a couple pentium chips right in half just to see their inside under the microscope. I used to want to learn how to play in the registry, but not anymore. Now that I've got this toy working like a charm, I can relax back and forget about the glitches and pain, and just use the derned thing as intended, as my notebook, my post office, my typewriter, my photo-copier, and my library, and for just an hour or two a day. I don't want it to take over my life. I am reminded about a fellow I met in Toronto. He nearly lived inside his laptop. When I met him and his shoplifting buddies, their jackets were bulging full of all kinds of store junkfood treats. They called it, "supper", and rammed it into their mouths like it was their first meal in a week. The leader of the group said that he had to pee real bad. He flipped open his laptop computer that he stole at a university library, brought up his cyber penthouse apartment, scrolled to the bathroom, and peed in his pants right where he stood on the street. He had to take his gushy shoes off and went barefoot for the next two blocks. I just had to see more! It felt as if I had just entered the monkey cage at a zoo. In his living room was a mountain of about three thousand out of jacket shoplifted record albums, all flung to wherever they had happened to land. When he hung off the bar ot the top of a doorway, and made ape sounds, I just about bolted and ran out of there. He sat in his favorite spot, near the stereo, in his t-shirt and pee-soaked underwear, ripping records of the turn table, tossing them to the top of the pile, and trying another, and so on... ...I felt real sorry for a "brother" who had truly lost it... ...Nothing I could do there, he was now totally possessed by his PC, and probably strungout on somekind of white powder and/or fumes. In a sense he had become an extension of his PC. ...I left quietly and saddened... ...as I made my way down the steps, I heard another record being ripped away from the stylus, then bouncing off the wall... ...As I made my way through the alley toward Young Street, I heard strange "ook ook" sounds and "ieeee hoo-hoo-Hoo-Wooawk!" sounds, coming from their apartment, just like the sounds chimps do at the zoos and on tv nature documentaries. His buddies had passed me as I went through the alley, they had returned with more supper treats. There was a lot of excitement over the jacket full of JoeLewises. In his case WindowWasher can't help him much, except maybe to get him to his cyber john a couple seconds faster, but it can help all us novices get and keep our slow & obsolete W98 PC's running as fast and smooth as they can. I read that those WindowWasher creators won major awards for it. I'm not knockin' knowin' the registry. I honestly wish I knew even a tenth of what Mr. Gates knows about PC operating systems. I wish I had the time to learn how to mess with the registry without nuking the operating system. Then I'd be like a kid with a flame thrower, rockets, grenades, and machine gun, in my PC's registry. But for now, I'm just gonna leave the ole registry intact. Everything is running just fine, smooth, and fast with this simple little system I've found, and as soon as I get a slave drive, I'll install Ghost so I can dump C at the drop of a pin, and reload as easy as right clicking a mouse when ever the operating system so much as hiccups.. On Monday, August 19, 2002 at 8:48 pm, br wrote: >You're on the right track Don and surely you are proud of your accomplishments. Keeping >a clean computer is a key to smooth performance and your new attitude will probably >lead to even more things to further improvements. My solution is not as simple >as yours because I have developed a system that has no need for Window Washer, AdAware, >AVS, software firewalls, etc. But then, I am a performance freak and not a download >junkie, so some of what I do would not be suitable for most people. However, I do >use several utilities to keep a trim registry and I also do other housecleaning chores >on a regular basis. Even then, I format C: more often than normal to get rid of a >few cobwebs that cannot be prevented. I will also add that some of these reinstallations >are due to radical experiments that a sane person would stay away from. [Reply or follow-up to this message] There are no simple solutions! Tuesday, August 20, 2002 at 9:56 am Posted by Michael (2800 messages posted) This may work for you, but don't forget that a PC is a box full of disparate electronic units and badly-written software. It doesn't really matter how much maintenance you do on some PC's, they'll never work properly. What you've said is basically good advice, but it's not necessarily a panacea... On Monday, August 19, 2002 at 2:56 pm, Don J. Engel wrote: >In the past three years I had enough computer grief to kill a wild bull elephant >in the field, trying to get and keep my PC running properly. I had to format-C about >a hundred times to erase whatever was progressively slowing it down. Eventually >I discovered that the "doubleclick" spy-trojan was mostly to blame for the slowness, >and some of the glitches. There were moments I felt like heaving the whole thing >right through the glass window. >Eventually I found "Window Washer" and "AdAware", dumped McAfee AVS for Norton AVS, >dumped "ZoneAlarm" for "NeoWatch", and opted to stay away from all those poorly developed >booster and registry downloads which only seriously MESS-UP the operating system. > I won't touch Kazza, Gozilla, triple-X and the like with a hundred foot pole. There >are some real sticky PC wrecking nasties in surfing triple-x web pages that you can't >easily get rid of without formatting-C, and pulling the battery and cards. >Finally, now All the pain is totally over. Those two softwares (WW & AA) clean All >the evils out of the PC, making it run at peak performance without any glitches what >so ever. I added McAfee's "Uninstaller" to safe clean the registry, and to give >me a powerful tool to clean out any unwanted garbage. I run "Uninstaller Quick Clean" >once a week. >All that, and I run "Scandisc" then "Defrag" twice a week. >This whole combination keeps 'er runnin' fresh and Samooothe! >Give it a trial shot, you will be megabytely amazed and relieved when all the pain >gets washed away with the PC's garbage. > [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: One Simple Solution for a Smooth running PC. Wednesday, August 21, 2002 at 9:04 am Posted by br (387 messages posted) I have not tried Window Washer, but have read some of the things it does. One of its main features is cleaning up after Internet Explorer, which along with its companion Outlook Express, is not installed in my modified operating system. Therefore, I do not have folders such as Application Data, Cookies, Downloaded Program Files, Favorites, History, Local Settings, NetHood and Temporary Internet Files. So, without these hideous monstrosities contaminating my computer, that particular feature of WW is not needed. Window Washer can remove tracks from other browsers and programs, but I'm not too concerned about privacy. If someone wants to snoop into my activity, they will get exactly what they deserve. I realize that some PC users cannot afford this attitude, but fortunately I am not in that position. Other browsers are not integrated with the operating system and do not accumulate near the garbage as IE, so most of what is left behind can be useful for my needs. As far as the other features of WW, most are duplicated by utilities that I already have. Please understand, I am not trying to knock WW in any way. From your report and that of others, I gather that it is a very useful program for most systems. When it comes to cleaning the registry and getting rid of garbage, I have yet to find a single utility that will locate it all. Any worthwhile utility will find most of it, but each individual one will often find a few things the others miss. I suppose if I installed yet another, it would find a few more things. However, there is not much left in my system to be removed. For instance, my Windows folder is 110mb, containing 1780 files in 49 folders. Not much when compared with most PC's. I work with numerous programs, some of them quite large, but they produce little garbage, if any. So it is a matter of minor housecleaning on a regular basis to keep things tidy. Like you, I learned a good bit tinkering with old computers. I didn't go to some of your extremes, but it gave me the opportunity to experiment without worry, and some of the things I learned were applied to my main computer afterwards. Also like you, I am not a whiz with the registry, but feel comfortable going into it on occasion when necessary. Many things can be changed in the registry by using certain windows routines, so going directly to it is not always necessary. A slave drive is good for what you have in mind, and with a little ingenuity, you may find other good uses for it too. A partitioned HD can do very much the same thing, so don't leave that option out. I always install just the operating system on C\ and everything else on other partitions. When done this way, nothing needs to be saved, so the operating system can be redone by whatever means without dealing with anything else. Regardless of what you or I do, hopefully we will never get carried away to the extent of the fellow you met in Toronto. There ain't no patch that can remove a virus that has wormed its way that deep into the human operating system. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: One Simple Solution for a Smooth running PC. Sunday, January 19, 2003 at 1:17 pm Posted by Don J Engel (1 messages posted) In addition to my PC Cleanup program, I purchased a "Netgear-RP114" router for $70, in the U.S. Now I don't need to install a firewall. This router device keeps out All the attacks. Absolutely nothing gets past it. No more firewall warnings. No more huge firewall logs.. Just total peace and quiet privacy. Also I purchased a Logitech wheel-mouse and a Logitech remote key board. Adding state of the art hand controls makes this obsolete little PC feel modern and comfy to use. With the wheel-mouse you don't get that sore wrist anymore from dragging a mouse all over the place on a dirty draggy mouse pad. Only your fingers get the exercise. The mouse never needs to be moved, and the yuky mouse pad gets tossed into the trash. You can even use the wheel-mouse when it is hidden under a clutter of papers and desk junk. You can use it for hours at a time without any of those nasty hand cramps or wrist stings, and after a week you get pretty good at using it. But the first couple days you wonder why you ever bought the darn thing.. It's like a little dream come true.. It's like getting a icy cool glass of crystal clear water in the middle of a hot dry desert... It neutralizes a pile of the normal tension levels associated with using the PC. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: One Simple Solution for a Smooth running PC. Tuesday, May 27, 2003 at 7:28 pm Posted by Don (8 messages posted) On Sunday, January 19, 2003 at 1:17 pm, Don J Engel wrote: >In addition to my PC Cleanup program, I purchased a "Netgear-RP114" router for $70, >in the U.S. Now I don't need to install a firewall. This router device keeps out >All the attacks. Absolutely nothing gets past it. No more firewall warnings. No >more huge firewall logs.. Just total peace and quiet privacy. > >Also I purchased a Logitech wheel-mouse and a Logitech remote key board. Adding >state of the art hand controls makes this obsolete little PC feel modern and comfy >to use. With the wheel-mouse you don't get that sore wrist anymore from dragging >a mouse all over the place on a dirty draggy mouse pad. Only your fingers get the >exercise. The mouse never needs to be moved, and the yuky mouse pad gets tossed into >the trash. You can even use the wheel-mouse when it is hidden under a clutter of >papers and desk junk. You can use it for hours at a time without any of those nasty >hand cramps or wrist stings, and after a week you get pretty good at using it. But >the first couple days you wonder why you ever bought the darn thing.. >It's like a little dream come true.. It's like getting a icy cool glass of crystal >clear water in the middle of a hot dry desert... It neutralizes a pile of the normal >tension levels associated with using the PC. [Reply or follow-up to this message] re: One Simple Solution for a Smooth running PC. Tuesday, May 3, 2005 at 2:42 am Posted by Dano (16 messages posted) prior to my first pc purchase in late 96 I swore that I wouldn't do it... Never saw the need. I was 33 yo then. It has progressively gotten worse overtime with either equip becomeing obsolete within minutes of walking out the door or hackers or KIDS screwing up settings... lol. I find now almost 10 yrs later, that I still need a 3-dimensonal file cabinet, I still write with a pen/pencil/magic marker and paper.... My actual MAINTANCE time for computers is up around 60% of all or any puter time on. By the time I am done with the maintance, Im too tired and bored to be the "get more done" or be "more productive" peep with the lil plastic box that just sorta sits there until ya bump the mouse! "Where do I want to go today"..... How about Pluto! I can with MS PAINT!!!! ;) roflmao.... dano :) there are NO simple solutions! always willing to learn and to help others do the same! 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