Maximum Performance

[Brett]

I keep getting pop-ups from McAfee Virus Scan advertising
something called PCBoost which is designed to configure
my Windows system for maximum speed and performance. Is
this something that anyone has used or does Windows XP
have something built in to it's system to do the same
thing? I would like to get the best performance and
speed possible but would like someone else's opinion on
the software first.

 

[Matt Coy]

You will get the best performance and speed by not trying programs that
claim to do so. Winodws runs great by itself and oftens starts to slow down
the more other applications are installed and must interact with each other.

My tips for speed are defragment and check for spyware. For security, keep
a firewall up (the ICF should work fine for you), keep an updated virus
scanner running in the background, make sure Automatic Updates downloads the
latest security updates for Windows.

Defragment:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314848

Spyware:
http://www.safer-networking.org

Firewall:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/icf.asp

Free Virus Scanner:
http://www.grisoft.com

Automatic Updates:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/tips/maintain/autoupdates.asp