System slow

[Jeff]

Hi. My dad's PC has recently slowed down. We have kept it clean of viruses
and that other type of malware (well, we ran McAfee and Spybot). What else
can we do to speed up the system?

I want to try defragmenting the system, which I know how to do, and cleaning
the registry, which I don't know how to do.

I am reading reviews from a site called PCDoctorReviews.com. Is this a
reputable site or are they leading me to virusware disguised as registry
cleaners? This website's best recommendations are products called RegClean,
RegCure, RegistryBot and RegistryFix. How do I know if these are valid
cleaners or virusware?

So my questions are really two-fold:
1) What kind of things can I do to speed up the computer?
2) What are good registry cleaners? (Oh, and also, what if they screw up the
registry?)

Thanks for your help,
-Jeff

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hi. My dad's PC has recently slowed down. We have kept it clean of viruses
and that other type of malware (well, we ran McAfee and Spybot). What else
can we do to speed up the system?

I want to try defragmenting the system, which I know how to do, and cleaning
the registry, which I don't know how to do.

I am reading reviews from a site called PCDoctorReviews.com. Is this a
reputable site or are they leading me to virusware disguised as registry
cleaners? This website's best recommendations are products called RegClean,
RegCure, RegistryBot and RegistryFix. How do I know if these are valid
cleaners or virusware?

So my questions are really two-fold:
1) What kind of things can I do to speed up the computer?
2) What are good registry cleaners? (Oh, and also, what if they screw up the
registry?)

There are no good registry cleaners. I strongly recommend that you
stay away from all of them. 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.

 

[Al]

OK, so Registry cleaning programs are snake-oil. But cleaning the Registry
surely must help the system's response time. If you re-install Windows and
all of the programs (which I don't feel like doing), the system is markedly
faster.

What else, then, can I do to speed up this computer, which is really, really
slow? I do not want to re-install Windows, and I will defragment it. As
stated, McAfee and Spybot report that the system is clean.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

OK, so Registry cleaning programs are snake-oil. But cleaning the Registry
surely must help the system's response time.

No, it doesn't, not at all.

If you re-install Windows and
all of the programs (which I don't feel like doing), the system is markedly
faster.

Only if your system is poorly maintained, and reinstalling fixes other
problems.

What else, then, can I do to speed up this computer, which is really, really
slow? I do not want to re-install Windows, and I will defragment it. As
stated, McAfee and Spybot report that the system is clean.

These days, slow systems are most often the result of malware
infection. I can't know that that's your problem, of course, but if
you find it "really, really slow," it's certainly something to
suspect, regardless of what security software you run. If I were in
your shoes, I would start troubleshooting by going to MVP Malke's
malware removal site at
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware and
following the instructions there.

 

[-Phil Clemence]

OK, so Registry cleaning programs are snake-oil. But cleaning the Registry
surely must help the system's response time. If you re-install Windows and
all of the programs (which I don't feel like doing), the system is
markedly
faster.

What else, then, can I do to speed up this computer, which is really,
really
slow? I do not want to re-install Windows, and I will defragment it. As
stated, McAfee and Spybot report that the system is clean.

First thing to avoid having to reinstall Windows, is to NOT USE ANY registry
repair programs.
I have tried them in the past, and the most recent was Registry Mechanic
from PC Tools.
I backed up my drive with Acronis TrueImage.
Then I loaded Registry Mechanic and played with it for a while, just looking
through the errors, etc.
I let it back up my registry, then let it optimize my registry. I noticed no
problems.
I backed up my drive again with TrueImage.
Then I tried to actually use Registry Mechanic to clean up some invalid
entries.
After a while I noticed a problem. I think i noticed two problems, actually
within a few days.
I restored the registry from the backup it made and after another two weeks
I knew for sure that my computer was screwed.
I fooled around for another week or so after that trying to fix minor
things - nothing too terrible - but i lost the ability to play many files in
WMP(and never did fix that) and the worst thing was blue screen of death
occuring randomly when before, the only time that ever happened was
(occasionally but consistantly) in playing BF1942
That computer had been running WinXP for about 5 years (or six?- i forget)
and maybe 300 programs installed and removed - large ones small ones,
cracked ones bought ones - no matter , recording music and video, playing
everything from Heretic to Battlefield 2 ,which should not have run well at
all on an AMD 1.4 Gig.
I barely had a glitch i could not fix.
The only way i fixed Registry Mechanic's work was to restore from the
TrueImage backup.
I paid money for that program hoping to speed up that ancient install. I had
done some other things myself and keep it streamlined as i can running all I
do on it.
Well, i bought a new computer a few months later and that freed me up to
reinstall WinXP on the old one.
It runs fine, not like my new one, but I don't think any faster than it did
after the 5 years it did before.
I may manually edit the regisrty, as I have in the past, but no 'cleaners'
for me.
Norton Ghost was my old method of preventing problems back in the day.
Some program to clone your drive is really the best way to go before any
fooling around.
I have no idea why registry programs have problems- maybe they have a hard
time dealing with an old wacky registry as must have been with my computer,
but at least the prog could leave alone what it doesn't understand. I really
wish i could trust them - it would be nice to fix little things that slow
loading, etc.
Whatever you decide, start by backing things up. First manually back up any
files you have spent time creating (documents, pictures, etc, etc) if you
don't get a cloning program. What is 5 hours of searching and copying
compared with the hundreds you may have spent on creating?
Why the long reply? To delay you a couple of minutes longer from screwing up
your registry ! LOL!
Good luck!
-Phil C

 

[jake]

I would agree with everyone else here and say stay away from reg cleaners
I've tried them as a test to see if it would speed boot times up and it
doubled.The biggest thing thats going to slow your computer down is if you
have too many programs running at one time.(msconfig)if you want even more
speed get more ram.Disk defrag,disk cleanup will speed things up a bit.And
for god sakes dont be one of them guys that leave there computers on for days
at a time and complain that its running slow.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I would agree with everyone else here and say stay away from reg cleaners
I've tried them as a test to see if it would speed boot times up and it
doubled.The biggest thing thats going to slow your computer down is if you
have too many programs running at one time.

Actually, how *many* programs you have running at once isn't relevant.
The important thing is *which* programs are running. Some programs can
affect performance severely; others may use so little memory and CPU
cycles that their effect is so small as to be completely unnoticeable.

Moreover, even if a big program is running, if it is not being
actively *used*, it may have little or no effect on performance.
That's because it's not using CPU cycles if it's being used, and
because it quickly gets paged out and is not even using RAM.

if you want even more speed get more ram.

That is also not necessarily true. Despite the many people who
continually repeat "the more memory the better," that's true only up
to a point. Once you have enough RAM so that the system is no longer
paging, any additional RAM does next to nothing for you. At what point
that happens depends on what apps you run, but for most people that
point is somewhere between 256-512MB, and except for those doing
something like editing videos or large photographic images, is almost
always no greater than 1GB.

Disk defrag,disk cleanup will speed things up a bit.And
for god sakes dont be one of them guys that leave there computers on for days
at a time and complain that its running slow.

I leave my computer on for days at a time, but don't complain that
it's running slow, because it isn't.