PCTips Box

Slow computer getting you down? Wish you could speed up your system so that games won’t crawl by like a slide show permanently set to slow? Well look no further! I shall share five easy steps that you can take to improve your system’s speed! Most of them are free of charge, and all of them should have some effect on your system. So without further ado, we begin with:

1. Remove spyware and adware from your system. Have you noticed recently that ads seem to pop up whenever you go to a Web page? Or that Internet speeds are about that of diseased livestock? Your system’s probably chock full of spyware. What to do? Well, thankfully there are several things you can do. First, download either Spybot-S&D or Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware, and run it. This should remove most if not all of the spyware and adware on your system. Neither of these are particularly robust, however, so we move on to: (more…)

Following the availability of Windows Vista SP1, Microsoft is now offering additional resources tailored on the service pack. Case in point: Windows Performance Tools Kit, version 4.1.1. The Windows Performance Tools Kit is a set of performance analysis tools designed to integrate seamlessly with both Vista SP1 as well as Windows Server 2008 SP1/RTM. On April 1, 2008, Microsoft updated Windows Performance Tools Kit to version 4.1.1, permitting system and application performance analysis for the latest versions of Microsoft’s server and client operating systems. According to Microsoft, the tools are aimed at a select group of users from driver and application developers to hardware manufacturers and systems builders interested in testing the performance of Vista SP1 and Windows Sever 2008. (more…)

The Windows Experience Index Score was introduced in Windows Vista and used to give you a good idea of the capabilities of a computer. You can use a computer’s Experience Index base or sub score to help determine if it’s what you need when purchasing a new computer.

The Experience Index Score rates your computer’s components performance from 1 to 5.9 with 1 being the worst performing and 5.9 being the best. The score’s benchmarks were established when Windows Vista was released.

Base Score Explained

The base score represents the overall performance of your system as a whole, based on the capabilities of different parts of your computer, including RAM, CPU, hard disk, general graphics performance on the desktop, and 3-D graphics capability. (more…)

Firefox may be my browser of choice but there are times when it is REALLY slow, so slow in fact that I am sorely tempted to defect to Opera or even gasp Safari!

It’s sometimes even worse when you’re opening up Firefox. You click on that little Fox icon and it sits there thinking “hmmm….he wants me to start up…will I or won’t I? Let’s think about it for a few minutes”. Meanwhile you’re sitting there gnashing your teeth and flirting with the idea of walking on the wild side with Flock.

But you don’t have to wail and despair any more! During a little stroll through SourceForge, I found an interesting program called Firefox Preloader which was short on technical details but long on prospects. It claims to be able to “improve Firefox’s start-up time”. (more…)

I tend to be wary of programs that purport to make computers go faster, fix problems and so on. The vast majority of them are worthless snake oil. I’m also a bit suspicious of Russian software – they’ve still got a reputation for dodgy programs and scams and anything that comes from a company called Loonies is bound to set the alarm bells ringing so Actual Booster doesn’t get off to a very promising start.

Nevertheless, after giving it a fairly thorough road test I can tell you that Actual Booster really does liven things up a bit. It’s also free, and as far as I can see there’s no iffy content and it doesn’t try to phone home. (more…)

If there is one bloated and unnecessary service that you should immediately disable, it’s definitely the Indexing Service built into Windows XP. The idea behind the Indexing Service is that you can search for files more quickly if it is enabled. The indexing service uses a lot of CPU cycles and RAM, which slows down applications you use on a daily basis. Assuming you spend more time using applications more than you spend searching for files, chances are you’ll benefit a lot by disabling the Indexing Service.

To disable the Indexing Service go to Start –> Administrative Tools –> Services. You can see the Status says “Started,” and the Startup Type says “Automatic.” (more…)

The System tool in Control Panel uses currentspeed to do its reporting rather than maxspeed, but the System tool may display the wrong clock speed for the Central Processing Unit (CPU).

As of January 2002, Windows XP uses the currentspeed value rather than the maxspeed value because the maxspeed value was reporting inconsistent values.

After startup, the processor may not correctly reflect its correct speed until a program utilizes processor cycles.

The computer basic input/output system (BIOS) in some laptop computers may throttle the processor because of heat, load, power AC/DC. (more…)