Tag: start

what is google updater and why its running?

March 09, 2008 by Jason

If you have ever downloaded any of the google products like picasa ,google screen saver etc, you may have googleupdater.exe running as a process in your system right now.

You can check by pressing “alt+ctrl+del” to open task manager and click the process tab.

What is googleupdater.exe?

GoogleUpdater.exe is a process which belongs to the Google.com’s range of Internet search facilities provided. This program is a non-essential , can be terminated unless suspected to be causing problems.

Why its running?

This process informs the user about the new version and updates for the all the google products installed. Read More»

Give Firefox an Adrenalin Shot with Preloader

March 08, 2008 by Jason

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”. Read More»

Can Loonies Speed Up Your PC?

February 29, 2008 by Jason

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. Read More»

A Head Start for XP

February 25, 2008 by Jason

If you have been following my Boot Camp series in The Daily Telegraph you may have see the recent three-parter on making XP look and behave like Vista (Poor Man’s Vista, archive on Bootlog and the DT Website) Here’s another utility to add to the mix, called Vista Start Menu Emulator. It does what it says, giving XP a Vista-like Start menu, complete with transparent borders and a Live Search facility. It’s looks and works well, though my only complaint is that I can’t seem to shift it from the default bottom right hand corner of the screen, which looks a bit odd if, like me you prefer to have your Taskbar down the right side of the screen. Read More»

Uninstalling Vista Product Keys Activates the Platform’s Kill Switch

February 21, 2008 by Jason

Windows Vista introduces a new tool on top of what its predecessor Windows XP had to offer in terms of dealing with licensing resources, from the product key to information related to the activation status of a machine. The Windows Software Licensing Management Tool can be accessed via the “slmg.vbs” command and will offer users the possibility to activate, rearm and display the activation status of Vista, but also to install and uninstall product keys. In this context, the “slmgr.vbs –upk” command, designed to uninstall a Windows Vista product key, may result on the Business and Enterprise SKUs of the operating system into the scraping of all the licensing information, synonymous with a lost activation status, and the transition of the platform into reduced functionality mode.

“After you run the slmgr.vbs –upk command on a Windows Vista-based computer, you cannot see the licensing information as expected. Additionally, the Windows Vista activation status is lost. Read More»

Start Me Up … Faster

December 22, 2007 by Jason

I recently noted that Vista has some interesting new behaviors regarding applications that are launched from the Startup folder. By default, their I/O priorities are throttled back for a total of one minute from launch. This is a good idea to keep lots of smaller or background-use applications from all starting up at once, but it doesn’t seem to be such a good idea if you try to boot an application like Outlook, which is by nature I/O intensive, by putting it in the Startup folder.

To that end, I tried a few experiments. I wrote a batch file to start up several major applications Outlook, Word, Windows Live Writer, AIM and at least one or two other things and put it into the Startup group. Between each program launch, I instigated a forced seven-second delay by using the CHOICE command (a sneaky trick I picked up from somewhere). I wanted to see if this would cause any difference in the amount of utilization or responsiveness. Read More»

Customize Command Prompt

November 06, 2007 by Jason

For power users Command Prompt is where you go to get work done quickly and efficiently. If you spend a lot of time using Command Prompt, why not customize the appearance and operation to your preferences? There are actually a few Command Prompt customizations that will make it more useful and good looking.

Just follow these steps to customize your Command Prompt:

1. Click on the Start Button and key in Command Prompt and hit Enter. Read More»

Speed up Aero by Disabling Minimize/Maximize

October 19, 2007 by Jason

Some performance increases have nothing to do with strain on hardware, or amount of processing. Sometimes, things are designed to take longer than they should, though only maybe 1/2 a second, but the end result to the user is a faster machine. This is one of those tweaks. Minimizing and maximizing does an animation. Watch closely. Pretty quick eh? Still, it does slow you down, and, really, what does it add to your experience? I am all about vanity and aesthetics, but this feature has got to go.

Relish in the fact you will be increasing your productivity by 0.2 seconds per minimize/maximize. Read More»

How Processor Speed Is Reported to a Computer

October 07, 2007 by Jason

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. Read More»

CheckDisk Runs On Every StartUp

July 04, 2007 by Jason

Here are some things you can try. Let it run completely once.
Then try this :
Run regedit
Edit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager
Change the BootExecute entry from:
autocheck autochk * /.
To:
autocheck autochk * Read More»