Fix your PC with ten maintenance tools

jjones | Guides | 14/01/2009 15:02pm
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1 A tidy Registry

If you’ve had a Windows Vista installation on the go for a while, it’s likely that your maze-like Registry contains a large amount of spurious and irrelevant information. Windows Vista will generally be a lot happier and faster if this information is as streamlined as possible, so a program that’s designed to remove such detritus can really speed up the process. It also means you won’t risk breaking everything by diving in there yourself. Wise Registry Cleaner is an excellent choice, available from www.wisecleaner.com.

2 Remove useless files

While we’re on the subject of Wise’s packages, another to consider is Wise Disk Cleaner. It scrubs long-redundant temporary files from your hard drive, often left there by application installers and web browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox, in order to free additional space. We didn’t get much back on our test machine – a couple of hundred megabytes is a drop in the ocean on a 250GB drive – but if you’re using a laptop with restricted storage space this could come in very handy. There’s a secondary bonus, too: the fewer files there are on your hard drive, the faster your antivirus or anti-spyware scans will be. Like Wise Registry Cleaner, Wise Disk Cleaner is free to use, but with certain ‘pro’ features disabled.

3 Destroy spyware

Malicious and unwanted software makes its way onto most machines sooner or later. It pays to hunt down these programs once in a while, as they can sap system resources all the way from internet bandwidth to RAM and CPU time. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (www.malwarebytes.com) is our favourite tool since it’s fast to search with it and generally very effective, but it’s worth running several packages to cover as many bases as possible. Check out Ad-Aware (www.lavasoft.com) and SUPERAntiSpyware (www.superantispyware.com) as well.

NO MORE MALWARE It pays to scan your computer for malware on a regular basis.

4 Forget fragmentation

The more you write to your hard drive the more scattered everything becomes. It may look as if your files are neatly tucked away in folders, but in reality they’re sitting in physically separate places, filling any gaps left by deleted files. This means your drive has to waste time seeking each part out. Windows Vista can already do a pretty good job of defragmentation, but the excellent JkDefrag (www.kessels.com) finds chunks of data to shuffle even after a full run of the built-in tool.

5 Remove ‘free gifts’

Just bought a PC from a big-name manufacturer? Somewhat annoyed that it’s full of intrusive ‘bonus’ software that you don’t want or need? We’ve all been there. Thankfully, there’s a program to help. PC Decrapifier (www.pcdecrapifier.com) is an application specifically designed to get rid of the bloat that certain system builders install – everything from unwanted 30-day trials of software you won’t use to cleverly enforced web-browser branding is easily removed. The package was originally directed at Dell machines only, but it’s been expanded to run the gamut of preinstalled rubbish.

6 Perform a tune up

Totalidea’s TweakVI (www.totalidea.com) is a package filled with cunning and obscure tweaks that can significantly speed up your day-to-day Windows Vista operations. Although the free edition is missing much of the advanced functionality of the paid-for package, it does include hundreds of minor alterations that make your PC run faster both under the hood and in terms of your own efficiency. Be wary though – you’ll have to pay attention during the installation process to avoid installing additional sponsored packages.

7 Use what’s built in

Windows Vista includes better tools than ever to keep your system in tip top shape. It pays to keep an eye on the Windows Experience Index – with any luck, you’ll be able to push some of these scores up after using the Disk Defragmenter and Disk Cleanup tools, both located in Control Panel > System and Maintenance. You can also switch off indexing, which will slow down searches but improve overall performance. Just right-click your C: drive, choose Properties, then uncheck Index this drive for faster searching.

8 Stay up to date

The best way to keep Windows Vista in good shape is pretty obvious – just keep it up to date with the latest patches and fixes. It isn’t just security tweaks that get rolled out with Microsoft’s updates: fixes for flaws in its internal sprockets trickle down too, which can help prevent crashes and slowdowns. Make sure you have automatic updates switched on by going to the Control Panel, opening the Security section, and clicking Turn automatic updating on or off.

9 Do it all at once!

There’s nothing that says you have to install a host of different packages. We’re trying to streamline Windows, not add mounds of software to it! Glary Utilities (www.glaryutilities.com) is the best jack-of-all-tr
ades package we know of. It does an incredible amount, from advanced disk management and cleaning to constant system monitoring, and managing your RAM and processes so that Windows Vista runs at peak efficiency.

COMPLETE TOOLKIT Fix and optimise your system with this fantastic all-in-one toolkit.

10 A good defence

Don’t forget that Windows Vista has its own built-in spyware detection tool, Windows Defender, which will look after your PC and keep system-hogging spyware away. Double click the Windows Defender icon in the Control Panel to switch it on.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Guides. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.