Keeping your computer Smooooooooth

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John Cartwright
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Keeping your computer Smooooooooth

Post by John Cartwright »

Well I just reformated and I love the feeling of a very clean and fast hard drive with only a few programs... very fast :)

I run a 80 gigz 7200 Maxtor Hdd
3.0 HT
1024 DDR 400 (single channel)


and in a month from now where I will only have around 50% of my harddrive filled at month, I notice a very large speed reduction. On average I have around 300mb of ram in use at any given idle moment, and 0% CPU usage. I was just wondering what do you guys do to keep your comp running as smooth and fast as possible. BTW, I defrag about once a month and update windows as much as possible
d3ad1ysp0rk
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Post by d3ad1ysp0rk »

100gig Western digital HD
600mhz Celeron
192mb RAM
16bit Onboard Video
etc.

Know what I do? Keep viruses/spyware off my computer and get rid of as many running processes as possible. It's all I can do and keep my sanity..

I hate being poor. lol
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nigma
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Post by nigma »

I'm definitely not an authority on the subject or someone with more than a little practical experience outside my own home on the subject. So take that into consideration when reading my advice.

On my primary desktop run winxp. I also run an antivirus & firewall program (norton for both) and update them whenever I can. One thing that I think can help is making all users but "administrator" non-administrators. Then using a non-administrator account to browse the web and chat. When logged on as the non-administrator you can't alter the list of programs set to run at startup without typing in the administrator password. Which of course prevents programs from being set to run at startup without your knowledge. When installing programs from a non-administrator account you just have to right-click and go to "Run As"
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phice
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Post by phice »

180gb -- 120gb 7200rpm, 60gb 7200rpm
AMD 2600
512mb DDR2100
256mb gfx5200
lots and lots of fans.
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Sema
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Post by Sema »

160gb 7200rpm,
Intel Prescot 2,8 S775
512mb DDR2 (PC533 or somthing like that)
128mb Radeon X600 XT

A little beast :P
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m3mn0n
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Post by m3mn0n »

-defrag often
-use a memory cleaner (FreeMem Std is good & free)
-use a spyware/adware remover (Adaware is good & free)
-use anti-virus (AVG Antivirus is good & free, but I use Panda which costs $)
-use a firewall (hardware and software...ZoneAlarm for software)

8)
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patrikG
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Post by patrikG »

Sami wrote:-defrag often
-use a memory cleaner (FreeMem Std is good & free)
-use a spyware/adware remover (Adaware is good & free)
-use anti-virus (AVG Antivirus is good & free, but I use Panda which costs $)
-use a firewall (hardware and software...ZoneAlarm for software)

8)
might just as well migrate to Linux then. No need for any of that (apart from the firewall, of course).
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m3mn0n
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Post by m3mn0n »

I did, but I need Flash/Photoshop so I still use XP a lot. :x
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John Cartwright
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Post by John Cartwright »

Sami wrote:I did, but I need Flash/Photoshop so I still use XP a lot. :x
:idea: Why not have a dual-boot? :P

Thanks for the tips, but im very persistant on my adware/spyware/virusses


I just its just the clutter of things that add up inevetably cause this slowness.. I would expect my specs to handle everything with optimal performance, maybe I should consider getting a 10 000rpm hdd :)
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patrikG
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Post by patrikG »

Phenom wrote:everything with optimal performance, maybe I should consider getting a 10 000rpm hdd :)
RPM isn't everything. Get a SATA drive, with 8MB cache with 7200 rpm. Fastest HD I've ever put in a computer. I'm using a Seagate (don't remember the model no).
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m3mn0n
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Post by m3mn0n »

Phenom wrote:
Sami wrote:I did, but I need Flash/Photoshop so I still use XP a lot. :x
:idea: Why not have a dual-boot? :P
I do. :wink:

Fedora Core 2 and Win XP are sharing my teeny tiny 15 GB drive at the moment.
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phpScott
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Post by phpScott »

alot of what has already been said as well as removing programs I don't use as that I find takes up real-estate . As well http://www.tweakxp.com has some pretty good suggestions for speeding up your xp based computer.
Last edited by phpScott on Mon Nov 01, 2004 9:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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irealms
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Post by irealms »

I have 04 2.8 800mhz bus
1gb dual channel ddr (400)
and one of those nice SATA drives mentioned by patrikg. :)

I just have to remember to defrag, check spyware and make sure only what i need is running. :) Works fine then, the hardest part is remembering to defrag.
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Post by AVATAr »

Thinkpad X30
30GB 7200rpm
768mb RAM
Dual boot
- Suse 9.1, kde 3.3 (95% of the time) - No virus, no spyware, no defrag....
- Win XP (for compatibility issues) - just waking up from SP2.
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Weirdan
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Post by Weirdan »

irealms wrote: Works fine then, the hardest part is remembering to defrag.
then set defrag as a sheduled task using windows sheduler. It's much like a cron on *nixes.
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