First of all, I hope you had a very happy Christmas, and that you have a very fruitful New Year.
I thought that before we delve into the inards of the Personal Computer you might be interested in some hopefully useful sites and FREE ( my favourite word ) software. In future, these will be identified as specific blogs. By the way, these will all refer to Microsoft Windows systems.
Anyway, let's get down and dusty.
Have you ever had the problem when you load the computer that it wants to check your disk nearly everytime and you wish you could stop it? If your disks are formatted to the NTFS file system - check by going to My Computer and just click once on the load drive, normally C:, then look at details box in lower left side - then click on START - RUN - then type in CMD and press enter. In the box that appears type:-
CHKNTFS /X C:.
This will stop it from checking your disc drive.
If you wish at anytime to get it checked then go the same way to CMD and this time type:-CHKDSK /R C:.
Does your computer take longer and longer to load? If so, this should help. There is a folder under the WINDOWS folder called PREFETCH. This where all the things that run on start up, programs, services etc are cached. When you load Windows, it looks in this folder to see what has already run on start up previously. It is quicker than trying to load each one individually. However, after a time this folder could contain programs etc that you used to use but have deleted. It then takes longer to find these programs, if they are no longer on your disk. What I do on a regular basis is to delete the contents of this folder - be careful not to delete the folder itself - and then reload. It takes a little longer this first time as it has to find these programs that normally load. It will not try to load those programs that it used to try and load but which are no longer there. Once the system has loaded, go to this folder and check that you have something in it. You should have at least a file called layout.ini. If there is no layout.ini then do the following:- Get to the CMD box once again and type RUNDLL32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks. This should then begin to fill this folder.
Wow, after all that we need some fun time. Ok, now some free programs etc to whet your appetite.
We hear in the media about these nasty little beggars called RootKits. How do you know if you have one at home? You go here to download an Anti RootKit program from Sophos, FREE of course. http://www.tinyurl.com/2pxghz.
Another free program is Internet Threat Meter. This is from our good friends at Symantec, or Norton as we know them. www.tinyurl.com/2xdbmm.
It is a sad age we live in today but without being paranoid, there are people out there just waiting to get us. When they do, it is nice to know that there are people who can help. I am talking of course about having your PC Hijacked and being used for nefarious means. What we say to these people is HIJACK THIS. Actually that is the name of this bit of software which will tell you what is going on in your system. You run it, then put it in a post to the people at http://forums.spywareinfo.com/. Anyway, download the software from www.tinyurl.com/jp5m4.
Are you interested in what is running on your system? then you need AutoRuns from Microsoft. www.tinyurl.com/3adktf.
Help clean out your system with HackCleaner. http://www.geekclaw.com/ will get you there.
Want to check your download speed? then go to http://myspeed.visualware.com/.
Concerned about spyware? then you need SpyWare Terminator from http://www.spywareterminator.com/.
Wow, all that sounds like Brain Explosion, I don't know about you but it does my head in. I think I need a lie down, see you next time.
David
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