For you Windows users...

[fritz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dawg52 Thanks for the link. Not to hijack the thread, but I have a question. My Dell notebook locked up the other day when trying to boot up. Would not let me go into safe mode or do anything. Corrupt files I suppose as I have had to turn the pc off when locking up on other occasions. I will admit, I'm not very computer savvy. I ended up formatting the disk, reloading the OS and drivers. And then updated all my drivers from Dell's website. Amazingly, the laptop is running better than ever and boots up quickly. My question is......what clean up utilities should I be doing on a regular basis to help prevent corrupt files? I have always had anti-virus software stay up to date and run scans regularly. But have not done a good job of basic pc maintenance.

I use Glary Utilities, and Advanced System Care for one click clean up. They both offer other features you might find helpful (and are freeware). Glary works great and doesn't have the annoying upgrade pest (buy me) found on ASC's free version. IObit Security can be run with AVG - I have Windows Vista. Also might want to look at pc-decrapifier (also freeware). Removes programs similar to the control panel function.

[Tesaje]

Quote:

Originally Posted by winger I finally got tired of fighting with Vista. And I'm not going to spend $100+ for Win7, given my Vista issues. I'm using Ubuntu 9.10 and Vista in a dual-boot system. I had to keep Vista for Quicken, and I have a few months left on a one year contract with an online backup service that only supports windows. The Linux world doesn't yet have anything that compares to Quicken (or Microsoft Money). I'm also using Mint right now, and it is getting close. I need to have accounts within other accounts...... I had some issues with Ubuntu early on, but they were caused by me just rushing in and not doing any homework. That happens often.......................

I started to check out moving to ubuntu but didn't get very far due to not wanting to spend the time building a new system. Check out Moneydance linux. It can do subaccounts & the files can interchanged with windoze versions. But then I had been unhappy with quicken for awhile...

[winger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tesaje I started to check out moving to ubuntu but didn't get very far due to not wanting to spend the time building a new system. Check out Moneydance linux. It can do subaccounts & the files can interchanged with windoze versions. But then I had been unhappy with quicken for awhile...

I had to reformat my laptop HD and reinstall Vista three times this year before I finally decided to try Ubuntu. I'm getting good at it.

This morning, I tried to print a Quicken report out of the Vista partition. Quicken aborted with a Windows error.

I'm not trying to do this with some exotic homemade PC. It's an off-the-shelf Dell Inspiron 1525. No hardware changes.

I've read good reviews of Moneydance. I'm ready to spend the $29.95 for it.

[winger]

Sorry for hijacking the thread.

[REWahoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by winger Sorry for hijacking the thread.

Staying on topic is so 20th Century...

[CuppaJoe]

Did someone say, "bacon"?

[Nords]

My nine-month-old Dell Vista machine took 90 seconds to boot, and Soluto claims that it managed to cut that down to 74 seconds. Got rid of (or delayed) 16 applications, including the three seconds wasted on TiVo's server.

Interestingly the longest boot application is AVGFree at 16 seconds, which is as long as the next four Windows processes.

We'll see how this all works out when I reboot next month.

[TromboneAl]

I use the free app Startup Control Panel to manually examine or change the list of things that start automatically.

Mike Lin's Home Page

[RonBoyd]

This has been a very enlightening thread for me personally.

First, I have had Soluto installed for a week and have re-booted six times during that period (normal SOP). While the program didn't save me a lot of boot-up time, I found some memory robbing programs that I didn't know about. Starting with the statistics:

Prior to installing Soluto, I had 96 programs start, taking 4:58. After Installation, and adjustments made:

Required Programs -- 56 Apps - 2:14
Potentially Removable -- 26 Apps - 1:43.2
No-Brainer -- 1 App - :4.6

For a total of 83 Apps taking 4:13 to Boot. (Eliminated 13 Apps and 35.7 seconds.)

In fairness to Soluto, I had to re-install my original Boot-up controlling program, which controls the timing, and it runs at the same time as Soluto. (The reason was Soluto prevented "Gadgets" from starting during Boot-up.)

Bottom line: I am impressed with the program and highly recommend it. Not that it saved me any boot-up time but because of the basic principle of the thing -- it is self-adjusting and, even better, self-adjusting based on knowledge learned from all users of the program. A wonderful use of the Internet.

In addition to the joy from Soluto, I also discovered, through this thread, that Moneydance was re-written. This is one of the programs that I considered back when Microsoft abandoned Money. At the time, I decided against Moneydance because it was as light-weight as Quicken. My solution was to program Money so that it would retain the ability to update the Portfolio data and continue to use it. (This article explains the procedure for those that are interested.) Anyway, that would have taken considerable time and resources so I have been putting it off -- my Money subscription will end sometime in July.

Imagine the thrill I got when looking at Moneydance and finding that they did a complete re-write and, now, is exactly what I have been looking for.

While I am on the subject, iTunes was another program that was completely undesirable, in my opinion. My solution was "MediaMonkey." My song library, BTW, has 7,426 listings -- and I still have about 300 vinyl LPs to convert.

My photograph collection is also quite large (over 52,000 and I use Portfolio -- if anyone cares.

[Trek]

After I installed it today, I just get a screen saying it's down for maintenance and will be back shortly. Been like that all day. So now I have another useless piece of software on my computer I have to remove. Great.

[RonBoyd]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trek After I installed it today, I just get a screen saying it's down for maintenance and will be back shortly. Been like that all day. So now I have another useless piece of software on my computer I have to remove. Great.

And, worst of all, it gobbled up your Avatar.

[harley]

My DD was complaining that my old XP PC that I gave her was taking forever to boot up. When I was in town last week I tried it out. It took 12 minutes to boot. Poked around in it for a few minutes then used MSConfig to take ITunes out of the startup process. Booted in 3 minutes! Steve Jobs is screwing with Bill Gates again.

[walkinwood]

Another article highlighting Soluto
Novelties - Soluto Offers a Program to Fix Those Irritating PC Delays - NYTimes.com

[Nords]

After a little research on a couple mystery .exe files, I was finally able to rid this Dell PC (with its networked HP laser printer) of the Dell remote-support utility and the HP printer's "user support group" program.

These were programs that seem to have defied MSCONFIG's attempts to get rid of them. It shaved another 10 seconds off the boot. More importantly, who knows what those two programs were reporting to their respective mother ships.

[Bimmerbill]

I use MSCONFIG too. But then again, I miss command line DOS.

[scrabbler1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nords After a little research on a couple mystery .exe files, I was finally able to rid this Dell PC (with its networked HP laser printer) of the Dell remote-support utility and the HP printer's "user support group" program. These were programs that seem to have defied MSCONFIG's attempts to get rid of them. It shaved another 10 seconds off the boot. More importantly, who knows what those two programs were reporting to their respective mother ships.

That Dell Support facility was a big nuisance for a friend's PC which was booting up slowly and running slowly and hanging all the time. I had to uninstall the damn thing because MSCONFIG couldn't stop it from running all the time at start-up. It was quite the hog of system resources.

[RonBoyd]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nords These were programs that seem to have defied MSCONFIG's attempts to get rid of them. It shaved another 10 seconds off the boot. More importantly, who knows what those two programs were reporting to their respective mother ships.

Many years ago (5-6), I decided to never purchase another HP product for this very reason... haven't missed them a bit.

An update: I decided to install Soluto on my laptop. I went from a 6:25 boot time to 3:30 after adjusting. I still have 63 programs start at boot but got rid of 23. This may sound like an inordinate number of programs but a lot of them are security and network programs -- the laptop, for instance, belongs to two different networks -- depending on where I am (bricks & sticks or RV). Media Center is used extensively on the laptop and SageTV on the desktop.

I am now installing it on the other two machines. (Windows 7 & Windows XP)

I am very pleased with this program. (Now, watch that come back to bite me.)

[HFWR]

I have the Kentucky version, called Win-ders...

Don't care so much about boot time, but do hate all the useless crap running in the background, gobbling memory and CPU.

[Bimmerbill]

Whenever I get a pre-bought PC/Laptop, the first thing I do is reinstall the OS. Gets rid of all those pesky add on programs.

I almost always build my own PCs, but can't do that to laptops.

[TromboneAl]

When I reinstalled, I made drive images that I could later come back to. But it turns out that doesn't help that much, since I often add or remove apps, or change settings. IOW, it would be a big bother to restore back to an earlier state.