downtime
Nitro Member
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2006
- Messages
- 274
- Age
- 66
- Location
- Brunswick, Maine
After performing a backup...
Some basic best practices should include deleting the internet temporary files.
If you click the "delete all files" box you will also delete all your cookies so make sure you know all your passwords...
The swap file, which is the amount of drive space reserved for virtual memory can be changed in terms of size. By default Microsoft allows the swap file to grow and shrink as Microsoft deems necessary. You can set it to one static size and that will generally provide a marginal improvement in performance.
Downloading and running Ccleaner is a generally safe undertaking. It will eliminate a lot of problems (always have a backup first) and you may want to run the registry cleaner and ALWAYS make the suggested registry backup before running it. I have seen three passes of the cleaner needing to be made to eliminate all the problems. Then do a reboot.
I have not experienced any problems with the latest IE updates. I also use Google Chrome and Apple Safari (as well as IE) as these browsers are what the majority of my clients use.
Often all the add on programs we run take up memory space and in an older system with limited resources the slowdown can be quite significant.
After running Ccleaner and rebooting, a defragmentation would be a good thing to do. Cleaning out the crap first will provide additional drive space and that allows for a more thorough defragmentation process.
Since the system is older I do suggest starting a piggy bank for a replacement. I bought my wife a Gateway from Best Buy that had been discontinued, and despite the unpopular processor (one of those triple core AMDs), it had 4G of RAM and a 500G hard disk for $350..... It came with Vista Home Premium, 64bit edition.
I'm a geek so I had a version of Vista Ultimate, MS Office 2007 Enterprise, Expression Studio Suite, and Paintshop Pro Ultimate and I must admit that I am quite impressed with the performance of the system.
For myself I use an old and slow P4 of 2003 vintage and since I basically use system utilities, MS Office, and some accounting stuff, along with Vista Business, my system is more than fine for what I do for a living. However my wife's computer will simply run rings around mine even on simple tasks...
But... When looking at computers with 80G drives, or Windows 2000... It is realistically a better option to replace them with a newer model rather than start upgrading hard drives, memory, graphics or sound cards.... Sure it can be done but the time spent to get everything working not only the right way, but also make it reliable, is often significant in terms of hours spent searching for the correct drivers and updates, and then configuring the details of each component so problems do not present themselves as time goes on.
Some basic best practices should include deleting the internet temporary files.
If you click the "delete all files" box you will also delete all your cookies so make sure you know all your passwords...
The swap file, which is the amount of drive space reserved for virtual memory can be changed in terms of size. By default Microsoft allows the swap file to grow and shrink as Microsoft deems necessary. You can set it to one static size and that will generally provide a marginal improvement in performance.
Downloading and running Ccleaner is a generally safe undertaking. It will eliminate a lot of problems (always have a backup first) and you may want to run the registry cleaner and ALWAYS make the suggested registry backup before running it. I have seen three passes of the cleaner needing to be made to eliminate all the problems. Then do a reboot.
I have not experienced any problems with the latest IE updates. I also use Google Chrome and Apple Safari (as well as IE) as these browsers are what the majority of my clients use.
Often all the add on programs we run take up memory space and in an older system with limited resources the slowdown can be quite significant.
After running Ccleaner and rebooting, a defragmentation would be a good thing to do. Cleaning out the crap first will provide additional drive space and that allows for a more thorough defragmentation process.
Since the system is older I do suggest starting a piggy bank for a replacement. I bought my wife a Gateway from Best Buy that had been discontinued, and despite the unpopular processor (one of those triple core AMDs), it had 4G of RAM and a 500G hard disk for $350..... It came with Vista Home Premium, 64bit edition.
I'm a geek so I had a version of Vista Ultimate, MS Office 2007 Enterprise, Expression Studio Suite, and Paintshop Pro Ultimate and I must admit that I am quite impressed with the performance of the system.
For myself I use an old and slow P4 of 2003 vintage and since I basically use system utilities, MS Office, and some accounting stuff, along with Vista Business, my system is more than fine for what I do for a living. However my wife's computer will simply run rings around mine even on simple tasks...
But... When looking at computers with 80G drives, or Windows 2000... It is realistically a better option to replace them with a newer model rather than start upgrading hard drives, memory, graphics or sound cards.... Sure it can be done but the time spent to get everything working not only the right way, but also make it reliable, is often significant in terms of hours spent searching for the correct drivers and updates, and then configuring the details of each component so problems do not present themselves as time goes on.
