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Tip 1
This time I'm going to make your PCs run as fast as they can, let's squeeze that CPU and
OS of yours!
First look at the bottom right corner of your Windows screen, do you see all those icons
at the left of the Windows clock?
Those icons are the "some" of the programs that make your computer crawl because
the take MEMORY & RESOURCES, two important and limited things for Windows. In the best
scenario you WON'T need most of them, the only true need for some of them are Mouse
Utilities, Joystick Managers and some tweak utilities. If you check them closely you will
notice that most of them are reminders, schedulers, auto launchers and some useless crap.
To start the clean-up process right click the START button in the Windows task bar and
select "Open", double click PROGRAMS; STARTUP. There you will see a list of some
of the programs that run when you boot up your computer, select the program or programs
that you don't want Windows to launch when it starts up and press the DELETE key in your
keyboard, they're gone! If you are not sure what to delete let me give you some
recommendations of useless crap: Find Fast; "Any" Reminder; "Any"
Registration; Office StartUp; Adobe Gamma Loader; After Dark; AllAdvantage. Now, that
takes care of the "normal" start up, let's go to the tricky one. Just remember,
if you need some of the following programs you can still disable them at the start up
process, if you run them frequently, like ICQ, AllAdvantage, GetRight, Zone Alarm, the SB
Live Launcher, etc., create a shortcut in your desktop or in your Quick Bar instead, you
don't need them to take up memory and resources that you need when you are not using them.
I'll explain the Win 98 way this week and the Win 95 way in the next update.
If you have Windows 98 original or SE you'll have access to a nifty new utility that M$
included with the 98 version of the OS, it's called the "System Information". To
open it go to START; PROGRAMS; ACCESSORIES; SYSTEM TOOLS and click in the System
Information icon.
There you will find not only information about your computer but a set of useful tools
that I will describe when the time comes, but for the speed up process let's concentrate
in just one of them, in the "Tools" bar open the "System Configuration
Utility". Now go to the last tab "Startup" and you will see the list of
programs that are running when you start up your computer, believe it or not most of the
things listed there are just "trash" programs that a lot of software companies
put there to remind you to use their program or other unused stuff. The best thing about
this utility is that you can "disable" a start up program by removing it's check
mark and if you want it back later you can just open the Utility and mark it back! The
ones that can be safely "disabled" here are: LoadPowerProfile, both of them,
unless you have a laptop, in that case just uncheck one of them; ICQ Monitor; 3dfx Tools;
Scheduler; Keyboard Managers; "Any" Compaq crap; HP Printer Utilities; others;
and if you have Norton Antivirus you can uncheck 2 of the 3 startup options, leaving
"Navw32.exe", that's the one that runs the program. The ones that MUST stay are:
Task bar Display Controls; ScanRegistry; SystemTray; Tweak UI; others, like the mouse
utilities and joystick managers, are optional.
Now click OK and let it restart your computer and feel "some" speed.
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