Windows XP Slow Startup?

My Windows XP Professional Computer was running very slow. I know I have added a lot of junk to it over the past six months but still I thought it was toooooo slow.
I am an IT professional so I know several tricks of the trade like defraging the hard drive, making sure the swap file is correct, making sure I always have at the very least 30% free disk space for the OS to move things around in, etc.None of my normal routine seemed to help so I do what all IT people do I began my research with Google.
One great source of information that I have found while doing my research is a set of E books with the Title Computer Secrets Unleashed!
This E book is jam packed with information that will help you get the most from your PC or Laptop.

I will briefly go over the major points of what I discovered during my research.
Windows XP is designed to boot up within 30 seconds. Of course any additional software / services that you install will add time to the boot.

According to one source I read it could take up to 2 minutes if you have lots of software and many services running. Of course the CPU speed and other system components have an effect as well.

During my research I read all the usual things like a symptom of spy-ware and viruses is a Windows XP slow start-up. BTW many people recommend Kaspersky anti-virus. Personally I have had very good results with the free version of AVG.

You can read more about AVG here
http://soho-411.com/soho-intro/soho_basics/freeav/

If your computer just slowed down after visiting a site that claims to do a free scan then you are probably infected with some type of malware. You can learn how to almost instantly remove Malware here http://soho-411.com/helpdesk/removing-malware/

OK. So the other factor we all think about is RAM. Random Access Memory. This is where your computer stores all the data it is working with. RAM is much faster than the hard drive but in the old days it was very expensive so it was kept to a minimum. Now days RAM is much less expensive. You should have at least 1gig of RAM these days.

The second major cause of a Windows XP Slow Startup (After spyware infection) would be all the services that get installed on your computer over time. These services can be installed as part of programs and they may still linger after the program is uninstalled. Some cool widgets we find on the internet like Weather Bug also install services that are always checking the parent server on the internet to see if there is new weather news for you. Also software like Browser tool bars, Adobe updater, java updater, and many more all install services that check the internet to see if there are updates for the software.

Sometimes you can also have a corrupted registry. I feel that the registry is the Third major cause of Windows XP Slow Startup. Other experts may disagree but the registry constantly grows. It rarely shrinks. It takes time to load all those services we mentioned and it also takes time to load the registry. In any case the registry is written to when new programs are installed and it is not always properly cleaned up when the program is uninstalled. I find this happens often with trial software that people install and then uninstall when the trial expires. So the registry really might not be corrupted but it might be really cluttered with unneeded entries that interfere with other applications.

Remember the E book I told you about
Computer Secrets Unleashed!
I found this book after quite a lot of research and I wish I would have found this E book before I went to all the trouble.

I hope you check the book out and purchase it for your SOHO environment. You will save tons of money by not having to hire a computer person every time something happens.

Is your Computer Slow?

Removing Malware

What Prompted this Repost of an Older Post.
I am an IT manager and no matter how hard I try to protect my users there is always a new threat. Sometimes it is a new virus and sometimes it is a Malware or other scam. If there is not a dangerous threat to combat then there is always some bandwidth issue or other nuisance my users are informing me about.
What can be done? Well besides virus protection, firewalls, and other best practice steps I have found that education is a very good defense. Most of my users can recognize an e-mail scam or e-mail carrying an attachment with a virus.
So I believe that in addition to trying to tell the SOHO community about cool open source and free software I should also be doing my best to educate.
Click to Download AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
Click to Download Microsoft® Windows® Malicious Software Removal Tool (KB890830)

Removing Malware

is one of the most annoying problems users face when browsing the internet? I have found that occasionally no matter how careful you are you will eventually stumble upon or be redirected to a site that serves up malware.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“Malware, short for malicious software, is software designed to infiltrate a computer
system without the owner’s express consent. The expression is a general term used by
computer professionals to mean a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive,
or annoying software or program code.
The term “computer virus” is sometimes used as a
catch-all phrase to include all types of malware, including true
viruses.” informed consent.

OK so the anti-virus software should stop and prevent this right? Well it does in many cases but there are times when a sneaky web site will try to trick you into installing software or even make it look like your computer AV software has detected a virus and is informing you of it. You are asked to click OK to remove the virus or threat and instead you are really installing the software. At this point the popups start. You are being blackmailed at this point to pay some fee to have the malware removed. The software says that you need to pay in order to activate the software to remove the threat. In reality you are being told that the popups will only stop if you pay the ransom. Yes, your computer is actually being held in ransom. The popups are actually so bad that you cannot even use your computer any longer.

So what is a quick fix?

The first line of defense should be your Anti Virus software. Secondly, if you do get this malware there is a feature in Windows XP and Windows 7 called “Windows System Restore. This feature lets you roll back the computer to the way it was before you got the malware.

If you have XP or windows 7 you can check so make sure the system restore feature is enabled. By default it should be enabled.

For Windows XP click on start then right click on ‘My Computer’ and select properties. When the properties window appears select the system restore tab. Make sure the box that says ‘Turn off System Restore’ is unchecked . Also make sure the disk space usage slider bar is set to Max. See picture below.

Finally select OK. Now you can rest in the secure knowledge that you can roll back your system state at any time.

If in the future you notice you have malware operating be sure to restore your system state to a few days in the past. This trick has saved many hours of work for my IT Helpdesk Team.

1. To use System Restore to restore Windows XP to a previous state, follow these steps:
2. Log on to Windows as Administrator.
3. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click System Restore. System Restore starts.
4. On the Welcome to System Restore page, click Restore my computer to an earlier time (if it is not already selected), and then click Next.
5. On the Select a Restore Point page, click the most recent system restore point in the On this list, click a restore point list, and then click Next.
6. Note A System Restore message may appear that lists configuration changes that System Restore will make. Click OK.
7. On the Confirm Restore Point Selection page, click Next. System Restore restores the previous Windows XP configuration, and then restarts the computer.
8. Log on to the computer as Administrator. The System Restore Restoration Complete page is displayed.
9. Click OK.
10. If you successfully restored your computer to a previous state, and the computer is performing as it should be, you are finished.

Steps 1 – 10 above were taken from the Support.Microsoft.com site at this link.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306084

Save this link to this Post for future reference: http://wp.me/pRk6M-3L

Please leave comments about your experiences and tell us of any good Malware removal tools so we can share with all our SOHO users.

If you Hate Malware Join our mailing list

- I Hate Malware -

We will send you an e-mail whenever we have a new solution for removing or preventing malware.

To be added to the I Hate Malware mailing list.
Please make sure you enter all of the information

First Name, Last Name, and E-mail Address are all required. Thank you.

Defrag your hard drive

If your Computer is slow you might want to defrag your hard drive

As you use your computer reading and writing files. Creating, copying, moving and deleting documents. Your hard drive starts to become disorganized. Your computer’s operating system tries to keep files readily available but in it’s hast it allows the files to be fragmented. This causes your hard drive to need to work hard to reassemble the files to present then to your computer’s operating system so they can be displayed to you. You can think of this like a messy desk. At first when you keep everything out in the open it is faster to find what you need. However, when enough things get shuffled around on your desk you have to search for individual papers to reassemble them into the report or other document you want.

The software your computer uses to defragment your hard organized the individual pieces of a file back into one contiguous whole. The software does this for all the files that can manage and afterward tour computer is faster because it no longer has to wait so long for the hard drive to retrieve the information you want.

If you decide to defrag your hard drive you will find that it is a very easy task. However, the first time you defrag or if it has been a very long time since your last defrag it might take a long time. Just be patient and let the computer do it’s thing. Once the defrag is started you can even minimize the program and continue working as usual albeit slower than normal.

In order to defrag a hard drive on Windows7 navigate to ‘My Computer’ Right click on the drive you are interested in defragmenting and select ‘Properties’ and you will see something like this:

Next select the ‘Tools’ Tab and you will see something like this:

Next Select the Defragment now… button and the following screen will appear:

 If you select Analyze disk you can see the status of your hard drive. If you select Defragment disk it will analyze the disk and begin to defragment it. You can even schedule the defragment process to run on a schedule.

Once you select the defragment disk button just sit back and let the computer do it’s thing.

So you have decided to purchase a new laptop or PC. Perhaps you even decided to purchase one of the laptops we recommended here: Low Cost PC Laptops.
You are not alone. I have recently gone through a migration to a new laptop myself. With all the data we store on our computers these days it is no longer a trivial matter to migrate to a new computer.
  There is an excellent article titled “The Great Migration” written by Anthony Verducci in the May 2010 Edition of Popular Mechanics. I am a little disappointed that I did not have an opportunity to read this article prior to my own migration. It would have saved me a lot of effort.
  When it comes to personal computers most of us do not consider planning anything we do. We just do it! After all it is a personal computer and it is supposed to be plug and play. This is the way I approached my own migration. I did this partly because I am an I.T. person and I felt that I had enough knowledge of what I needed and how to proceed. Part of the lack of planning was also because I am lazy.
 I can tell you from experience that planning is very important for everyone including computer (IT) professionals.

 I recommend that you go out and purchase the May 2010 edition of Popular Mechanics and read pages 143 -146 if you are going to migrate to a new computer anytime soon. It is well worth the $3.99 and there is a lode of other interesting articles to read as well.

If you are not a Popular Mechanics reader let me try to present to you the major ideas from Anthony Verducci’s article. Also let me take this opportunity to thank Anthony for his well written article that will benefit many computer users.

Please read carefully because a little extra thought will save you from wasting a lot of effort.

• If your PC is over 3-4 years old now is the natural time to upgrade to a new computer because the operating systems of older computers are out of date and the older hardware probably will struggle with the new Operating Systems like Windows7 and MAC OS X “Snow Leopard”.
• If it has been 3-4 years since you have migrated your programs and data to a new computer you will find that the logistics involved in a migration have grown in complexity.  With all the new Media types we store on our computers the sheer volume of data involved in a single person’s migration is staggering.
• The longer it has been since your last computer upgrade, the higher the chances are that some of your software will not survive the migration.
• You must get organized and figure out how much stuff you will be taking with you to the new computer. Think of this just like moving to a new house and box up your data logically (photos, Music, documents, videos).
• Determine how much storage you will need. Will a simple memory stick do. do you need a lot of storage like a NAS (Network Attached Storage device would supply) The memory stick or NAS would serve as sort of a shuttle bus between computers. Perhaps if you have a network at home you can just transfer the data from one computer to another through your network. If your migration is a difficult one you might decide to use a NAS for all your data storage so all your data is portable. Any form of attached storage would work and most are as simple to operate as the USB memory stick. You can look at storage options here:NAS Products.

• What Equipment should you keep?

1. Screen – If it is LCD keep it. You can use it to create a Dual Monitor setup. If it is an older CRT just ditch it.
2. Cables – Keep any USB, SATA, DVI, or power cables. They may come in handy for replacement parts or repairs. Junk all the older serial or parallel cables.
3. Printers- if it has a USB port keep it. if it has a parallel or serial port junk it.
4. Mouse and keyboard – Keep them if they are USB or Wireless. Otherwise junk them.

• Software migration is going to require some extra effort. Any software you have on your old computer that did not come installed on your new computer will have to be reinstalled on the new computer. You may have to deactivate the old software on your old PC before you can activate it on your new setup. Some software like iTunes must be deactivated from within the software and others like Microsoft Office deactivates automatically when installed. Of course if you Use Open Office 3.0 you do not need to worry about licensing issue as it is free and open source. You can read more about Open office here:  Open Office News.

Anthony goes on to talk more about how to dispose of your old computer securely and where to donate if it is still useful.

Thank you again Anthony. Great article.