Web2Go

A guide to tuning up your computer which will save you having to pay the computer repair-person.

This will very likely be one of the last Web2Go posts I type on this computer. Why?

The hard drive on my faithful laptop is chockers, I don’t have enough RAM (temporary memory) to have all my design and editing programs at once and most worrying of all, each time I turn it on, it runs a disk check before booting to Windows. An ominous sign, especially if it happens a lot.

I’ve tried most of the other free stuff I would recommend to students with an ailing computer such as defragging the hard drive and cleaning out and un-necessary temporary and log files with Disk Cleaner or with my favourite free tune up program Advanced System Care.

Reducing the number of programs that run automatically when the computer starts up will also help. I use the ‘Start Up Manager’ utility in Advanced System Care but you can also use Microsoft’s Autoruns or Startup Inspector. (Windows Vista has a built-in start up monitor.)

Checking for viruses and spyware regularly using a free program such as AVG will also ensure that your computer stays healthy for longer.

Of course, I haven’t tried the more drastic option of backing up my files to an external hard drive and reformatting my internal hard drive (C:).

Doing this restores Windows to its original state and along with it any settings that may have been conflicting and causing problems.

I’ve done this a couple of times now for family and friends now with excellent results.

Be warned that although it’s quite straightforward to reformat a hard disk it’s a mammoth task to reinstall all the programs you had on the computer beforehand.

You could get around this by creating an image of your entire hard disk and putting that back on after the reformat. Disk images, however, will preserve all the settings you had prior to the format so doing it this way often defeats the purpose.

Reformatting is particularly useful for restoring your operating system (Windows XP, Vista, 7) settings to their original state and getting rid of any viruses or malware nasties that may have burrowed themselves deeply into your computer but it ultimately won’t increase the amount of RAM (temporary memory) you have available to use.

For example, if your computer can only have a maximum of 1 gigabyte (GB) of RAM installed and you find you are using a lot of programs that require at least 2 gigabytes of RAM to run, then your computer will slow down and you’ll probably get a lot of error messages about having ‘low virtual memory’. (There are programs available that will extend your RAM but this is really only a short term solution.)

Yes, there’s a lot you can do to tune up your electronic buddy for nix but eventually you may have to concede (as I have) that, after six years of almost unfailing service, it’s time to fork out your hard-earned dough for something new.

First of all it’s time to do another back up and then I can start window (or should that be Windows? sorry Mac users ) shopping.

I’ll keep you all posted.

Found any great DIY software that’s not mentioned here? Let your fellow Web2Goers know about it. Leave a comment below.