Windows XP Repair- Tweaks for WinXP 3

LuvComputers PC Repair Tweak No.3

Now moving on to the final part of this little series of Windows XP tweaks.

In this part were going to improve the computers all around start up time. The way that were going to do this is to remove the amount of programs starting up when we boot our computer. Truth be known, there are quite a few of these that just don't need to be starting up when we boot the machine.

Now the programs starting up will differ from machine to machine, depending on what programs are installed on a given computer. I'm not going to go into to much detail here. I'm just going to give you an overall idea of the sort of things that really aren't necessary to be loading up and starting.

Tweak-NO.3

1. The first thing that we need to do is to get into our run box again.

So remember, click Start, menu opens, find and click run.

2. Once we have the run box open, we're going to type into the run box the phrase "msconfig", without quotations. Then click ok. Now we are in what is known as the System Configuration Utility.

3. Now that were in the utility, the tab were going to be needing is the Startup tab. Now for the purpose of this, we are going to keep it basic, I don't want people unchecking things that shouldn't be unchecked.

4. As you can see there are many things that are starting up when you boot your computer, and frankly, up startup, many of them just aren't necessary.

There are programs such as Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, etc. that really don't need to be started when you boot up, unless of course your one of those people that likes to be automatically logged in upon startup. But, any of these sorts of chat programs will start when you need them to, just by double clicking their icon or else starting them from the programs menu.

So, taking these things out during the startup process, will speed up your startup times, by quite a lot in many cases.

Does Windows Office need to be started when you boot your computer. No. Probably not.

Does your webcam software need to be started at this time. Again, probably not.

Go through these programs starting up and choose which one's you really don't need to be starting when you boot up, and it will improve your performance.

Now, there are some things that should be starting as well, and you should be leaving these alone. These are things like your antivirus protection. For the purpose of this tweak, leave the checks next to items that look more like filenames alone. These are items like isschd, ccapp, and things along this line. In future tutorials I'll get into these a little bit more. For now, let's just stick to basics.

Once your finished unchecking the programs that don't need to be starting, and are sure that these are fine. Remember what I said about your antivirus software. Anything that has to do with your Internet Security, leave these checks in place.

After your finished, click ok, after you click ok, you will be asked to restart your computer. After your computer restarts your changes will take place.

So there you go, this concludes our little LuvComputers PC Repair Tweaks for WinXP series. I hope that you enjoyed these tutorials and learned a little bit from them.

Again I kept things fairly straight forward. I didn't want people checking and unchecking things that may have an undesirable effect.

Well see you all soon, and take care of yourself!

Thanx Davin

LuvComputer's PC Repair

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Davin_Ogden

Windows XP Repair-Tweaks for Windows XP 2

LuvComputers PC Repair Tweak-NO.2

Ok, so in Tweak-No.1, we performed a couple of changes to Windows XP to improve your overall quality of your session experience a bit. In tweak No.2 we are going to expand on this a little bit, but we are also going to improve the shutdown time of your computer measurably.

This tweak is going to involve getting into the registry, so heed my warning from Tweak No.1.

Please do not perform this tweak if your at all uncomfortable about going into the registry, OK!

Tweak-No.2 Now, to get into the registry in Windows XP, we first need to access our Run box. To access the Run box: Press Start

Find Run in the first menu that opens up, and then click Run!

Now we are in the Run box, simple hey.

Ok, now that we are in the run box, we want to type in the phrase "regedit", without the apostrophes of course.

When you access the registry you will notice under the My Computer icon, the different subsections of the registry. These include:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT

HKEY_CURRENT_USER

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

HKEY_USERS

HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG

In this tweak we want to click the plus sign next to HKEY_CURRENT_USER folder.

This opens up to all the different folders stored in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER parent folder.

Scroll down to the folder that is labeled, Control Panel, then click the plus sign to open the subfolders of the Control Panel folder.

Once this is finished, you'll notice many folders, Accessibility, Appearance, Colors etc. For the purpose of this tweak we are going to open the Desktop folder.

If you look to the right of your screen in the registry editor, there are many, many different things you could play around with in here. Please don't! Let's just concentrate on the few that we are going to change for the purpose of this tweak.

1. The first value we are going to change is MenuShowDisplay. Basically what this little feature does is, governs the amount of time it takes to open up your menu's on your desktop. The default value is set to 400. We can change this value, simply by double clicking the actual heading, MenuShowDisplay.

So once you have double clicked it, reset it too, 200, this will improve the speed at which your menu's open on your desktop. I usually set mine to 150, but this opens them up pretty fast. You can play around with different values here, but anything lower than 150 is usually opening up your menu's to fast.

So like I say, you can play around with the value a bit, to your liking.

2. If you scroll up from MenuShowDisplay, the value we are going to change next is AutoEndTasks. The default value for this is 0. We are going to switch this to 1. The same as we did the first one, just double click the heading, then change it, and then click OK. Basically this is like a switch, as in binary, 0 being off, and 1 means on. Changing this value to one will automatically shutdown a hungup program for you.

3. Now were going to go down the list a little bit, to HungUpAppTimeout. The default of this value is 5000. Switch this to 1000.

Note:Be a little bit careful with this one. If for some reason you might have a program that runs very slowly in WinXP, on your machine, the operating might falsely think that the program is hung up. In such a case, you can increase this value in increments of 1000, until the false hang ups stop.

4. Lastly, to finish off, we are going to change one more value. This being the value of WaitToKillAppTimeout, the default for this is 20000. Set this value to 4000. There really shouldn't be any reason to go back and switch this later on, as with HungAppTimeout. This will close your programs much faster, and great when shutting down if you haven't closed a program before trying to shutdown your computer.

A couple of things you should know about the Registry is that these changes take effect immediately, and there isn't anyway to undue the changes in the way you might be used to. The only way to change them back to default is if you remember what the defaults are. Well, actually that's not true. There is a way, but that is beyong the scope of this little tweak section were doing. If your unsure, and are worried about the effects, of some of these changes, I suggest you write them down somewhere, just in case for some reason you would like to go back to Windows XP's original settings.

One more thing, always back up the registry before making any changes such as these. I'm quite sure you will appreciate the responsiveness that these changes in the registry have on your computer.

Let's move onto the third part of LuvComputers PC Repair-Windows XP tweaks .

Davin Ogden

LuvComputer's PC Repair

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Davin_Ogden

Windows XP Repair- Tweaks for WinXP 1

LuvComputers PC Repair Tweak No.1

There are a few little things that you can do with your Windows XP installation that will improve it's performance. These include speeding up the boot time, shutdown time, and just overall general session experience.

Now a couple of these are straight forward, these Windows XP tweaks can be performed by most users, with a bit of experience. Some of the other's involve getting into the registry to make a few changes. If you don't know what a registry is, and the general outline and purpose of it, then I don't recommend that you go in there at all. Making a mistake inside the registry, in the wrong area or changing the wrong value, can have catastrophic repercussions on your operating system. So please, remember I said, "If you don't know what a registry is, it's purpose etc., DON"T GO IN THERE!!" There is my warning, I'm no longer responsible!! If perhaps you would still like to have a faster machine, and you are feeling uncomfortable with your saviness, ooh that's a cool word, saviness! I mean your not feeling as computer savvy as maybe you would like, then find somebody that does have a lot more experience with computers, and might be comfortable with places such as the registry. Here we go!

Windows XP Repair-Tweak No.1 1. To start off with, were going to start right from the desktop, no programs open. First we want to get into the properties of My Computer.

Click Start, and find the My Computer Icon in the menu. To get into the properties of My Computer, simply right click the icon, then choose properties, from the drop down menu.

In the properties box you will see a series of tabs. These are General , Computer Name, Hardware etc. The tab that were interested in here is the Advanced tab.

Open up the advanced tab. Incidentally, you will have to have administrative privileges on the computer that you are working on to make most of these changes. With that said, and with the Advanced tab opened up you will see three main categories in which you can access.

These are Performance, User Profiles and Startup and Recovery.

In the Performance area, click settings. In here we are just going to make a couple of changes.

As you can see there are four bullet points:

Let Windows choose what's best for my computer??

Adjust for best appearance

Adjust for best performance

Custom

Normally, in here I will choose Custom, and deselect everything in the list of graphic features, except for the very last two.

Use dropdown shadows for icon labels on desktop

Use visual styles on windows and buttons

Leaving the last two of these options checked still gives you a visually nice desktop, and you can still see visual styles on your windows and buttons.

Once you have made these changes go to the bottom of the Visual Effects tab and click Apply.

As for all of the one's that were left unchecked, most of these will use up memory because of the graphic nature of them, but for most users, if you didn't know what they did, you wouldn't miss them anyway. But having them unchecked will speed up your overall system performance by a smidge.

Alright, so that's the first part of Windows XP Repair-Tweak No.1.

For the next part, while we are in the properties of My Computer, on the Advanced tab, let's look down towards the bottom, and you will see the button Error Reporting.

Click Error Reporting and get into the window that opens up and disable error reporting by putting a check mark in the Disable Error Reporting box.

Error reporting is much the same as, "Your computer has performed an illegal action", from back in the Windows 98 days. Basically, your computer did something that your operating system didn't understand. Only now, Microsoft wanted you to report it to them. Frankly I don't see the point and also, this is mostly annoying more than anything, so go ahead and disable it, trust me, your not missing anything.

Davin Ogden

LuvComputer's PC Repair

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Davin_Ogden

Anti Virus Software Download - Keep Your PC Safe With Multiple Programs

It's fairly safe to say these days that most of us, (around 80%) have bought a well-known antivirus package. Personally, I favour Norton but McAfee, AVG and a few others dominate the antivirus and spyware market. There is of course a good reason for this.

Popularity is the main reason. When you buy a computer the chances are you would buy it from a high street computer shop, a well-known internet name such as Dell, or on the strength of a recommendation. You would be very cautious about handing over your hard-earned cash to a company you have never heard of, and rightly so. The same applies to an antivirus software download. Most of us would much rather spend our money on one of the big names mentioned above, (even if they are more expensive) because we know that we will be getting a high level of protection from a brand we can trust. The only time we are likely to deviate from this is if we are offered a free antivirus program / trial or if someone we trust recommends different antivirus software downloads. What most people don't realise, (also around 80%) is that we shouldn't rely solely on these programs. Why?

Once we buy and install this antivirus software we let it run and forget about it. We assume we are safe and fully protected because we bought the best there is. To a point this is true. I would always recommend buying your main antivirus package from a recognised brand. Personally I use Norton Internet Security. It not only protects against viruses but it comes with automatic updates, checks my emails for viruses and spyware, and even comes with Norton GO-Back which is a more advanced version of Microsoft's, "System Restore". This is all wonderful stuff but there is one problem. Something that affects every one of these big brands of software.

If you are familiar with computers you may have heard that using an alternative operating system or internet browser such as firefox is safer. The reason for this is that Creators of Viruses, Trojans, Spyware, Worms and all the other types of malicious bugs are very clever. They know that almost everyone uses Internet Explorer. They also know that 80% of people use one of 5-6 big software brands.

When the viruses is created it is usually intended to reach as many computers as possible. Therefore it is only logical that the first targets to overcome are the big named brands. If the virus get get past this antivirus software undetected then it stands a very good chance of infecting thousands of machines. Now this is where the problem lies. Norton, McAfee and other big names are always the first target. There is nothing they can do about this other than to be as prepared as possible.

This is where the consumer needs to get wise. As stated above I would always recommend owning one of the recognised antivirus software packages as your first line of defence. But if this was all there was to it, then nobody would ever get a Virus on their machine. We know for a fact that thousands, (maybe more) still get infected everyday. so how do we prevent this?

The answer is very simple and inexpensive. There are hundreds of lesser known antivirus downloads available on the market. These are not frequently targeted by the creators of viruses because there is less opportunity for their virus to spread. Many of these programs will run quite happily alongside your main software, or you can just use them to run a scan periodically.

So, to ensure you are as fully protected as possible here is what you should do. First, buy or keep your current recognised 'big brand' software. This is a vital step that should not be missed (the smaller cheaper antivirus downloads are unlikely to provide adequate cover on their own). Secondly, buy a lesser known spyware scanner and remover. Thirdly, Also buy a lesser known adware stopper. It is important to note that there is no need to spend vast sums of money here. You can very easily purchase both of these products for far less than half of the cost of Norton, or McAfee.

This may sound like a time-consuming effort, but once it is installed you can simply set it to run once a week and forget about it just like your current software. By buying separate programs like this you maximise your chances of spotting anything untoward on your PC. For the sake of a few $$ you could potentially save the security of your bank account or credit card details. Don't delay in taking action!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dawn_Smith

Malaysia Online : Related Link
important advice on adware removal

Windows Vista Top 10 Tips and Tricks

1. Power button default action

The default action for the Power button on the start menu in Windows Vista is Sleep, which isn’t necessarily useful for everybody. You can configure this setting easily by using the advanced power settings panel, which is a little tricky to get to normally, but we’ll take the shortcut. Open a command prompt (type cmd into the start menu search bar), and then type in the following: powercfg.cpl,1. You could also take the long route (Control Panel Power Options Change Plan Settings Change Advanced Power Settings) Once you get to this dialog, browse down as shown to “Power buttons and lid”

From here, you can change the options:

Power button action - Changes the hardware power button action
Start menu power button - Changes the power button on the Start Menu
You can change the power button to either Sleep, Hibernate or Shut Down, or even nothing for the hardware power button.

2. Hide Desktop Icon Text on Windows Vista

Some icons are just obvious enough that nobody should need text below them to tell them what the icon is for. A good example of this is the icon for Internet Explorer. We’re all really used to it by now, and the text just makes it ugly. Just right-click on the shortcut, and choose Rename. Now hold down the Alt key and type in 255 on the keypad to the right of the keyboard. You can’t use the number keys right above the keyboard, they won’t work. If you have a laptop, you can turn on numlock and then use the little number keys next to the regular letters. (You know you always wondered what they were for)

For the first shortcut on the desktop, a simple Alt+255 will do. For the next shortcut, you’ll have to enter the combination twice (Alt+255, Alt+255). For the third, 3 times… you get the idea. The way this works is that the Alt+255 character is blank, so the shortcut filename is actually just named with a character that is completely blank. Since you can’t have two shortcuts or files named the exact same thing, the second shortcut will have to be named with two blank characters.

Now we have a sweet looking icon on the desktop, with no bothersome text beneath it. If you use this tip to rename a folder, you will not be able to rename the folder back using the right-click rename. I’m not sure why this is. What you’ll have to do is open a command prompt and change directory into the containing folder (For instance, the desktop folder), and run this command: ren “Alt+255” “NewFolderName” You will need to actually type the Alt+255 characters where illustrated in the command. It will appear as a space. Note that the Recycle Bin icon won’t work this way.

3. Enable Hidden BootScreen in Windows Vista

The Windows Vista BootScreen is pointless, but Microsoft decided to hide a more visually appealing boot screen that can easily be enabled with very little trouble. I’m not sure why they didn’t make the boot screen better.

1) Press Win+R, type msconfig and press Enter.
2) If User Account Control prompts you to allow the action, click on Continue.
3) In the "System Configuration" window, click on the Boot tab.
4) Select your Windows Vista installation and under "Boot options", check "No GUI boot". Press OK.
5) In the dialog that appears, check "Don’t show this message again", and then click on Restart.
6) Your computer will now reboot, and you will see the Aurora boot screen with text that says "Starting Windows Vista".

Note: You may get a Windows Defender error on the next startup. You can enable the system config utility using the tray icon and this error will go away.

4. Fix for COM Surrogate Has Stopped Working Error in Vista

If you’ve been getting the error COM Surrogate has stopped working whenever you browse folders containing Divx avi files, it looks like the latest Divx update to codec version 6.5 fixes the issue, but it also seems to remove the thumbnails. If you want to upgrade, just use the divx update checker to grab the new version. Looks like it’s finally fixed, at least the error message is now gone, although I really wish they would have just gotten the thumbnails working instead.

If you are using Nero, you will need to update to version 7.7.5.1 to fix the problem. I think this is the source of the error for most people.
If you’ve upgraded Nero and Divx and still have the problem, you can try renaming the file C:Program FilesCommon FilesAheadDSFilterNeVideo.ax to NeVideo.ax.bak This will break Nero Showtime, however.

5. Stop an Application from Running at Startup in Windows Vista

Back in the old days, there were a lot of places an application could hook itself to run at startup. You had to check the registry in more than one place, as well as your start menu. With Windows Vista, there’s a built-in panel that handles all that for you. To quickly get to this panel, you can open Control Panel, and then type “startup” into the search box. The link for “Stop a program from running at startup” shows up immediately. You could have also opened Windows Defender and fooled around with the menus until you find the right spot, but this seems quicker to me. Now you can see the Windows Defender screen that lets you manage the startup programs. You can choose to Remove or just Disable any startup item using this panel, as well as lots of other useful information so that you can see what each item is.

6. Emptying Windows Vista Temp Files Directory

Windows Vista Disk Cleanup wizard is really not all that bad, but I did find a small problem with it… It doesn’t fully empty your temp folder. It only allows you to delete temporary files that haven’t been modified in a week. If you’ve recently done a lot of editing or something that generates large temporary files, you may want to manually clean up. Just type in %TEMP% into the start menu search box, and hit enter. You’ll immediate be taken to the temporary files folder, where you can delete whatever you feel like.

7. Disable User Account Control(UAC) For Administrators Only

If you can’t stand the User Account Control prompts, but you’d still like to retain a little bit of security, you can disable it for Administrator accounts only. What we’ll be doing is actually changing Windows Vista to automatically elevate the privilege level for administrators without prompting. The nice thing about doing it this way is that regular users as well as Internet Explorer still run as regular users, and would still use the normal security mechanisms. To configure this setting on Windows Vista Business and Ultimate, you can use the Local Security Policy configuration.

Just type in secpol.msc into the Start menu search box and hit enter.
Now browse down to Local Policies Security Options
Find the following in the list: “User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode” and double-click on it.
Change the setting to “Elevate without prompting”. You should be all done.
This is an easier method that you can use to do the same thing from the GUI interface.
Open up Control Panel, and type in user account into the search box.
You’ll see the link for “Turn User Account Control (UAC) on or off”. Click it.
Uncheck the box, and reboot your computer. You should be done with obnoxious prompts!

8. Using Windows Vista System Restore

Windows Vista has a feature called System Restore that automatically backs up registry and system files whenever you install new software or drivers. This feature is useful when you install evil software that makes your computer run really slow. But don’t worry, System Restore won’t remove Windows Vista.

Using System Restore in Windows Vista

There are two places that you can use the system restore feature from. From within Windows, you can just type restore into the Start menu search box, and you’ll immediately see System Restore at the top of the start menu, or you can type rstrui into the search box and hit enter. Your choice. You will immediate see a screen where you can choose to roll back the system to the last restore point. You can select “Recommended restore”, and just click next, or you can choose a different restore point. If you do choose a different restore point, you will see a list of restore points that you can choose from. Click one of them, and you will have to confirm and then restart your computer to roll the system back. If your system won’t boot If you can’t even get into windows, you can boot off the installation dvd, and choose the “Repair your computer” option on the lower left hand side. Click next on the next screen. Now choose System Restore from the System Recovery dialog. It will take a few seconds to come up, and you will see the same screen that you would see in Windows. Click next, and on the next screen select the drive that your copy of Windows Vista is installed on. Click Finish, and Vista will roll back to the previous restore point. Really pretty simple stuff. I absolutely recommend keeping the system restore feature on in Vista !

9. Verify the Integrity of Windows Vista System Files Windows Vista includes a utility that will scan your system for corrupt, changed or missing system files. Running this from the command prompt is much easier than booting off the dvd into repair mode. To run this utility, you will need to open a command prompt in administrator mode. You can do that by right clicking the Command Prompt in the list and choose "Run as Administrator" Once you have an administrator command prompt open, you can run the utility by using the following syntax: SFC [/SCANNOW] [/VERIFYONLY] [/SCANFILE=] [/VERIFYFILE=] [/OFFWINDIR= /OFFBOOTDIR=] The most useful command is just to scan immediately, which will scan and attempt to repair any files that are changed or corrupted. You can run that command with this command: sfc /scannow

10. Disable Hibernation & delete the Hibernation file

Windows places a file on your hard drive that it uses when your computer goes into hibernation mode. If you do not use hibernation mode, or your computer does not properly support it, you may want to disable hibernation and clear the file off your hard drive to free up some space (the file will use as much space as you have in physical memory, so if you have 1GB of RAM, it’s going to use 1GB of your hard drive space).

Disable Hibernation:
1. Click Start, All Programs, and then right click on "Command Prompt".
2. From the context menu click on "Run as administrator".
3. If User Account Control prompts you to allow the action, click on Continue.
4. In the command prompt window, type "powercfg –h off" (without the quotes).
5. Close the Command Prompt window.

Delete the Hibernation File:
1. Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and then click "Disk Cleanup".
2. If prompted to choose a drive, select the drive in which Windows Vista is installed on to and press OK.
3. Disk Cleanup will scan the hard drive and present you with a list of options.
4. Check "Hibernation File Cleaner", and then click OK.
5. When asked "Are you sure you want to permanently delete these files?" click on the Delete Files button .

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Zoran_Petrovic