Fixing A Slow Computer

Fixing A Slow Computer

It’s no secret, most computers out there are currently using Microsoft XP operating systems right now even though Vista is available and Windows Seven is ready to hit store shelves shortly.

My personal opinion is Windows XP is a very stable operating system. I feel it’s been the best one yet. However, any operating system won’t make your computers full potential show if regular careful service isn’t implemented properly. A slow computer could result.

I recently did some volunteer work for a couple of churches. In both situations it involved computer work on church computers that get used a lot. It started as complaints of the computers being slower than they’ve ever been, and never used to be that way.

Okay, … I started with the basics. I showed up with a arsenal of defensive software. First I scanned all computers with ‘Stand Alone Anti-Virus Software’ that can be run from a CD or thumb drive. Viruses were found on some of the computers but not all of them. Then I ran some strong ‘Stand Alone Anti-Mallware’ software to see if I could find anything the first virus scan didn’t detect. Sure did; One out of seven computers serviced showed a benefit in doing this. That’s good.

Next I ran a good aftermarket registry cleaner and internet cleaner called Defender Pro. The results on the computers using the internet were catastrophic. Tons and tons of dead weight garbage were found on these systems and then cleaned out. One receptionist computer was real bad as if she surfed the net all the time, because the software found thousands and thousands of things to delete that have built up over time.

The next step for these machines was to defrag them, this was the most time consuming task of all because defragging a computer takes a lot of time, but can be worth it in the long run. The three computers I was doing in the church in Fond Du Lac Wisconsin, I started the defrags at night and came back the next day. Luckily all machines serviced, completed the defrags with no hang-ups or stalls. The three machines in Fond Du Lac, as well as the four closer to home went really well. Sometimes a defrag won’t finish, and it will stall or hang up. I got lucky on this project.

My next step for all these machines was to uninstall their anti-virus software after temporarily disconnecting the internet to do so. I do this because I ran a outside virus scanner on these machines which could have changed the defenses of the onboard anti-virus software. So now I’m going to uninstall, then re-install the onboard anti-virus software so its starting from scratch. Now the internet connection is reconnected, then the updates are run on the internet for the onboard anti-virus software. The machines are cleaned out and show a noticeable difference in performance.

Taking extreme steps like this can be avoided if you clean out your computer regularly, at least once a month as a minimum. Clean the registry and internet history. If your not comfortable doing this yourself, … there are services and shops that can do this for a fee.

During the coarse of this project I was greeted by a teenage girl and her mother carrying there CPU cabinet from their home computer. The teenager asked if I could look at their computer because it keeps rebooting continuously when the power is turned on.

As they were asking me, I looked over their shoulder noticing the priest in the doorway of the classroom nodding his head. So I said “sure why not”. I hooked it up to a monitor, keyboard and mouse, then powered it up. Sure enough, the machine kept rebooting itself non-stop. I reached for the screws on the cabinet as I told them “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this. I’ll bet you have a AMD processor in here and you have Windows XP”. As they answered yes, I noticed the priest walking away with a smile. Sure, this machine had a AMD processor inside it. I used a Windows XP disk to get her machine running again. Then I told them that with this computer they have to keep the automatic updates tuned off because if XP service pack 3 is allowed into this computer, this will happen again. AMD processors and XP service pack 3 don’t get along together at all. Just keep the machine as XP service pack 2, by keeping automatic updates turned off and it’ll be just fine. They were pleased and relieved.

This incident touches base with the fact that I did mention this once before in one of my other articles. If you have a computer that you know has a AMD processor, and your computer has access to the internet, … keep automatic updates turned off. If the XP service pack three upgrade manages to get on your machine, you won’t be happy.

Reporter Joseph Toth

Washington Micro Bank BBS