System Tuneup Guide

While sometimes you can’t prevent something terrible from happening to your PC, there are many things you CAN do to “Be Prepared”:

Sooner or later, you’ll probably have the wonderful experience of having your PC fail or ‘meltdown’ on you…this has happened to me several times in the past, and I wish I had a photo of the look of unimaginable horror on my face when I realized I couldn’t get my computer to startup and operate normally.

Computer disasters come in all shapes and sizes, from a damaging power surge, to and even more frightening theft of your personal data by someone to create a false identity.

10 Days to become a PC Disaster Response Specialist

That’s right, over the next 10 days we’ll be covering many critical issues on how to successfully restore a a dead PC to life, and we’ll also cover the area of computer security, and how to prevent break-ins and safeguard your data in ways that would make Fort Knox proud!

Are Your Components to Blame?

Many disasters can be caused by your hardware. The good news is it IS possible to revive a dead PC due to hardware failures, simply by identifying and replacing the malfunctioning components. Nothing is worse that typing a report that took you 3 hours to create, only to lose it because of a power outage or computer freeze. We’ll show you the options you have to diagnose and repair irritating errors that can be just as destructive as major hardware failures.

We’ll show you how to recover items or files that you deleted accidentally and want back. Like digital camera photos. We’ll look at how to repair scratched disks and how to use your recovery console to start your PC if it doesn’t boot. We will also show you how to create a recovery CD so you can examine an unbootable hard drive for your valuable data.

PC Security & You

We’ll also cover specific security concerns and what to do if your PC has been hacked or you know that someone else has helped themselves to your data. We’ll show you how to avoid spyware in all its ugly forms, and give you advice that will help you to protect yourself online. Wireless connections pose a major security threat today because most people simply don’t bother to encrypt their connections, which allows others to use your bandwidth without your knowledge.

So sit back and relax as we educate and entertain you these next 10 days…you’ll be better prepared to deal with any computer disaster after we’re done with you!

Share This

Microsoft has included with Windows XP & Vista a multimedia diagnostics tool that will allow you to test your current settings and make sure your PC is performing at optimum levels. The DirectX testing tool will show you what areas your PC excels in, and which areas need imporvment:

To open the Microsoft DirectX Testing tool, click Start > Run > and type in dxdiag into the dialog box. Click OK to start the dxdiag and show a summary of your computer’s current setup. You can then click “Check for WHQL Digital Signatures” to make sure all your DirectX files are signed. Then you can click on Next Page to view a listing of all the DirectX files currently found on your system. Microsoft will report any problems on the bottom pane of the window. The following page will list all of your PC’s display functions. You can select Test DirectDraw and do the same for Direct3D.

You can move to the sound tab and use the slider bar to choose how much hardware acceleration you would like to use. Now click Test DirectSound, which will play a test sound in a variety of different formats. Make sure you can hear all the test sounds and then press Yes when the test is finished. This tests your computer’s ability to produce Mono, Stereo and Surround Sounds. You can then move to the music port, which show the different sound devices you currently have connected and their ability to produce the intended sounds. Click on test DirectMusic, which plays a small soundtrack you can listen to several times, and then click Yes to confirm that you have heard the music ok.

Diagnostics:

Running diagnostics on your PC is a good way to check for any problems that you might not be aware of. There are a number of commercial applications available for this task. I cannot recommend Norton System Works (one of the best known programs) however, because the program is an enormous resource hog, and any benefit you gain from running their suite of optimization products on your PC will be negated as a result.

There are a number of free trial download you can try first: TuffTest Light www.tufftest.com/free.html will run a number of very basic system performance tests, but won’t check any RAM over 8MB or hard drive performance. Memtest86 WILL check any amount memory and is available for Free! The catch is that you have to burn the ISO image download to a CD so it will work on your computer, and this can be done by getting another Free program like CDBurnerXP Pro and using it to burn the ISO image for you.

By running diagnostics on your computer you can enhance it and increase the performance levels of a PC you thought wasn’t worth saving!

Share This

This registry tip is a fix to a bug that was installed in Windows 2000 (will work on most XP machines too if you have the registry key installed). It has to do with the delay of windows (up to 30 seconds) when your computer scans shared files for Scheduled Tasks. When you try and view files across a network, Windows 2000/XP will use that extra time to search the remote computer you are browsing for Scheduled tasks. This fix is intended for only those PCs affected by this bug.

Windows 2000 users will experience the greatest increase in speed when browsing both the Internet and windows explorer, since windows will no longer search for scheduled tasks. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Make a registry backup
2. Open up the registry (type regedit in the start -> run bar)
3. Open the registry and go to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / Software / Microsoft / Windows / Current Version / Explorer / RemoteComputer / NameSpace
4. Select the following key under that registry branch: {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF} and delete it.

This registry key instructs windows to look for Scheduled Tasks on the network PC you are browsing. If you want to restore this key at a later date for whatever reason, just make sure to export it to a file before deleting.

After doing this windows tweak, you should see an immediate performance and speed jump when browsing networks folders on other PCs!

If you are looking for an automated way to repair your Windows Registry and streamline it for optimum performance levels, we recommend the Free RegCure Download. It fixed 822 errors on our test system here in the lab, and increased performance a measurable 15%!

Share This