The Need For PC Speed

The Basics to PC Speed

By: Ang Biondo

 

Sometimes I think it’s a conspiracy by the PC makers.  I can’t  prove it, but I swear they lobby the Software Geek’s to write code into their software to slooooooow your machine down.  Yep! They know we get addicted to our computers, we have to get our e-mail before we get our coffee in the morning and  if your like me even read all the news on the net before showering. Oh!, I think their conspiring against us so that we feel a need to buy a new computer to get the speed of a new unit back.

 

The truth is, it’s the nature of the beast.  One day someone will finally introduce computers like those on “Star trek’s Starship Enterprise”, with full vocal control and fully self maintained.  However for present day us lowly home computerists are stuck with maintaining our own machines, or paying lucrative prices for a service tech to do it for us.  I for one being “cheap” or would rather just do it myself, perform maintenance on my computers on a regular basis.

 

Since I’ve been burned on several occasions with the occasional virus, worms and constant flow of spyware, I have taken the necessary steps to protect them from most attacks.  I say most because there is a constant evolution of malicious software appearing on a daily if not hourly basis.  The fact is, for every program installed to counteract the invasion of malicious intrusions to our machines, there is a definite slowdown in its performance.  So you must expect diminishing results as you add anti-malicious software to protect your computer.  The average person doesn’t realize these as a cause, because like the virus or Trojan worm it is protecting the machine from, it also runs in the background constantly searching for malicious intrusions.  Any program that is loaded at boot up and remains running in the background is a “TSR” (Terminate and Stay Resident) program.  The icons you see in the lower right corner of your screen, next to the clock on your “taskbar” are TSR’s.  If you have icons on the left side of the “taskbar”, those are quick launch not TSR’s.  They are not loaded until you click on them.  They are called “quick launch” because they are readily available and only require 1 click to load them instead of the normal double click.

 

The “KEY” to speed is to keep the files on your main hard drive to a minimum and all non-essential files on an external or slave drive.  On my main work computer, I have 2.5+ Terabytes of HD (hard drive) space, but only 500 GB is internal.  The external drives totaling 2 Terabytes are USB and hot swappable.  This simply means that I can turn them on or off at will so the computer’s processor is either seeking them or not seeking them.  Can you imagine if the CPU (Computers Processing Unit) had to constantly check for its next command through 2.5+ terabytes of virtual memory.  Having said that, we will assume that the majority of the people this article is addressing have a single hard drive in their computer and probably came with a 250 GB or less capacity.

 

There are a number of obstacles involved that will slow down the performance of your computer.  If you were happy with the quality of the performance your computer provided you when it was new, and you are the average computer user who uses the computer for email correspondence, browsing the Internet, playing an occasional windows game, or composing a written document from time to time.  Then, normal routine maintenance should be sufficient to get your computer back to its original speed.  We do this by looking at the main causes of PC slowdown:

·         Fragmentation

o    To fully understand fragmentation, is a lesson in itself, I will give you the abbreviated version here.  Information is stored on the magnetic media of your drive in tracks and sectors, which vary in size depending on the size and type of drive, Ie: “IDE”, “SCSI”, or “SATA”.  For this example we will say the drive we’re storing our data on has five platters with each platter having “x” number of tracks containing “y” number of sectors.  As we store data, the speed of the drive (3000+ rpm) forces the data flow to be stored in “y” number of bytes filling the sectors sequentially in multipls of 5.  That is to say that starting on track 1 of the drive starting at sector 1 and every 5^th sector thereafter data is stored until it has completed storing the entire file.  If it finds the next sector it is seeking is full, it jumps forward  to the next open sector and starts from there.  When this happens the drive is beginning to become fragmented and needs to search for the next sector for the file it is attempting to read.  As the drive becomes more and more fragmented it also becomes slower and slower.  Thus defragmenting the drive will re-sequence and synchronize the stored date speeding up the drive-seek to its original potential ability..  For those of you running “Microsoft Vista”, you might want to browse the internet for a third party defragmenter, Vista’s is a TSR itself and very efficient.  “RegCur” offers a free download fix for Vista defrag at: http://www.optimize-your-pc.com/regcure/repairing_errors.php?gclid=CMnIu6a_1JUCFQYdswodCz2uXQ , but usually free download means it will scan and point out the problems, but must purchase the program to affect the fixes.  RegCur is one of them.  There are free utilities on the web that will work with Vista, you just have to search for them.  I have  a dual operating system installed and use XP’s defrag to perform this task.

·         Excessive TSR’s

o    In order to understand how TSR’s affect the operation of the computer you need to understand the basics.  Most TSR’s are written in a high level language.  The highest level being true binary code consisting of “0” & “1”.  This is the true language of the computer and requires no interpretation by the “CPU”/  The next highest language utilizes hexadecimal code, which utilizes a series of alpha numeric code in the form of 16 bit, 32 bit, etc hexadecimal code where “0” is a real number = to “1” and “F” = “15”, etc.  Any TSR written in a low level language like “basic” or “visual Basic” or any language that is closer to the English language, needs to be interpreted by the CPU before it can execute the programs commands.  Being this program is resident, each time the CPU encounters it in its rounds as it seeks the next command to be executed it must interpret it first. Today’s CPU’s are multi-tasking and very fast, but nevertheless slowed down by un-necessary TSR’s impeding their potential performance. The easiest way to manage the TSR’s on your computer is to download “autoruns utility” from the “Windows Sysinternals” library located at: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx .  The program lets you see and manage the TSR’s on your computer, giving you full control over them.

·         Hard Drive overload

o    No matter the size of the drive, Windows utilizes 10% of the drive for a swap-file (a virtual memory file), when the data starts running into utilizing over 90% of the drive capacity, windows becomes confused, so to speak and all kinds of nasty things start to happen.  Files become corrupted as the CPU looks for non-existent space on the drive to store data.  Other files, like precious un-replaceable photos of your kids and grand-kids become corrupted by other files trying to overwrite them, etc.  You get the picture (Ha! Ha!).  But this explains the importance of not exceeding the 90% rule.  This can be done in a couple of different ways which we will cover at a later date, but for now – the easiest way is to eliminate duplicate and garbage files.  Uninstall any old software you no longer use and download a good free utility like “CCleaner” to clean the drive.  CCleaner is just that, a Crap Cleaner that can be downloaded from the CCleaner home page at:   http://www.ccleaner.com .  It’s a neat little utility./    

·         Spyware:

o    Spyware has become a major problem, and is extremely difficult to control, you can’t browse the internet without picking up several spyware infestations with each session.  I use Computer Associates “Internet Security Suite” and  PC Tools “Spyware Doctor” to control this problem, and its still a problem.  Spyware will slow your computer to a near halt and the more spyware on your system the greater the affect.  If you don’t have Anti-Spyware software installed on your system, it will shock you to find out how much spyware is on your system when you do install software to protect you from this growing menance.  If you don’t have an anti-spyware program installed one of the better, if not the best of the free utilities is “Spybot” which can be down loaded from their home site at: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html  .  If you think your anti-virus software alone is protecting you , you have another guess coming. 

·         Viruses & Trojan Worms:

o    Viruses and Trojan worms are another epidemic that is constantly evolving into intricate and complex intrusions of our privacy which is nothing short of a miracle the anti-malicious software industry’s tech’s can keep up with.  My security suite seems to update two or three times a day.  If you are running Windows XP or higher with only a Firewall running thinking this is protecting you, then you better go back to LaLa land, ‘cause you in for a rude awaking.  Virus’s, especially those attacking the “0” track which stores the “mbr” (master boot record) for the computers hard drive.  If the “mbr” is destroyed you lose access to your hard drive giving the appearance of instantly wiping the drive. Although you may get an email stating “watch out for such & such virus going around, if you open it, it will instantly wipe your hard-drive destroying it completely.  You will not be able to recover from this.”  The truth is, in most cases the damage can be easily rectified be simply re-writing the “mbr” to track “0”.  The “How too’s “of is this will be discussed at a later date.  The point is that virus’s are for the most part a program designed to damage the computer quickly and if it doesn’t go after track “0” it is designed to pop up un-wanted windows and run files to annoy you.  Trojan worms, are intrusive files which attach themselves to other files worming their way through the computer and your email address book.  Some Trojan worms which attach themselves to your address book, will steel the addresses and send out the hackers message to everyone on your list making it look like it came from you.  It is important to take precautions to thwart these attempts.  The method I use is to create pseudo email addresses to fool the worm into thinking it is done.  To do this, create a pseudo address in the form of “ aaabbb@aaabbbccc.com “ and “ zzz@xxxyyyzzz.com “  these invalid addresses will fall in order at the beginning and end of your address book.  Any email Trojan worm attempting to send out email will stop as soon as it encounters an invalid email address and be rendered harmless.  The threat of virus’s in any form must be taken very seriously and if you are not protected, you are asking for problems.  If you don’t have anti-virus protection installed there are several excellent security suites  that will give you the protection you need.  Some of them are:

§  Avast Antivirus 4.7 Home Edition which I believe is still free for the Home user and available at a reasonable cost for business users.  It can be used on as many computers as you have in the household, but you need to register each installation which must be renewed from time to time.  It is an excellent program which updates the virus signature database at boot up and on a regularly basis and even tells you that it has done so. It even works with Vista’s 64 bit version. Download it at:    http://www.cnet.com.au/software/security/0,239029558,339283664,00.htm   

§  Norton’s Internet Security Suite, some ware around the $70 mark for a 3 license version.  Meaning you can put in on up to 3 computers. The licenses are good for 1 year and must be renewed annually.  It can be purchased at most retailers or downloaded directly from Symantic’s home site at: http://store.norton.com/v2.0-img/operations/symantus/site/promo/pd/pt_nis09_360_us_05_2.html

§  CA Internet Security Suite, which also offers the 3 license annual package retailing around the $70 mark.  If you are an on-line shopper the CA security Suite is offered on a lot of sites for free or with a full price rebate,  I believe “Tiger Direct” is one such retailer.  CA’s suite is also available at most retail stores, or can be downloaded directly from the CA site at: http://shop.ca.com/malware/internet_security_suite.aspx?gclid=CJ_Ur6_V1JUCFQmdnAod1yenXw

§  McAfee Security Suite, which I can’t give you a lot of detail on.  I had an incident with McAfee some years back and was unable to use it.  I’m sure they have resolved that problem by now and it’s probably as fine as the others I’ve mentioned.  I know a lot of people who use McAfee and are happy with it.  I unfortunately was not and haven’t even tried it for a number of years.  I felt it was to invasive and I prefer my privacy.  McAfee is also available at most retailers and can be downloaded directly from their site at: http://mcafee.secureie.com/mcafee-home.asp?source=002_mcafee_home&tid=002&gclid=CP2-wN_V1JUCFQqdnAod4yXAYQ

§  Microsoft also has a free “malicious software removal tool” which can be run directly from their site or downloaded to your computer. It is available at: http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/default.mspx , this tool is updated by Microsoft on the first Tuesday of each month, and is not intended to replace your anti-virus software.

If you have installed Windows XP’s Service Pack 3 (SP3) and have encountered problems with your computer since then we might be able to help you there too.  If you haven’t installed SP3 yet, you might want to hold off for awhile until you understand the problems you can encounter with it. SP3 is a significant contribution to the Windows XP updates and does indeed boost XP’s performance.  I can’t say I see a 10% performance boost, but it is a notable boost. However, after installing SP3 I did lose the ability to download updates. Updates are an important feature of the Windows XP operating system and security updates must be downloaded on a regular basis.  By not keeping Windows updated you place your computer in harms way and are headed toward some serious problems.

 

I contacted Microsoft Tech Support and was aided by an MS Tech by the name of Sally Tang who provided me with the following solution, here is what she told me to do:

·         This error can be caused by one of the following factors:

1.       The two registry branches of Automatic Updates are corrupted.

2.       Some Windows Update engine files have not been registered.

3.       The Automatic Updates service is not working properly.

 

·         We will address some of the more common causes of this issue. It is important that we attempt to connect to the Windows Update web site after each step to confirm whether the resolution has worked. This will prevent us from having to proceed with additional troubleshooting steps and provide us with valuable feedback to further develop our support resolutions for you and our future customers. Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

 

Suggestion 1: Restore two registry branches.

 

Let’s repair the following two registry keys:

·         HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\wuauserv

·         HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root\LEGACY_WUAUSERV

1.       Click “Start”, click “Run”, type: “Inf” (without quotations) and press “Enter”. A folder will open.

2.       Locate the file “au.inf”, (you can type au to locate the file), right click it and choose “Install”. Note: The file extension “.inf” may be hidden; we may only see the file named “au”.

3.       The setup process will try to restore the registry branches automatically. However, you may not receive any notification. If some files cannot be located automatically, we will be prompted to select the installation source. Please click “browse”, and go to this location: C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles\i386 If this folder is unavailable, please choose the folder “C:\Windows\System32″.

4.       Please restart the computer.

 

Let’s now try Windows Update again and see if the issue has been resolved. Please let us know if this step has resolved it. If it has not, please proceed to the next step.

 

Suggestion 2: Re-register the Windows Update engine files.

·         By trying this step, we can check the update engines.

·         Close all instances of Internet Explorer.

·         Click “Start” and “Run”, type “REGSVR32 ATL.DLL” (without quotations) in the open box and click “OK”. Note: There is a space between REGSVR32 and ATL.DLL

·         Register the files listed below:

·         REGSVR32 MSXML3.DLL

·         REGSVR32 WUAPI.DLL

·         REGSVR32 WUAUENG.DLL

·         REGSVR32 WUAUENG1.DLL

·         REGSVR32 WUPS2.DLL

·         REGSVR32 WUCLTUI.DLL

 

There are a few other issues with XP Service Pack 3 which we will cover at another time.  If you need instant information on this subject, Windows Secrets Scott Dunn has written and excellent article that can be obtained from the Windows Secrets site. Click on :  http://windowssecrets.com/search/ , then click on the search tab and enter the title “Don’t let XP Service Pack 3 hose your system.  Don’t forget to sign up for their free newsletter, it’s very informative and a fun read.