Part 7 of Quick Tips on how to improve your PC's performance

Posted By: D-A-L | Date Added: 20-09-2007 08:34 AM | Views: 2153

Quick tips on how to improve your PC's performance by Nathan Forrest Hi! Welcome to the final brief article in this seven-part series that will show you how to clean up your PC and improve its performance. We'll be giving you inside tips on all of the checks and improvements that we carry out when we visit our UK customers for a "health check" on a desktop or laptop PC. Each week, we'll be showing you how to carry out another part of the full "health check" yourself and it won't cost you anything! Note that this article refers only to PCs that run Windows and will probably be irrelevant for users of Linux, Apple Mac, etc. Previous related articles: Part 1: Performance status (http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/143.html) Part 2: Clearing out temporary files (http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/144.html) Part 3: Defragmenting your hard disk (http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/145.html) Part 4: Checking your Internet speed (http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/146.html) Part 5: Improving your Internet speed (http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/147.html) Part 6: Backing up and restoring the Windows registry (http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/148.html) Part 7: How to correctly remove unwanted programs If you've been reading our previous articles about optimising your PC's performance, you will hopefully now have a well-tuned PC. However, in your quest for the best performance, you might have identified a number of programs on the PC that you no longer use ..... or perhaps programs that you do not recognise and think you could probably do without. For the purposes of this article, I've loaded my clean test PC with the following typical programs that you might find on your desktop or laptop computer. For the most part, I accepted all of the default installation options. - Adobe Reader 7.0.8 (earlier versions were known as Adobe Acrobat Reader) - this program is used for reading PDF files, an increasingly common way of distributing documents, user guides, sales literature and illustrations on web sites and via email. - Apple iTunes 7.0.2 - this program is typically installed by Apple iPod owners who wish to download or transfer music to their portable music/video player. This automatically installed Apple QuickTime Player and Apple Software Update without me asking it to. - RealPlayer 8 Basic - this program is used for listening to audio and watching videos, similar to Windows Media Player. It is typically downloaded and installed when you want to run streaming music/audio or video from a web site, such as listening to Internet radio broadcasts. - SiSoft SANDRA Lite (trial software) - this program is a popular benchmarking / testing / diagnostics program for hardware and software. - WinZip 10.0 (trial software) - this program is the industry standard for creating and using ZIP files, a common method of distributing smaller (compressed) files on web sites and via email. WinZip has actually become less prevalent since Windows XP introduced built-in ZIP handling capabilities but it is still very popular in business environments. This automatically installed Google Desktop and Google Toolbar as well. - Zone Labs ZoneAlarm 5.5 - this is a popular firewall program as it is available in a free version for personal home users. I already had Kerio Firewall installed so now I am running two firewall programs, which most experts agree isn't ideal for novice users as it introduces additional complications to networking and day-to-day PC usage. Figure 1. Since installing these programs, not only do I have an extra 8 icons on my desktop (see Figure 1) but my PC now takes significantly longer to start up and will also run slightly slower during general use. The reason for this is that I now have extra "startup entries", which are auto-loading applications or tools that are initialised every time that I log into Windows. You can get a rough idea of the number of startup entries that you have by checking the number of icons that you have in the Windows System Tray / Notification Area - this is the space in the bottom-right corner of the screen down by your clock (see Figure 2). Lots of icons means lots of little utilities, tools and background applications that have to be loaded after you've logged in before your PC is really ready to use. These programs also take up a little more room on my hard disk - not a major impact in my case but it may be beneficial to free up that space if your hard disk is getting a bit full. Figure 2. So let's look at how to clear up these unwanted applications. Firstly, though, I need to say that this is general advice for users of PCs at home. If you are using a company-supplied desktop or laptop PC, you need to consult your IT/IS/MIS team to advise them of what you want to remove and to seek their permission. Furthermore, it is important to get a full system backup before changing software installations, or at least a copy of your "My Documents" folder onto CD or DVD. Your backup should also include a full backup of the Windows registry, which we described in last week's article (http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/148.html). Before I show you the ways in which you should go about removing software and startup entries, let's just dispel a few myths (or misunderstandings) that cause novice users problems. 1. Deleting an icon from the desktop does NOT remove the program! The icon on the desktop is not the program itself - it is just a shortcut to the program. Just like a sign at the side of the road pointing to a golf course. That doesn't mean that you are at the golf course but the sign shows you how to find it. 2. Deleting an entry from the Start Menu does NOT remove the program! The Start Menu entry is just another shortcut. 3. Finding the installation folder under "C:\Program Files" in My Computer or Windows Explorer does NOT properly uninstall the program! All that you do here is destroy part of the installation and leave lots of hidden shortcuts broken in your wake. You may receive numerous error messages when you restart the PC as Windows loads registry entries and files from other parts of the system that look for the files that you have just deleted. Deleting an installation folder leaves your system in a real mess - you would be better off doing nothing at all. There are various methods for getting rid of software, mainly depending on exactly what you are trying to achieve. If you still have a use for all of the software on your PC but you want it to start up more quickly and not have its resources (e.g. RAM) consumed by background utilities, then removing the startup entries (described above) may be appropriate. Note that removing the startup entries for some programs such as printer status monitoring utilities will cause them to stop working. However, some of these startup entries give no real benefit to most users. Examples of these include Adobe Reader's Speed Launch feature, RealPlayer's System Tray icon and WinZip's System Tray icon. In the case of Adobe Reader's Speed Launch utility, the idea is that it takes just a couple of seconds to pre-load after Windows has started and then, each time that you want to open a PDF file, it can launch more quickly. However, if you rarely use PDF files, then the accumulated time that you have to wait for the pre-load is longer than the extra time that it would take to open a PDF without the pre-load. The System Tray icons for other programs are usually even less useful - just a series of shortcuts that practically none of us ever use. So why wait each time our PC starts up? Getting rid of them is easy and is usually accomplished in one of two ways. 4. Go to the Start Menu, click 'All Programs' (or just 'Programs' if you aren't using Windows XP), then select the 'Startup' folder. Here, you'll find some of those startup entries such as Adobe Reader Speed Launch. One by one, right-click the startup entries that you want to get rid of and click Delete on the menu (see Figure 3). Note that this is general advice and you should make your own decisions about which ones you want to delete. This is why we recommend making a good backup first! Figure 3. 5. Most startup entries these days reside in a particular part of the registry. Before editing the registry, ensure that you back it up as described in last week's article (http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/148.html). To open the Registry Editor tool, go to the Start Menu and select 'Run...'. At the 'Open:' prompt, type Regedit and click 'OK'. 6. Navigate through the tree in the Registry Editor program to find the correct registry hive. Start off by expanding 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE', then 'SOFTWARE', followed by 'Microsoft', then 'Windows', then 'CurrentVersion' and, finally, select 'Run'. Once that registry hive is selected, you will see keys on the right-hand side of the screen that correspond to all of the startup entries that Windows processes when you log in (see Figure 4). Some of them you will not recognise and it is probably best to leave those alone or seek expert advice about what they are. Figure 4. 7. Select the keys on the right-hand side that you want to stop pre-loading such as "RealTray" and "QuickTime Task", then right-click them and select Delete. Note that this is general advice and you should make your own decisions about which ones you want to delete. This is why we recommend making a good backup first! Steps 4 to 7 will probably help your PC to start up more quickly. But, if you definitely want to completely remove a piece of software from your system, we'll have to go for a more thorough approach. 8. Some software comes with its own "uninstaller". This is similar to the installation program but it removes the software from your PC rather than adding it. Find the application on the Start Menu and see if there is a specific uninstaller for it (see Figure 5). If there is, click the uninstall program and follow the on-screen instructions. Figure 5. 9. If you don't find an uninstaller, then you'll need to use the 'Add Or Remove Programs' screen in the Windows Control Panel. The typical methods for accessing this varies depending on what version of Windows you have and what view you have the Control Panel screen set to. However, there is a shortcut that works for all Windows versions: go to the Start Menu and select 'Run...'. At the 'Open:' prompt, type Appwiz.cpl and click 'OK'. This opens the 'Add Or Remove Programs' screen (see Figure 6). Figure 6. 10. To remove a program, simply select it in the list and, when it appears, click the Remove button. Some programs will have a Change or Modify button instead or as well as the Remove button. In this case, the Change or Remove button will usually let you add additional components to the program, change components that are already installed or remove the program completely. Removing some programs will require you to restart the PC so make sure that you carry out this step with all other programs already closed. That's it. If you've been reading the previous articles, you've now completed all 7 major parts of our full system health check process. And it didn't cost you anything! Next week's article will be about something completely different but you can be sure that it will be just as useful and worth keeping an eye out for! Nathan Forrest - Future Systems ( Sussex ) http://www.futuresystems-sussex.co.uk This article may not be copied or distributed in part or in full from this site and is copyright D24 Media Limited.

Comments

Posted By: ca.stanley@tiscali.co.uk  25-10-2007 10:37 AM

I have folloed your instructios to the letter to try to uninstal a program called MinoltaDimage scan dual 2 scans films and slides. This program was given to me by a friend who said it may work on my XP but was really only for windows 98 he however installed it ( at least ) tried wothout success,since then I have tried without sucess, also while on the subject I notice that a program that I use does not work, Is it that there is a clash between the progams ??? I tried removing the progam called Printhouse suite 11 which I did successfully but now this program will not install again. pleaseHELP

Posted By: Winnipeg  14-11-2007 01:03 AM

Have you tried running the program in "Compatibility mode". Right click on the program > MinoltaDimage > click on the button Compatibilty. Put a check mark > Run this program in compatibility mode for - In this case Windows 98. The box will be greyed out unless an operating system is selected, you can choose Windows 95, 98, ME, NT or Windows 2000. If you are removing the program because it doesn't run right in Xp, but if you don't want the program anymore follow the instructions in the tutorial.

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