[dc3bb61]

Here are a few “bones” to pick with your staff in general on the 3 items listed in the article.

Cleaning the Registry – The suggestions of “improves efficiency, makes it run faster” I believe are taken out of context. Removing unwanted startup items from certain areas in the registry (in regedit, search for “run” and check boxes marked “match whole string only”, “keys”, “values” , and “data”) does help by eliminating items in the “tray” in the lower right that are programs running in the background.
Now, anti-virus programs, and other beneficial programs do need to be in the startup, but media playback programs and the like do not.

Trust me, the fewer items running in the “tray” the better.

I do agree it should only be done by someone familiar with Registry settings and operation.

Disabling system restore – Does not speed up the system, but does take up space. Not everyone who owns a system is rich enough as you folks seem to be to buy a new system every 6 to 12 months, so for those readers without a large hard drive, can disable it, though regular backups and even image software such as Acronis or Norton Ghost would be recommended. And as far as Windows System Restore as being beneficial, if it has to deal with a Malware infection, the XP variant is 9 times out of 10 incapable of doing it’s assigned job.

Defragging your drive – Yes you should, but for most home users, who are not gamers or production users in Photoshop or Auto-Cad for example, defragment 1 to 2 times a year. Production machines should be done weekly if your work files are 500MB or larger. The automated “performance” optimizers in windows XP/Vista/7 are not optimal for each user. They appear to be “dumbed down” for the average user and not a “power user”.

Most of your observances appear to be oriented towards the new system user and not the user who takes care of their PC for a longer time and has to make a major financial decision to replace it.

Kenneth R. Jones

Comp-TIA A+/Network+
Associates of Applied Science in Computer Networking Systems Technology.
14 years of bench service break-fix, small business network installations, and client technical on-call support.

This post has been edited by dc3bb61: 19 May 2010 - 10:19 AM
Reason for edit: Removed email address - it is not a good idea to post your email address as it can result in spam. We will remove it once as a courtesy.

[PCgoo45]

I agree 100%. There's more to computing then raw speed. In reference to defrag, a cluttered HHD is akin to my son's bedroom when he was a teen. If the HHD clusters are optimized and orderly, it stands to reason the HHD mechanical parts won't have to work as hard, which should translate into longer HHD life. I'll take HHD longevity over speed any day.


Never, ever approach a computer saying or even thinking "I will just do this quickly".

[brainout]

Okay, I'll weigh in on the opposite side. It's hard to read the current September issue of PC World on Zinio.com (what a stupid interface for online subscriptions) -- but page 58, 16 PC Mysteries.. Solved!, covers some of the same ideas as defrag and registry cleaning. That stuff DOES help. I defrag every week, and feel sorry for anyone who doesn't. Speed is vastly improved, especially if you've done a lot of work on the PC that week. Cleaning registry every week is a must also, because the more junk left in there, the longer it takes for the time outs to occur on bootup.

It's true that because of bugs (especially Windows glitches), any work on a PC will not give you the performance you'd hoped to get. Incompatibilities abound, and I spend at least 72 hours a week troubleshooting one glitch or another. That could be solved by better OS design, which we're not getting. By less arcane blue-screen errors (what, can't we just get a DIRECTORY OF CODES somewhere in help? Or why can't they translate the codes into English). By simple things, like when you look up your USB ports, you know WHICH PHYSICAL PORT on your machine, matches the hub you see in the list. (As it stands, I can't tell unless I have something hooked up.) Like, if you're not getting enough power to your external drive, it will not be recognized -- rather than, assuming the drive itself is defective (or more often, the cord is defective).

And God forbid, you actually know what programs use what programs, on your machine. God forbid, you can find the files that are sometimes hidden, sometimes in program files, sometimes in shared, sometimes in Local Settings or wherever. So when a program isn't working, you don't know what's missing or why.

And let's not forget the two proverbial answers to all problems we encounter: UNPLUG THE MACHINE, or UNINSTALL/REINSTALL. Most of the time, those 'answers' don't help. Or if they do, it's a stupid way to fix a problem, since you still don't know why the problem occurred.

In short, lots of GUESSWORK because of poor documentation or code identification, wrecks the performance of a PC; no amount of RAMM or clock speed or other 'features', can save you time, if you spend that time chasing down arcane bugs you can't diagnose.

This post has been edited by brainout: 20 August 2012 - 06:33 PM

[orlbuckeye]

dc3bb61, on 19 May 2010 - 10:02 AM, said:

Here are a few “bones” to pick with your staff in general on the 3 items listed in the article.

Cleaning the Registry – The suggestions of “improves efficiency, makes it run faster” I believe are taken out of context. Removing unwanted startup items from certain areas in the registry (in regedit, search for “run” and check boxes marked “match whole string only”, “keys”, “values” , and “data”) does help by eliminating items in the “tray” in the lower right that are programs running in the background.
Now, anti-virus programs, and other beneficial programs do need to be in the startup, but media playback programs and the like do not.

Trust me, the fewer items running in the “tray” the better.

I do agree it should only be done by someone familiar with Registry settings and operation.

Disabling system restore – Does not speed up the system, but does take up space. Not everyone who owns a system is rich enough as you folks seem to be to buy a new system every 6 to 12 months, so for those readers without a large hard drive, can disable it, though regular backups and even image software such as Acronis or Norton Ghost would be recommended. And as far as Windows System Restore as being beneficial, if it has to deal with a Malware infection, the XP variant is 9 times out of 10 incapable of doing it’s assigned job.

Defragging your drive – Yes you should, but for most home users, who are not gamers or production users in Photoshop or Auto-Cad for example, defragment 1 to 2 times a year. Production machines should be done weekly if your work files are 500MB or larger. The automated “performance” optimizers in windows XP/Vista/7 are not optimal for each user. They appear to be “dumbed down” for the average user and not a “power user”.

Most of your observances appear to be oriented towards the new system user and not the user who takes care of their PC for a longer time and has to make a major financial decision to replace it.

Kenneth R. Jones

Comp-TIA A+/Network+
Associates of Applied Science in Computer Networking Systems Technology.
14 years of bench service break-fix, small business network installations, and client technical on-call support.

I wouldn't say that disable system restore doesn't speed up the system because in some cases it can affect the page file. In some cases it could speed up your system in certain cases. But it depends on how much memory you have, if you have a faster SSD drive. The more memory you have the less of a chane the disabling the recovery will affect you.

This post has been edited by orlbuckeye: 15 February 2013 - 07:18 AM