Does your PC run slow? Are you seriously contemplating taking it into a computer repair show where they’ll charge you $100+ to speed up your system? There are a few things you can do before you succumb to the computer “repair” shop.

PC Tuneup

Websites that claim they’ll scan your PC for free if you download their software are nothing than money mongers — seriously, it’s a rip off. Even if you have a fresh install of your operating system they’ll claim you have viruses and other malware. If you think you have malware see this lovely article on malware. There is also an article on virus removal if you know that your system is infected.

The Tools

Windows utilities don’t always have a good reputation with users (whether they are computer savvy or not). Utilities like Task Manager, Disk Cleanup, Disk Defragmenter, and Services Panel, Event Viewer, Windows Explorer, and System Restore.

These utilities can usually be found in the System Tools portion of the Accessories menu. All of the highlighted items are essential pc tools that you should be aware of.

Though this OS is Windows 7, the location of the tools is the same for Windows XP and Vista.

Step 1

The first step is something quite obvious but is commonly overlooked. You need to ask yourself, “Do I have the most recent updates for my PC?” As it was stated before, this may seem like a dumb question but it is not. Sometimes, problems due to speed or hardware not working are caused by out-of-date drivers and software patches. To see your most recent service pack, open Run by pressing Window Key + R or opening it via the start menu and typing winver.

This shows you the version of Windows OS you are currently using and the Service Pack which is installed. As we can see from this example, we have Windows Vista with Service Pack 2 installed.

A Service Pack is a major OS update that updates core files of the OS. They are different than a regular OS patch. One key difference is the size of the update. Most service packs are well over 100MB in size.

To check and see if you have any updates, navigate to control panel and select Windows Updates.

For XP users it will be on the left-hand bar menu and for Vista users it will be under System as the first option. For Windows 7 users, click on System and Security and then on Windows Update.

Click on “Check for Updates” and Windows will check for any updates that you might need. If it finds any updates, be sure to install them and then restart your computer if you are prompted to do so.

Step 2

The next step is to remove unnecessary files from your system using Ccleaner which is a free and open source utility for all to use. It comes with a windows system cleaner and a registry cleaner together. This is a great utility to install and to run at least once a month.

Ccleaner will clean up various applications and various windows items that you select. Looking at the image, we can see that there are several applications and windows items that are using quite a bit of space on the hard drive.

Step 3

Next we want to defragment our hard drive. There are two utilities that are excellent and blow away the Windows Disk Defragmenter. Auslogics Disk Defrag and Piriform’s Defraggler. Personally, I prefer Auslogics over Defraggler because it comes with an optimization option and it is usually faster.

These examples are screen shots of Auslogics before defragmentation and after defragmentation.

Before	After

But what exactly is fragmentation of the hard drive? First we need to understand how a hard drive works. Most hard drives that we have are called magnetic hard drives which consist of one or more platters and a read/write head. Data is written in these 512-byte slots on the hard drive called sectors. The amount of space on the hard drive is determined by the number or sectors in each track. A track is a full rotation around the disk platter.

Data is stored as a magnetic spot in the hard drive and the absence of data is stored as a non-magnetic spot in the hard drive. This is also known as storing data as binary (0′s and 1′s). The presence of a magnetic spot is “1″ and the absence of one is a “0″. 8 bits = 1 byte, so each sector can hold 4096 bits or 4.096 kilobits of information. Translated into the terms of bytes, each sector can hold 512 bytes of information.

When we write information to the hard drive, the information sometimes gets scattered because it is using the closest sector with free space. More notably, when we uninstall programs or delete files, that frees up the spot on the platter so data gets written to that spot where the old data used to be. This allows for data to get placed in different sectors on the hard drive and thereby increasing the access time for the read/write head to get the data we need.

The defragmentation process places data in the proper sectors and tracks there the majority of the data is for that particular file or program is found. Auslogics does a little bit more with the optimization option, however. The optimization option “compresses” the free space we have instead of merely moving data to the right spot. This places all of the data we have in a single compacted block on the hard drive to further decrease the access time. Read more about the defragmentation process here with Auslogics’ great explanation.

These images below depict the fragmentation, defragmentation, and optimization process.

Step 4

msconfig. Though this seems somewhat daunting, fret not PC users. Run is a great tool and is the gateway to many PC features and shortcuts. We must open Run by pressing the Window key + R or by opening run manually. Type msconfig and then navigate to the Startup tab. Hide and non-windows startup services (if you have the option) and begin unckecking all non-windows startup services. Leave core services like video drivers and wifi drivers checked. Items like iTunes, Adobe, Quicktime, and other programs can be unchecked because we don’t need them to startup right when our OS loads.

All of the items that are highlighted are things we don’t need to be loading during the startup process. There is a more advanced way of going about this; however, this is the practical and easiest way of increase your systems speed during startup.

Notice that we leave the NVIDIA, touchpad, google update, and our anti-virus programs checked so they launch during the startup process. These are all items we want to loading during the startup process.

Step 5

Run a virus scan with your existing antivirus software or by using Microsoft Security Essentials or you can browse paid anti-virus programs. But if you’re running any version of Windows, AtomicPages commends and endorses the use of Microsoft Security Essentials.

Be sure to update your virus definitions daily and scan your system at least once a week and stay off of websites with bad reputations. If you want to check how reputable a website is, we recommend the WOT Plugin for Firefox/Chrome/IE/Safari. This plugin check to see how reputable a website is from community votes. This plugin will warn you if you are visiting a website with a poor reputation.

Although this might seem like a silly question, “How to prevent a virus?”, some people really have no clue how and why we should protect against malware and other technological parasites.

Why Protect?

Let us assume “malware” is an all-inclusive term that includes, but is not limited to, worms, viruses, grayware, riskware, scareware, and trojans. Why on Earth would we protect our computers from these little bits of code that could possibly have no adverse effect on our systems? Well, you always must think to yourself, “what if?”

What if you did visit a website or opened an email attachment and you did get malware from this malicious website or email attachment. What if this malware took over your computer and copied itself into hundreds of directories and was secretly logging every keystroke you made on your computer. This malware could potentially have banking usernames and passwords, credit card information, or other personal information that is sent over the internet.

What if malware took over your computer and began deleting critical system files and folders? It would be annoying to have to reinstall your operating system because malware hijacked your computer. But this doesn’t happen with ever infection; we need to weigh the pros and cons of both sides.

As wonderful as these arguments are, it is still better to have anti-virus than to not have it. When surfing the world wide web, you never know what your system might catch. Even if you visit a website that you know is malware-free, it still could give you malware. Malicious code writes are always coming up with better ways to infect systems and steal information or cause a nuisance.

What Programs to Use

It is a well know fact that there are a billion different anti-viral, anti-adware,and anti-malware programs. Not to mention email filters, spam filters, and popup blockers.

This begs the question, “What program should I use?” In my opinion, the best option is always the free option. This will save you money and will suffice in most cases. Great free programs are the following:

• AVG Free
• Avast Free
• Threat Fire Free
• Avira Free

There are other paid options, however. According to CNET ( a widely respected and well known technology-based website), the top paid anti-viral programs were the following:

http://us.trendmicro.com/us/home/

To see the full list the CNET’s reviews, check out this link for the full list.