improving system performance

[riviera74]

I am seeing several programs out there, such as www.windofix.com and www.finallyfast.com that claim to improve performance by correcting registry errors and the like.

DO any of these programs actually work as advertised? If so, what would you recommend?

[Meadows]

Do any of these programs actually work as advertised?

No.

what would you recommend?

Leave it alone.

[Fighterpilot]

If you don't have it already...CCleaner has a decent registry cleaning feature that seems to work ok.
http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/
Been using it for years on Vista and W7 with no probs.

[Buub]

Unless your system is seriously **** up, your registry doesn't need any cleaning. It's working just fine as it is.

If it's screwed up so badly that you need to "clean" it, then you really just need to reinstall Windows.

[Shining Arcanine]

If you use a mechanical hard drive, you have two options:

1. Get a solid state disk from Intel that has trim support. Your mechanical hard drive is obsolete and for all intents and purposes, belongs in a museum. The only reason to hold onto it would be to use to store static data for the next few years until terabyte solid state drives are available from Intel.

2. Buy PerfectDisk. It will make your hard drive perform as efficiently as it did on day one, but it will be no substitute for an Intel SSD. You will eventually need to go with option 1, but if you don't want to upgrade your hardware right now, here is option 2:

http://www.perfectdisk.com/

If you use a solid state disk that does not have trim support, you have one option:

1. Get a solid state disk from Intel that has trim support.

If you have a solid state disk that has trim support and it is not from Intel, you have one option:

1. Get a solid state disk from Intel that has trim support.

If you use a solid state disk that does have trim support, you need to make sure that the trim functionality is working properly. This involves making sure that the firmware is up to date and you are running Windows 7 with the Microsoft ACHI SATA driver.

By the way, I brought a 80GB Intel X-25M Generation 2 SSD a few weeks ago and I absolutely love it. I cannot imagine using a mechanical hard drive as my boot drive anymore.

Also, to answer your question, both of the products you linked are garbage. The only software that might make your computer faster is PerfectDisk.

[Flying Fox]

Without knowing the specific performance issue (perceived or otherwise) that the OP is having, and the effort/cost that is willing to be put in, I don't feel we can give any good suggestion.

[Welch]

Have to agree with Fox...... What performance issues are you having with your system that your trying to correct? If you could be a bit specific we can help you out. Slow start up, slow load times, stability issue, consistently slow performance in games, what?

Buub, to say that your system shouldn't need to have its registry "cleaned" is to say that you shouldn't maintain your car until it stop working, preventive maintenance. I wouldn't recommend doing this every day, but once a week isnt horrible and at least once a month. Of course if you make MANY changes to your system its a good idea to do your maintenance afterwards.

As for CCleaner, I have used it for sometime, great program for cleaning up left over registries after uninstalling software/devices. I will warn for ATI users on Windows 7 though... if you have it checked to remove Installer files, it will remove your ATI video card installer files from C:/ATI... which on older systems isnt an issue. For some reason Windows 7 looks for some files in there on startup (regardless of everything being disabled in the MSConfig startup menu) and you will have an annoying pop-up. Unzipping the ATI drivers back into that folder does not solve the issue, nor does reinstalling CCC or the Drivers fix it, little issue that im sure a new version CCleaner will resolve. Other than that, NEVER had it remove a file that i needed or that it should have.

I can also vouch for PerfectDisk, its boot-time, MBR, and smart placement make it a step above your built in windows defrag utility, ive noticed a good little bit of a performance increase with smart placement on my Hitachi 5400 Laptop HDD.

Shining..... to say that HDD's belong in a museum is pretty bold as of yet. Sure in 4-5 years that will be the case, maybe not even then. Hard drives as they stand now provide you MASSIVE amounts of storage, something that a SSD cant do, and if it could it would cost you more than its worth. Its like saying that RAM belongs in a museum and you should just push CPU manufacturers to up L2 cache in place of RAM.... not effective, not possible (yet ) I also don't know why the heck your pushing Intel SDD, as though they are the only ones possible that could make a SDD, you almost sound like an Intel rep or saleman..... There are others who have a good reputation and are also going along the road to larger, faster and cheaper SSD. Corsair, Cruical, Patriot, OCZ, pretty much any major memory manufacturer. Whether they have the features that you will want in a SDD right now, like TRIM, that depends on how much your willing to spend, and thats likely to be a pretty penny when compared to its HDD brethren.

[riviera74]

Have to agree with Fox...... What performance issues are you having with your system that your trying to correct? If you could be a bit specific we can help you out. Slow start up, slow load times, stability issue, consistently slow performance in games, what?

Buub, to say that your system shouldn't need to have its registry "cleaned" is to say that you shouldn't maintain your car until it stop working, preventive maintenance. I wouldn't recommend doing this every day, but once a week isnt horrible and at least once a month. Of course if you make MANY changes to your system its a good idea to do your maintenance afterwards.

As for CCleaner, I have used it for sometime, great program for cleaning up left over registries after uninstalling software/devices. I will warn for ATI users on Windows 7 though... if you have it checked to remove Installer files, it will remove your ATI video card installer files from C:/ATI... which on older systems isnt an issue. For some reason Windows 7 looks for some files in there on startup (regardless of everything being disabled in the MSConfig startup menu) and you will have an annoying pop-up. Unzipping the ATI drivers back into that folder does not solve the issue, nor does reinstalling CCC or the Drivers fix it, little issue that im sure a new version CCleaner will resolve. Other than that, NEVER had it remove a file that i needed or that it should have.

I can also vouch for PerfectDisk, its boot-time, MBR, and smart placement make it a step above your built in windows defrag utility, ive noticed a good little bit of a performance increase with smart placement on my Hitachi 5400 Laptop HDD.

Shining..... to say that HDD's belong in a museum is pretty bold as of yet. Sure in 4-5 years that will be the case, maybe not even then. Hard drives as they stand now provide you MASSIVE amounts of storage, something that a SSD cant do, and if it could it would cost you more than its worth. Its like saying that RAM belongs in a museum and you should just push CPU manufacturers to up L2 cache in place of RAM.... not effective, not possible (yet ) I also don't know why the heck your pushing Intel SDD, as though they are the only ones possible that could make a SDD, you almost sound like an Intel rep or saleman..... There are others who have a good reputation and are also going along the road to larger, faster and cheaper SSD. Corsair, Cruical, Patriot, OCZ, pretty much any major memory manufacturer. Whether they have the features that you will want in a SDD right now, like TRIM, that depends on how much your willing to spend, and thats likely to be a pretty penny when compared to its HDD brethren.

Boot times do seem a little slow and sluggish. Then again, my Windows XP install is about three or four years old.

I do not know about PerfectDisk, but I have used Diskkeeper for quite a while and it is very effective at defragmentation.

Where can I find CCleaner?

[Fighterpilot]

Try this.... http://www.google.com > CCleaner or perhaps the link I provided in my post above...
ps.Having tried them all....this is the best defrag program for Vista/Win 7 in my opinion.\
http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/di ... g/download

[Welch]

If your boot times are killing you, id suggest a simple clean up of your system... Start with deleting and removing old/outdated programs you don't need. CCleaner also has an uninstall utility that pretty much is just a shortcut to the uninstaller with windows.. except it also lets you remove a bugged programs from that Add/Remove programs list. After doing that you should make sure all of your drivers are up to date, video card, motherboard drivers, ect. You could go as far as flashing your BIOS and other firmware for some of your hardware. If you've never done this, seek some advice/help by someone here on TR, its not that difficult... just may be a bit overwhelming with all of the "THIS COULD KILL YOUR COMPUTER" messages

After that, id run CCleaner's registry cleaner, run its program cleaner which will get rid of lots of cached info that you more than likely wont use. If you use the remember my password feature in your favorite browser, it will erase the auto fill... no worries just add it next time your on there... each time you run it the program will remove the auto-filled fields, unless you specify that on CCleaner. After your sure that all files and programs you dont need/want anymore have been removed... you've ran your Anti-Virus and spyware programs to make sure your not infected from head to toe... then you can move on to Defragging. Disk-Keeper is a program i used to use... was pretty darn good but I havent used it in over 4 years now. I switch to perfect disk and never went back to windows. You can also if you want a freebie little defragger, use Defraggler....... its on the Download page from CCleaner, same people make it. I have never used it but been told its a great light-weight program. The guys making ccleaner did a great job, so id like to assume they did good with it too.

After everything you did above, i'd then go into Run>msconfig and edit your startup items. For this don't worry about software your used to using "Needing" to be on this list. If you uncheck it and apply it does not mean that you cannot use the software, it simply means that it wont bog down your computer at startup. Most people don't realize that things are on their startup and just click the program to start it up anyhow. Take things like Adobe off the list, Java...... Most of these will start up when a program request to use it anyhow.

Two more things you can do if you want... Run that CCleaner after EVERYTHING else is done and setup disk-keeper or perfect disk to run a Master Boot Record defrag on startup.

Give all of that a go and tell me that you don't feel a difference

[jarchack]

I can't count how many computers I've fixed with

ccleaner
malwarebytes
hijackthis
chkdsk

All of them free yet geek squad still plunders unaware consumers.

I do use perfectdisk on my own computer but by and large, most consumers don't work with anywhere near the number installs/uninstalls and deletes that I do.

[Shining Arcanine]

Have to agree with Fox...... What performance issues are you having with your system that your trying to correct? If you could be a bit specific we can help you out. Slow start up, slow load times, stability issue, consistently slow performance in games, what?

Buub, to say that your system shouldn't need to have its registry "cleaned" is to say that you shouldn't maintain your car until it stop working, preventive maintenance. I wouldn't recommend doing this every day, but once a week isnt horrible and at least once a month. Of course if you make MANY changes to your system its a good idea to do your maintenance afterwards.

As for CCleaner, I have used it for sometime, great program for cleaning up left over registries after uninstalling software/devices. I will warn for ATI users on Windows 7 though... if you have it checked to remove Installer files, it will remove your ATI video card installer files from C:/ATI... which on older systems isnt an issue. For some reason Windows 7 looks for some files in there on startup (regardless of everything being disabled in the MSConfig startup menu) and you will have an annoying pop-up. Unzipping the ATI drivers back into that folder does not solve the issue, nor does reinstalling CCC or the Drivers fix it, little issue that im sure a new version CCleaner will resolve. Other than that, NEVER had it remove a file that i needed or that it should have.

I can also vouch for PerfectDisk, its boot-time, MBR, and smart placement make it a step above your built in windows defrag utility, ive noticed a good little bit of a performance increase with smart placement on my Hitachi 5400 Laptop HDD.

Shining..... to say that HDD's belong in a museum is pretty bold as of yet. Sure in 4-5 years that will be the case, maybe not even then. Hard drives as they stand now provide you MASSIVE amounts of storage, something that a SSD cant do, and if it could it would cost you more than its worth. Its like saying that RAM belongs in a museum and you should just push CPU manufacturers to up L2 cache in place of RAM.... not effective, not possible (yet ) I also don't know why the heck your pushing Intel SDD, as though they are the only ones possible that could make a SDD, you almost sound like an Intel rep or saleman..... There are others who have a good reputation and are also going along the road to larger, faster and cheaper SSD. Corsair, Cruical, Patriot, OCZ, pretty much any major memory manufacturer. Whether they have the features that you will want in a SDD right now, like TRIM, that depends on how much your willing to spend, and thats likely to be a pretty penny when compared to its HDD brethren.

Boot times do seem a little slow and sluggish. Then again, my Windows XP install is about three or four years old.

I do not know about PerfectDisk, but I have used Diskkeeper for quite a while and it is very effective at defragmentation.

Where can I find CCleaner?

I used to use Diskeeper 10 in the past on my system when I used Windows XP. At some point, I switched to PerfectDisk 7 and things seemed faster. I had to make sure that it was managing the system files, doing a smart defragmentation and trying its best to consolidate free space at the expense of time, but I liked the results. This was with a 640GB Western Digital Caviar hard drive. I later switched to a 750GB hard drive and had Perfect Disk run nightly. I never noticed any drop in performance from when the windows installation was new.

[potatochobit]

reformat your computer.

this will give you the best performance gain.