Joe
06-15-04, 02:27 PM
Below is a general guide to troublshooting computer slowdown that i have written up for everyone who needs it. <BR><BR><BR><BR>Computer Slow Down Troubleshooting <BR><BR> There are many things that can slow a computer down these days. Most is mainly due to spy ware and viruses being installed on a computer from surfing the internet, downloading mp3’s, movies, software, and etc. Other possible causes of computer slow down is recent software installations. This can conflict with software, drivers, and etc. I am often asked about this problem so I thought I would write up a list of procedures for troubleshooting. <BR><BR>Spy Ware<BR><BR>We have all had it, and still get it on a regular basis. That’s right, spy ware. Unfortunately it is unavoidable. Some of the main types of spy ware comes from internet cookies, freeware, and shareware software. There is other ways of spy ware being installed on your system. But either way it can be some nasty stuff that will dramatically slow down your computer. Spy ware is quite simple to get rid of and in no way will it harm system files. I believe once something harms files it is considered a virus in my point of view. Some may say different though. <BR><BR>To clean your system of spy ware all you need is some free software. I would suggest Ad Aware from Lavasoft. They update the spy ware definitions on a regular basis so you will never be left behind on current spy ware out there when you run the application. Below are the steps required to scan your system with Ad Aware.<BR><BR>Step 1. <BR>Download Ad Aware - Lavasoft USA<BR><BR>Step 2.<BR>Install the software. (Ad Aware is compatible with windows 9x, NT, 2000, XP)<BR><BR>Step 3. <BR>Run the Application and update your spy ware definitions. <BR><BR>Step 4. <BR>Select drives to scan.<BR><BR>Step 5.<BR>Scan your system.<BR><BR>Step 6. <BR>Click next and quarantine the found spy ware.<BR><BR>And that is all there is to it. <BR><BR>Viruses <BR><BR>Computer Viruses are another one of the computer world’s downfalls. But there is several ways of avoiding them. The most common way of acquiring a virus is by email. A good way of avoiding this is to ask anyone who wishes to send you attachments to contact you prior to doing so. This way you can expect the file to be emailed to you. Also never open emails with attachments from people you do not know. <BR><BR>Scanning your computer for viruses on a regular basis is a good idea. I like to recommend Panda Active scan. This is an online utility brought to you by the good people of panda software. It is also one hundred percent free! Panda Software also updates their virus definitions at least once a day, sometimes more. I recommend scanning once a week. Anything more then that really isn’t necessary <BR><BR><BR>Bad Software.<BR><BR>Sometimes you are looking for software to do a certain task for you, a new game demo, or any other kind of software. Well the truth is some software does not even like to be in the presence of other software. Or sometimes the software is just poorly written. When this happens you can often notice a major system slow down. To fix this I first recommend running Ad Aware as mentioned above to check and see if the software you recently installed has put spy ware on your system. If it has this could be the reason for the slow down of your computer. If it hasn’t it could be due to what I was talking about in the first part of this section about poorly written software or conflicts between other software. <BR><BR><BR>Bad Drivers.<BR><BR>If you have recently installed drivers for some part on your computer and are experiencing slow down you may want to revert to previously used drivers that worked fine. But before doing this check for driver updates on the new driver or fixes/tweaks for that driver. Also never install 3rd party drivers. Yes they can be good and offer more performance but can sometimes wreak havoc on your computer and may be unrecoverable. If you are comfortable with knowing you may have to reinstall or spend hours trying to fix it then go ahead and install them if you wish. … But the performance gain is usually not worth the chance of having major problems. <BR><BR><BR>P2p Software<BR><BR>I could have mentioned peer to peer software in the bad software section but I decided to talk about it in its own section. First and foremost Pcstats.com does not condone piracy, but the fact remains that people do use it. However, p2p software is still legal … you can download non copyrighted documents, freeware, shareware, and more legally with these programs. I would really just like to stress the possible dangers of these programs though. If at all possible download the free software, documents, etc directly from the source. There are people out there that will create viruses and name them as certain documents just to get people with them. Often these viruses will be Trojans. P2p software is also more then often loaded with spy ware. So be sure to run ad aware after installation of any p2p software.<BR><BR><BR>Conclusion <BR><BR>There is also other ways of fixing a slow computer but this is just a general guide of certain steps that can be taken to fix the computer. If you have any more in depth questions about computer slow down please feel free to ask in the forums. <BR>