It makes sense that not everybody has the money to refresh their specs every year or so. Seeing some of my friend’s machines I’m usually overwhelmed by how bad things are and how much time they waste because of a lack in knowledge as to how they could make things better. The major problems I usually encounter are:

• An extremely slow user experience. Applications and heavy websites take a long time to load.
• If an internet connection is used, then a computer is usually packed with spyware and pop-ups that make it impossible to do anything.

Since I’ve helped at least 5 of my friends to set up their machines recently, I thought it might be wise to write a small guide about the medical care that I’ve provided them in order to overcome the problems mentioned. For someone who knows basic computing, the overall process should not take more than an hour’s work plus an hour of unattended application runtime. Please note that:

• To make things simpler, I’ll make the assumption that Windows XP is installed, though a similar process could also be applied to previous Microsoft operating systems.
• I take no responsibility what so ever for the information provided here. If you follow it, you do so at your own risk. You could, however, contact me if you get stuck and hopefully I will try and help you.
• All software and tools described here are either provided within the operating system or are completely free and available for download from an internet site unless stated otherwise.

On old machines the most valuable asset that a computer has is memory (RAM). Using more RAM than the computer has would mean that the computer needs to cache on the hard drive which would make the process a lot slower. What most people are not aware of is that the default Windows XP configuration, especially the Pro version, is packed with unnecessary services usually preinstalled for a computer intended to operate within a big administrated organizational network (a Windows Domain). Many of those services can be removed and save up a lot of memory, therefore decreasing the chances for caching. Furthermore, Windows XP can be pretty heavy on graphics and enhanced features, most of which can be removed to allow improved speed. So, to start up with a configuration, I recommend Black Viper’s famous services optimization tweaks:

• Windows XP Super Tweaks - http://web.archive.org/web/20050330014537/www.blackviper.com/WinXP/supertweaks.htm
• Windows XP Home and Professional Service Pack 2 Service configurations - http://web.archive.org/web/20050401044922/www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

The guides are pretty clear and straight forward, and will gain you major performance increase. I’ve applied the "safe" configuration to most computers I mess around with, yet I use a slightly modified version of "Bare Bones" configuration on my own machine. The way I see it, there shouldn’t be anything running in the background that you’re not using at a specific moment, so once you’re through with configuring services head-on to disable everything that loads automatically on windows startup through MSCONFIG. If you do need some software running, then best thing to do would be to load it yourself and close it after you finish (such as Messenger, music players etc.). I apply the same philosophy for resident programs like an antivirus or an antispyware. These programs are required to keep a computer running smoothly, but they take up too many resources when resident. So, what I do is I run automatic daily night-checks and disable the memory resident programs. Note that if you’re not using a webmail service but rather an email client software, or if you’re a massive application downloader then you might indeed require the antivirus running in the background. But most users I know really don’t need those heavy applications consuming their valuable resources. After you’ve finished removing all unnecessary Windows services and features, you should already have a much faster system than you’ve gotten used to. The next step you should take to increase performance is to clean up your computer from files you don’t need and to sort out your registry. Some of my friends use a computer in a shared apartment so there’s also the issue of getting rid of personal information. There are many tools that do these kinds of services for you. I can recommend the wonderful free Crap Cleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/). Next step is to secure the computer and get rid of all the spyware that’s been haunting your machine. If you use your computer to access the Internet then the first step you’d need to do is make sure that your internal firewall is running. The built-in firewall inside Windows isn’t the greatest firewall out there, but it will provide you the basic protection needed in exchange for very little memory consumption. Windows XP Service Pack 2 offers a very good step up for the internal firewall, providing incoming-application-filtering, so you might want to take advantage of that. I think that, in general, applying Service Pack 2 is something you should do to keep your computer secure. For the lame user, there’s really no need for ZoneAlarm or any of the other personal firewalls out there, which might provide better protection as far as outgoing traffic is concerned, but would also complicate things and take up more resources. The Microsoft guide about the internal firewall is located at: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/firewall.mspx When Windows XPSP2 firewall is running, make sure that you approve traffic only from applications that you use. Once the firewall is up, it is time to get rid of all the viruses and spyware. Once again, there are many tools out there, but of all tools I’ve found that the following provide a good free protection :

• AVG antivirus at http://free.grisoft.com/
• Spybot Search & Destroy at http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
• Lavasoft’s Ad-aware SE personal at http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

I don’t run the antivirus or the antispyware in the background, but rather use the internal options to schedule a night scan (set to quietly run in the background, run automatic updates download, clean automatically when finding trouble and close when done). Once installed, you should update definitions and scan your computer once to get rid of everything. You may need to restart your computer during the process. Microsoft suggests that you update your operating systems and software from the Microsoft update page or by using automated updates installation. I think there’s no major harm in doing it manually. Up to you how you want to do it. Slow computers might want to do it manually, while stronger machines might want this configured to run automatically. In order to avoid popup hell, you’ll require a good pop-up blocker. Plenty of those out there, but the one that I like is incorporated with the Google toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com/ ). This toolbar will, ofcourse, provide you with the usual Google tools as well. If you’re really looking for something smoother, then consider running some other lighter browsing alternatives to Internet Explorer. For example, it is well known that Firefox has a built-in popup blocker and a search bar provided within (http://www.mozilla.com/).Finally, some small tips that might seem trivial, but I’ll mention them anyhow:

• If you’re using a laptop, use the hibernate feature. You don’t really need to shut down the computer and wait for it to load up for over a minute every time. For a stable system configuration Hibernate should be all that you use. About Hibernate: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/mobility/getstarted/hibernate.mspx .
• If you’re a big (legal :P) filesharing P2P user and using an ADSL then you should be aware that uplink has an impact on your download speed and that filesharing programs have a tendency to overload your uplink. Few programs allow limiting uplink, but usually would take down of your download speed as well. To control your application up/down bandwidth you might consider using a shareware tool like Netlimiter (http://www.netlimiter.com/). And while I’m at it, with all due respect to Mule and Bittorrent networks, I think DirectConnect/IRC is the best thing out there (StrongDC++ is a good choice - http://strongdc.berlios.de/index.php?lang=eng).