I do this kind of shit for eight hours a day and rarely go into this area (not techno arcade but computer t/s) for that reason. But I feel compelled what can I say. Most people’s problems with their computers are that they really have no idea what is going on. So at least once a year I recommend taking a few hours to find out all the specifics. Here are a few good resources. pacs-portal.co.uk click on the "Startup Tips" link if your a novice read the whole page and this will take a few days not one. Otherwise hit f3 and search for "start_ups.exe" download it and save to the desktop. Now go to start then run and type msconfig analyze everything on the startup tab and use the .exe you downloaded as a resource to give you and idea of what the items are. Oh and also one thing use the search feature because, there are likely 18k items on the list these days scrolling through is useless. At the same time use Google it's not perfect science and the idea is to gain an understanding do not get bogged down in the minutia just learn. Now go to the services tab first choose hide all Microsoft services and see what is left over. No it’s not in the list of services box! Look below. Ok there once upon a time was a page called BlackViper.com and this guy had a great list of services similar to the PACS-PORTAL page it is no longer around. Google Windows services and there are a few out there now that are just as good. Use them and educate yourself. Last of all do this: Open task manager: Start-Run "taskmgr" or ctrl alt del. Right off the bat change the view settings. Add the process id, virtual memory use, and both read and write. This will show you your processes and how much data they are shuffling around, how much processor they use, as well as memory. I think user name is there by default if it is not then add it. Now stretch this to fit exactly the left or right side half of the screen and click on the PID column to sort numerically all the process id's Now open a command prompt. use CMD not command with the operating systems capable. And if you are using win9x ...I'm not even going to bother. At the command prompt start by typing : "cd\" [enter] just to clean things up Now type "netstat -anb" [enter] and wait (this will take a while to complete) Now you see a long list of TCP/IP as well as UDP protocols. You should see the ip addresses that are relevant as well as the actual programs that have activated these connections. You also see the state weather open or closed ect. If you are running Bit torrent and file sharing software you may be surprised about what is open or listening for activity. More importantly you can cross reference the PID column with the task manager for a better picture even. Also if you have a little network with Linux systems and are using a file sharing software like samba and or the UNIX services snap in from Microsoft it can be interesting what loads with that stuff. Use the previously mentioned resources and Google. Learn and have fun. Knowing what your computer is doing is 90 percent of the game about understanding why things happen weather good or bad.
<Start> <RUN> "REGEDIT" HKEYLOCALMACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run Clean this out too. A lot of crappy software likes to show up in here. Some legit too, but I have found several spyware/adware/virus BS in here, "RunOnce" folder as well also check HKEYCURRENTUSER\software\microsoft.....yadda yadda you ca really pick up your performance by shutting off a lot of the unused programs that are running in the background. I also like to disable services that are crap, I 'right-click' "My Computer" select 'Manage' go into "Services" and set any seldom used services to "Manual" and any useless ones to "disable". DEFRAG DEFRAG DEFRAG
