How to Easily Optimize a Notebook Computer and Make it Faster Discussion

Awesome Thanks man, this will help a ton

 

nod32 rules for anti virus.

you guys still recommend tuneXP? the project has been discontinued for two years and has been causing a lot of problems with sp2 according to the forums at driverheaven.net (official site/sponsor of tunexp).

 

AFter running these changes on my computer, I have 1 problem. When my external 20" lcd is connected to the vga port on my dell m1210, it does not automatically display at its native resolution of 1680x...its something more like 800x600.

I can manually go to settings and get the right 1680x resolution to show up, but something has changed in that it doest get detected automatically anymore.

Any ideas on what could have changed this?

 

I think that happens normally. I have a M1210 which never detected the correct settings first time, even after a reformat. It finds the correct max res for my external monitor (1440x900), but it doesn't automatically set it to that.

 

Best defraggers are Raxco Perfectdisk or O&O, actually

 

pwn3d = powned = owned = beaten badly

 

I want to disable system restore but I have questions, how do I backup my drive andwhat exactly is it? Also what would be an example of the registry that it backups?

 

^^^ can anyone answer me the question I want to disable the system restore by find out as much about it as I can.

 

im not an expert in this stuff yet, but ill tell you what i know.
System restore restores your computer back to exactly how it was at a certain date. To back up your files, you can get an external hard drive, or if you dont have too much stuff to backup, you can just get any flash drive to stick into your usb drive, and transfer your files onto that, to back it up.
Hope this helps. Maybe and expert will reply to this soon.
-MATT

 

What will happen if I turn it off will something not be saved? If I do this will this really help the performance of my laptop when playing games?

 

I'm not an expert either, but we need to define some terms for you. Here's a pretty good technical resource: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_restore.htm

System Restore does NOT save the contents of your C:\ drive (or any other drive for that matter). For that you would need a BACKUP program, either the WinXP service or some third party app, and copying to either an external HD, DVD-R, etc. A USB flash Drive could be used to TRANSFER files, unless you have very little critical data on the laptop.

What System Restore does is basically take a snapshot of your windows registry (4 files that are critical for windows, not sure of the names) and also I think your desktop and certain areas that are monitored by it and replaces these files back to the state at the time of the snapshot. Most common usage: You download some untested program. (Ideally, you manually create a restore point, before installing it). It doesn't do what you want, but now your CD-Drive, sound card, USB port, doesn't work, PC shuts down for no good reason, wants to send a message to Bill Gates, etc. You start the system restore utility, select a restore point before the installation of the problem software, and hopefully all works as it used to.

There is also a system restore service which runs automatically and creates restore points at certain intervals and critical events. I am not sure whether you can disable the service and then manually create restore points at a later time without enabling the service again, but I don't think so.

Nothing is LOST if you turn it off. (That is until some new program installer overwrites a critical file or it (or you) change the registry until your laptop won't load XP and you don't have a backup).

Not appreciably.

"Myth - "Disabling System Restore improves performance."

Reality - "System Restore does not cause any noticeable performance impact when monitoring your computer. The creation of a Restore point also is a very fast process and usually takes only a few seconds. Scheduled System Checkpoints (every 24 hours by default) are created only at system idle time to avoid interfering with a computer during use.""

From http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html

Plus, I REALLY like the function. It's saved my backside quite a few times as you might have guessed from my comments.

 

More links: Black Viper's guide is long gone now, not sure if it will return, but here is one of the few cases where I disagree with him: http://www.majorgeeks.com/page.php?id=13#System Restore Service

The ElderGeek and I are in synch: http://www.theeldergeek.com/system_restore_service.htm

Here a more practical instead of theoretical view of how it works: http://www.theeldergeek.com/system_restore.htm

 

all a system restore does it restore your computer to EXACTLY how it was at a given date. Thats ALL it does. If you are planning to system restore your computer to the date when you first bought it, then all your files would be gone. That MIGHT make your laptop go slightly faster when you play games, but you probably wont even notice a difference...
-MATT

 

Is anyone else having proplems reading this... I copy and pasted it from the topic.

Startup items that you will really want to disable are “qttask” (Quick Time), anything that begins with the 3 letters “ati” (these are ATI video card background tasks that are not needed and just waste memory and bandwidth), anything related to “office” or “fastfind”, or anything related to a program you installed such as a media player or utility. You should keep startup?*tasks that are running your touchpad, firewall?*or anti-virus software.


The entire post is like this. Can someone fix it?

 

ah I thought it was just me !

i'm sure it was okay when I first saw it about a week ago. I'm on firefox 2.0.

 

It's real annoying when your trying to figure out what to type in the "RUN" box.

 

yeah it also looks like that on my computer...

 

If you have 2GB of RAM, can you disable paging files all together? I rarely see my RAM usage go above 1GB so I usually have another GB free anyways. Does Paging Files serves some purpose that my RAM can't? Thanks in advance.

 

Theoretically, you could, but WinXP generally likes to have some page file there. Here is the best article I have found on them: http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

 

Interesting article, but not very convincing. This is the first time I've seen anyone recommend having a page file even with large amounts of RAM.

They also seem to be a little vague about how much your page file size should be. Here's a quote:

...it is suggested that a sensible start point for the initial size would be the greater of (a) 100 MB or (b) enough to bring RAM plus file to about 500 MB. EXAMPLE: Set the Initial page file size to 400 MB on a computer with 128 MB RAM; 250 on a 256 MB computer; or 100 MB for larger sizes.​

Huh??? OK, I have 2GB. Does that mean I should set my page file to -1.5GB (2GB - 1.5GB = the 500mb they suggest)? And just how many systems are out there with 256MB today?


Who is this organization and what credentials do they have?

 

dynot: It appears you answered your own question.

I have 1 GB or RAM and have run successfully with NO page file. However, as the article points out, XP needs some pagfile for dumps so it would be advisable to allocate some. I'd suggest you experiment with 100 MB and see if that works for you. If you get "out of memory messages" than increase your pagefile size.

 

Thanks for the tip dforion.

When I check the settings, it suggests a minimum of 2MB and recommends 3069MB. OK, so if I use 100MB what do I set the maximum at?

 

how long does bootvis take to optimize? mine is running for almost 10mins

 

Thanks for the article, but...

the "tuneXP" link is dead. please fix this asap

 

gamermatt, just go to downloads.com and download it. Lots of alternatives on there too. Unfortunately, the official website for tunexp are no longer giving it away for free.

 

k thanks

 

WHat is page filing and how does it work (ie how does it increase performance and where do you set it?)
what about virtual memory does that help?

*edit* found it
so what from what im reading here setting page file lower increases performance?

 

wow 4 mb to 8 mb!!! i cant even imagine that!

 

well i remember before i even had 4mb i had a 486-33mhz! with mayb 1mb and god knows how big the hard drive was! i had to use a boot up disk jus to be able to play games...before that i had an amstrad cpc 464 it used cassettes to play games!

anyone care to answer my previous question plz?

thanks

 

sunjhoon,

This is the purpose for pagefiles

its holds true even in today's current Windows OS's

 

So, does all this great information work in Vista as well? or do we know yet?

 

The startup programs, services, and the hard drive information things all work on Vista, I'm sure others do as well..but I didnt want to go too heavily into my notebook on a Sunday morning.

 

a bit of topic but do vista's need dual core optimizers.?? i have a turion 64x2 and when i installed Company of Heroes, it told me to download the amd patch for dual core optimization but when i installed it, nothing happened..

 

I have had this conversation many times on various computer forums, every time at its end the experts agree you need a page file no matter how much ram you have. There are programs that use a page file automaticly even if there is enough ram there, its required as part of there protocol.

 

Thank you so much, Jack, for this great post.

Two comments:

1. Windows indexing.
It's supposed to do the job only when the system is idle, so why are you concerned about slowdowns?

2. Disk difrag. I downloaded Diskeeper and PerfectDisk and tried them both. Based on my experience PerfectDisk is a lot better. DK got stuck in a fragmented disk after a few difrag sessions and wouldn't get better defrag results in following sessions. PD gave amazing results right away. It did a better job on the system files defrag upon reboot, defragging the pagefile and the free space. Both vendors offer a 30 day trial period.
I suggest that every user try them both and see for him/herself.

 

You all should try TUNE-UP UTILITIES 2007.

 

Thanks DeLotus! It looks like a keeper, except for the tiny fonts! I sure wish programmers realized not everyone uses a 21" desktop monitor.

My current favourite for Registry cleanup and maintenance is Reg Organizer. I have used it successfully to migrate the registry settings for several programs referencing one folder to reference another folder. This is MUCH more intricate than just moving files and anyone attempting this should BACKUP EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING.

Novices should should avoid this surgical operation on the Registry altogether. Consider yourselves warned. I do not make house calls.

Enjoy!

 

I used to use Diskeeper, but the newer versions seems more cumbersome, focusing on automation rather than performance. Then I tried PerfectDisk and was highly impressed by its simplicity and performance. It does what it is expected to do right away: degrag your files and speed up file access.

 

As I wait for a notebook installed with Vista, are all these fixes and sites still a good idea for Vista? Do they even exist in Vista?

 

1) Having a "messy" registry has essentially zero effect on performance. Using a "cleaner" may fix things if you already have problems, but otherwise it may cause problems.

2) System restore also does not really affect performance. The only reason to disable it is for HD space.

3) As others have said, a page file is necessary. You could have 1000000GB of RAM and you would still need one. It's just the way things are coded.

---

The only things you really need to do to "optimize" your notebook is to uninstall/disable unnecessary processes and programs. Turn off or down system restore for HD space. You're done.

The rest is unnecessary and may cause errors.

 

is it better to do a clean install, or clean up your system from unnecessary software?

 

I'd personally say a clean install beats clean up any day

 

Still leaves you with the problem of reinstalling all of your essential programs, which will still result in a messy registry and messy files...

Which defeats the whole purpose of a clean install.

I would suggest getting UltimateDefrag, it helps with performance a bit...

And cleaning out registry of old, unused, messy registry entries helps a lot too.

 

I have seen this question reappear from time to time.

The answer depends on what level computer user you are, how many programs you have installed, and what commitment you have to your efforts to tweak your programs and system. I currently have 128 programs installed and over a year of tweaking my system and program settings. Thus a clean install is not a good option for me. I use several registry cleaners a month and sometimes do manual registry cleanups as well. A good registry cleaner I recommend is Reg Organizer. There are other good ones too. A good registry cleanup takes less time than a re-install and leaves your program and system settings intact. Be sure to BACK UP your registry everytime. I also backup my entire harddrive on a regular basis. I hope this answers your question.

 

I agree, reinstalling Steam games takes forever

 

thanks guys. i guess laziness got the best of me anyways... so i'll just be doing routine cleanups every now and then. added a few things to my scheduler, so i'll just leave my laptop running on the 1st of every month while im out at work. let half the jobs run on its own!!

 

It doesn't that that long if you can transfer the downloaded files on a partion or external drive

 

Wise Registry cleaner and CCcleaner work pretty well. You could also get RegCure.

 

The answer is a very emphatic YES. I just went through this process, and my computer has definitely sped up, and RAM usage is down from 45% to 37%! The only difference is, you will have to direct yourself to a different part of the site when checking background services. And also, you will obviously not be able to do anything that involves XP (such as Bootvis).

UPDATE: I still can't believe how quickly everything is running on my computer now. WMP opens up and shows my songs almost instantaneously. AWESOME. I love it!

 

sorry one question guys..most or all of this applies to vista right?