Free performance increase for your computer or laptop

Ok, this is one of my favourite and and often-used tips to squeeze that extra bit of power out of your system. It's just a couple of simple system changes that will make your windows open quicker and generally improve the day-to-day performance of your computer. This works on Windows 2000, XP, and Vista.

Right-click 'My computer', and on the pop-up menu left-click 'Properties'. This opens the System Properties window, which can also be opened by double-clicking 'System' in the control panel. The first thing to do is note the amount of RAM in your system, which should be displayed on the 'General' tab of System Properties nearly at the bottom of the window under the heading 'Computer'. Write down the amount of RAM in your system, you will need this later. Now in System Properties click on the Advanced tab. Under the 'Performance' heading, click Settings, which will open the 'Performance Settings' window (remember how you got here - you will need to open it again later). Now on Visual Effects, click to select the 'Adjust for best performance' radio button. Now click Apply. After a few seconds, you will notice the appearance of your task bar and windows will change. This reduces the amount of memory required to render your desktop and open windows, thereby increasing the amount of free memory available for other things, and speeding up the time it takes to open a new window. If you like it better the other way you can change it back to 'Let windows choose what's best for my computer', or for the not-faint-of-heart, you can select 'Custom' and tweak the options to your heart's content.

Now moving on to virtual memory settings. First, open 'Performance Settings' again (refer to the above steps for how to get there). From here we want to click the 'Advanced' tab, then down at the bottom of this window, under 'Virtual memory' click 'Change'. Make sure your system drive (usually C:) is selected above, and then click to select the 'Custom size' radio button. This is where you will need to know the amount of RAM you have (if you remember, you should have noted this earlier in the first step above). I recommend you set the custom virtual memory to somewhere between 2 and 4 times the amount of RAM you have in your system. So, if you have 1GB of RAM, set the virtual memory to 2000MB or 4000MB. Also, make sure you set the initial size and the maximum size to the same value. What this does is it causes the operating system to allocate a fixed amount of disk space for the virtual memory, which saves the time that it would otherwise take increasing the page file size when more virtual memory is needed, and then decreasing it again when the usage drops. The only problem with doing this occurs when you are low on disk space. You will need as much free space on your hard drive as the amount of memory you allocate to virtual memory, and this space on your hard drive will become unusable and so it will appear as though you have that much less free space on your drive. With modern computers we're seeing hard drives of 160GB, 250GB, 320GB and above and for these systems with general use there should be lots of free space on the hard drive. However, with older systems (which generally will see improved performance more using this trick), unfortunately the hard drives are often smaller (80GB, 60GB, 40GB, and perhaps less, depending on how old the computer is) and you may be running low on free space. If this is the case, your system will most likely improve greatly with a hard drive and/or memory upgrade. After you've set your initial and max virtual memory sizes, click the Set button, then Ok, and then on the window behind click Apply and Ok. That's it, your system should be that bit quicker now. You may need to restart the computer for the changes to take effect.

I really hope these little tricks prove useful to you. As always, please feel free to comment or contact me through my website if you have any questions or if there is anything I can do to help.

Yours,

Sean Loewen
Owner
The PC GP Computer Services

Visit my website:

Computer and Laptop Repairs and Services for Home and Small Business

How to avoid getting ripped off - internet style

Ok, a client of mine was contacted by someone offering to book a tour with him (he's a tour guide) for 10 people and they wanted to give him a deposit of €2,000. Their accomodation was €8,000 but there was a problem paying for the accomodation, so they said, and hence they asked my friend to process a credit card transaction for €10,000 and then to pass on the overpayment of €8,000 to the hotel on their behalf. All the emails were very genuine and coming from an apparently legitimate source. This is a common scam, the overpayment deal, where the con sends you more than the cost of whatever goods or service, and you then give them the balance back in cash or else make a payment to a third party. This is a great way to launder money or use stolen credit card details. Always be on the lookout for this one! It's a classic scam.

Here's a great video about this very common scam:




Sean Loewen
Owner
The PC GP Computer Services

Visit my website:

Computer and Laptop Repairs and Services for Home and Small Business

The best backups are the ones you actually do

Hi, welcome to my new blog. This is where I'll be sharing as much as possible, the many ways of preventing the regular computer and laptop problems I see regularly, how to get the most out of your computer or laptop, and other tips and tricks that I hope you will find useful.

I enjoy using computers, when they are working properly. When they aren't working properly, they can be the most frustrating appliance ever inflicted upon the human being.

I thought I'd start this blog with something about backups. A lot of people talk about or think about doing backups. I just want to mention that this is a fairly useless activity, the futility of which becomes most apparent when you turn on your computer or laptop and the hard drive has mysteriously died at some point since the last time you used it. What this means, of course, is that all your data is irretrievably lost (let's assume major platter damage), and you have no backup copy. Now, aren't you glad you talked about doing backups? If you have data that is important, YOU MUST BACK UP REGULARLY!

That said, there's a very handy and free backup program called SyncBack, which you can program to automatically do a backup, from any drive in your computer or network, to any drive, network folder, external hard drive, memory key, or even FTP location. And, the best feature (for me anyway) is that it will also automatically email you a report when the backup is completed, or if it fails to run for any reason. Anyway, the name is SyncBack, click here to download this most excellent free backup software. It's free, it's totally safe, I've recommended it and installed it for clients literally dozens or possibly hundreds of times, and have always found it brilliant and spot-on. This is not an affiliate link and I'm not making any money whatsoever of the sale or recommendation of this software.

Ok, that's my tip for today. I hope you've found this useful, hope you have a wonderful day and thanks for reading.

Sean Loewen
Owner
The PC GP Computer Services

Visit my website:

Computer and Laptop Repairs and Services for Home and Small Business