Wonder Apps?

[bubbabobjoe]

Anybody know of any apps I can get that will increase the speed of my computor? Well, its not exactly for my computor, but for my parents. They have an old 200mhz processor and 32 megs RAM. It is REALLY slow, and I would like to give them some apps that will help them with their slow computor. And if it works I might use it on mine too.

[bubbabobjoe]

Help for speed with computor or internet would be nice.

[petemcevoy]

Generally speaking, the best way to maximise the speed of your computer is to keep it clear of the detritus that windows likes to leave lying around. Uninstall any apps you don't need, clean the registry (you can use microsofts own regclean for this), keep your hard disk defragged, make sure no programs are starting at boot time that you don't need (i'm not going to explain how to do that here - its been done before), run scandisk regularly, keep your c:\windows folder as small as possible - throw out the screensavers, text files, anything you don't need (be careful what you throw out tho, if you don't know what it is, leave it alone). A neat trick to speed up the boot process is as follows: open up a dos prompt and from the c: prompt type "attrib -r -s -h msdos.sys" followed by "edit msdos.sys" - make it look something (maybe not exactly) like this:

[Paths]
WinDir=C:\WINDOWS
WinBootDir=C:\WINDOWS
HostWinBootDrv=C

[Options]
BootMulti=0
BootGUI=1
AutoScan=2
DblSpace=0
DrvSpace=0
Logo=0
DisableLog=1
DoubleBuffer=0

Don't mess with any of the bumph at the end of the file. if your system is extemely old, you may want to set the DoubleBuffer parameter to 1, some older hdd controlers need this. Save this file (alt + f + s) and close it (alt + f + x) and reapply the attributes (work it out for yourself!), I've seen some older systems boot in 30 seconds with this "hack" - be warned though - you can mess up your system by tinkering with system files.

As for speeding up your internet connection, errmmm - get dsl or cable ;-)

[Tedob1]

it would help a lot if you can do a clean install, unless theres thing you can't replace on it (orig inst disks lost, etc.) or they don't want it.

[tazjam]

yeah keeping your computer clean of things you don't need is a big one for speed. check your registry too, the startup folders in there can have programs that don't have any use to you. i used dr. solomon's power tools and it worked great on my adsl connection, it runs at 1.2 Mbs now so i can't complain much. i tried the optimize windows thing that came with it and that made my computer lock up for 5 minutes when it started but i uninstalled it and everything works better now. my time for loading my parents computer, which has lots of stuff on it because my mom puts stuff everywhere then gets mad when she can't find it, is about 2-3 mins from a cold start and it runs windows 98. be carefull with network settings though, if you set them wrong your computer might be able to download faster but your packet loss can go up a lot and sometimes your nic will hang for a few seconds. at least that's my experience.