How to keep your PC happy –
A simple guide to system
maintenance.
Introduction.....................................................................................................3
What are the bits inside a PC? ......................................................................3
How does the PC use these bits?....................................................................3
Managing memory – the key to PC happiness.............................................4
The swap files – what is it and how do I make it less annoying. ................4
Hard Disk Maintenance – Simple tricks to keep it clean............................5
Hard disk capacity – size does matter!............................................................................ 5
The file system. ................................................................................................................ 5
My Documents folder – can I move it?........................................................................... 6
Temp folder – where did all that stuff come from? ........................................................ 7
Temporary Internet Files – keeping the incriminating evidence on file....................... 7
Scandisk – a physical for your hard disk........................................................................ 7
Disk Defragmenter – an efficiency expert for your PC. ................................................ 8
Long filenames – how long is too long? ......................................................................... 8
Registry – Your PC’s manager......................................................................9
Installing and uninstalling software – the right way. .................................................... 9
Cleaning up the mess – getting your registry back in shape.......................................... 9
Minimising what you keep in memory..........................................................9
Setting up the network connection..............................................................10
Matching Hardware and Software..............................................................12
Service Packs and Patches. ..........................................................................12
Summary........................................................................................................13
How to keep your PC happy.
Introduction.
When it comes out of the box, your new PC will hum along quite nicely. It will do
everything you ask with the minimum of fuss and at the maximum speed. This is probably
the only day that most of you will ever get the best performance from your PC. It is also
the only day where you will be completely happy with its’ performance. With the
exception of hardware failures, the user is the single reason why their machines don’t run
as fast and efficiently as they once did. Today we will look at the reasons for this and,
more importantly, ways in which we can undo all of the terrible things that we do to our
machines.
What are the bits inside a PC?
Many of us use our PC on a daily basis without ever knowing what the bits are that make
our PC tick. Most people do know that the CPU is the bit that does the thinking for the
machine and the memory does the “remembering” for want of a better word. This
smidgeon of understanding is as far as it goes for most people. They do, however
recognise that memory is at the root of most of their speed problems.
One of the most common complaints that are received by IT support staff is that “I’ve run
out of memory!” Unfortunately, this is a completely meaningless statement with regard to
solving PC problems as there are at least three main types of reusable memory in the
average PC and a whole range of single use memory. Examples of single use memory
include CD-ROMs and ROM Chips. These devices are very rarely the cause of speed
problems with PC’s. Most problems occur with the reusable stuff. Firstly, there is the hard
disk – the long term storage receptacle for the computer. Data is magnetically stored here
and is retained even when power is lost. This component is the single most common cause
of all speed issues for PC’s and is the one that most of this talk will revolve around. The
next type of memory is RAM. This is the short term memory of the PC. It stores the
information whilst data is being worked on as it much faster than the hard disk, however,
it is volatile and, consequently, when there is no power, it forgets everything that was
stored on it. As a general rule the more of this type of memory you have the faster your
PC will perform. The final type of memory is the cache. This handles data immediately
before going in to, and immediately after it comes out of, the CPU. This memory is
extremely fast and is usually matched to the speed of the CPU so there is little point
considering changing it. The cache is almost never the cause of problems.
How does the PC use these bits?
The operations of your PC, despite being incredibly complex on one level, are
fundamentally easy to explain. The data in your machine goes through a number of
exchanges from the hard disk to the CPU. The closer the data gets to the CPU the amounts
handled at any one time gets smaller whilst the speed of the handling increases
dramatically.
The reason for this chain of handling is that hard disks transfer data at relatively slowly,
whereas the CPU handles data at incredibly fast rates. Transferring data
directly from the hard disk to the CPU would results in the worlds slowest PC, therefore
the data goes through a few intermediaries, namely the RAM and the Cache.
Managing memory – the key to PC happiness.
The key to computer speed lies with managing your PC’s memory. Given that the Cache
and CPU are always matched to optimise performance, the management of the RAM and
hard disk are going to have the greatest impact on speed. The easiest step is to increase the
amount of RAM - a simple and relatively inexpensive process. If this is not an option,
however, there are a number of easy steps to extracting the best from what you’ve got.
The swap files – what is it and how do I make it less annoying.
As the amount of RAM in the system is limited, Microsoft Windows sets aside a portion
of the hard disk which the computer uses as pseudo-RAM, otherwise known as virtual
memory. This hard disk space is handled dynamically, meaning that it grows and shrinks
as required. You may have heard your PC start rattling away to itself, seemingly without
you touching it. This is your computer changing the size of its Swap File. The default disk
drive for the swap file is also C which may be inconvenient if this partition or disk is very
small. You can change the behaviour of the swap file fairly easily, however, care must be
taken to ensure that a few simple criteria are met. Firstly, the swap file must be retained your computer will be unable to run without it. The swap file should be no smaller than
384MB in size whenever possible. It must also be on a local hard disk – not a network
drive and finally should be on the fastest hard drive in your PC. Fixing the size of the
swap file will also stop it from resizing at inopportune moments.
You can change the way Windows handles the swap file by going to the Control Panels
and opening the System control panel and clicking on the Performance tab∗. This will
produce a Window similar to the following. As can be seen you can select the disk and
upper and lower size of the swap file.
∗
This varies between operating systems – please phone for specific instructions.
Hard Disk Maintenance – Simple tricks to keep it clean.
In terms of improvements in speed and performance, maintaining your hard disk regularly
can provide the biggest return for effort in terms of system efficiency. There are a few
simple tricks and processes that, if used on a regular basis, will ensure that your hard disk
stays in tip-top shape. Setting aside 15 minutes once a month should be sufficient to
perform most of these checks. These simple steps should be performed in the order that
they are presented here, as each one influences the rest.
Hard disk capacity – size does matter!
No matter what the size of you hard disk, Windows operates most efficiently if the disk is
no more than 75% full. This allows Windows ample space to change the size of the Swap
File as necessary. It also allows disk tools, such as Disk Defrag, to operate as efficiently as
possible. Most of the systems we have delivered use a large hard disk, split into a number
of partitions which show up in Windows as different disks. Unfortunately, due to a
number of technical issues and University policy, a lot of systems over the age of 1 year
were shipped with a 2 Gigabyte system partition. For newer operating systems (Win98,
Me, 2000 and XP) a 2 Gigabyte C drive is really too small. It is, however, quite difficult
and risky to change the partition size on a hard disk once it has data on it, but it can be
done. If you think that your machine needs this, please let me know.
The file system.
There are a number of file systems that are used by Windows operating systems. The file
system determines how the data is written to the disk. There are three file systems that are
likely to be encountered on your PC – NTFS, FAT16 and FAT32. NTFS is by far the most
powerful and versatile of the systems, however it cannot be used by all operating systems.
The following table describes the compatibility of each file system with various operating
systems.
NTFS
A computer running
Windows XP or Windows 2000
can access files on an NTFS
partition. A computer running
Windows NT 4.0 with Service
Pack 4 or later might be able to
access some files. Other operating
systems allow no access.
FAT
Access is available
through MS-DOS, all
versions of Windows,
Windows NT,
Windows 2000,
Windows XP, and
OS/2.
FAT32
Access is available only
through Windows 95 OSR2,
Windows 98,
Windows Millennium Edition,
Windows 2000, and
Windows XP.
The following table compares disk and file sizes possible with each file system.
NTFS
FAT
Recommended minimum volume
size is approximately 10
Volumes from floppy
megabytes (MB).
disk size up to 4
gigabytes (GB).
Volumes much larger than 2
terabytes (TB) are possible.
Does not support
domains.
Cannot be used on floppy disks.
File size limited only by size of
volume.
Maximum file size is
2 GB.
FAT32
Volumes from 512 MB to
2 TB.
In Windows XP, you can
format a FAT32 volume up to
32 GB only.
Does not support domains.
Maximum file size is 4 GB.
The file system of choice for Win95/98/Me is FAT32. For Windows NT/2000/XP the best
possible choice is NTFS unless the disk size is very small. File systems can be changed in
the Win95/98/Me systems by using the Drive Conversion utilty in the Programs →
Accessories → System Tools folder. To convert the file system on a Windows
NT/2000/XP the Disk Management control panel, however this should not be attempted
without guidance by you friendly IT support person.
My Documents folder – can I move it?
When Microsoft Office installs, it automatically creates the “My Documents” folder on
the C Drive, occupying vital space on your system disk. This folder can, however, be
easily moved by simply copying it to another disk and changing where the desktop
shortcut points to the new location. To do this click on the My Documents icon with your
right mouse button and select properties. When the properties window appears click on the
“shortcut” or “target” Tab (depending on o/s version) and change the target line to reflect
the new location of the folder. Click on OK to close this window.
Temp folder – where did all that stuff come from?
One of the simplest ways to recover disk space is to empty the temp folder. This folder
may be located either in the C: drive as a stand alone folder or as a sub-folder to the
Windows folder or in the local settings folder of your profile in Windows 2000 or XP
systems or in all of these places. Large amounts of data can accumulate in this folder
without the knowledge of the operator. Emptying this folder regularly helps to maximise
the amount of space available to your system.
Temporary Internet Files – keeping the incriminating evidence on file.
Similar to the temp folder, the Temporary Internet Files folder can also hold a lot of
useless files. On very slow network connections, eg modems, this folder can speed up the
loading of commonly accessed files, however, it is not really necessary on the Uni’s high
speed system. Although this folder rarely gets as large as the Temp folder it should be
cleaned out at the same time. This folder also holds clues to websites that you may have
visited, which may not always be a welcome trait.
Scandisk – a physical for your hard disk.
Scandisk should be run around once per month in order to ensure that your hard disk is as
healthy as technically possible. Scandisk detects both software and physical damage to
your hard disk and is able to fix some problems with damaged files as well as detect and
remove lost file fragments that may still reside on your hard disk. When Scandisk detects
physical damage to your hard disk it can move data away from that area and lock it off so
that your hard disk will no longer attempt to store data there.
Disk Defragmenter – an efficiency expert for your PC.
As your hard disk fills up, your PC finds it harder to store whole files in the same place on
the disk and so it starts to split the files to store them wherever it can. As you then delete
other files, little spaces open up all over the disk meaning that newly saved files are
broken up into more and more parts. When you wish to access these files, your PC firstly
needs to collect all of the parts and put them back together again before you can use them,
all of which slows down your computer. This problem is massively amplified when your
Swap file is forced to use fragmented space as it is acting as RAM and is already
massively slower than the hardware it is emulating. Running Disk Defragmenter on a
regular basis will minimise these problems. Disk defragmenter also places all of the
relevant parts of a program, ie the .exe files and the accompanying .dll files next to each
other on the disk - cutting loading times by a much 50% . The drawback to Disk
Defragmenter is that it takes a long time to run on large disks. Whilst it can be run in the
background while you continue working, it is best to let it run, unhindered, overnight. The
defragmenter should also be run once per month, although it may not be necessary to fully
defragment the drive – the program will indicate whether or not it will be necessary.
Long filenames – how long is too long?
Long filenames are one of the great advances of Windows over the DOS operating system.
We can now be much more descriptive in the names that we give to our files, but
occasionally it can get out of control. Some file systems, namely FAT16 (Win95) and
Joliet (CD-ROMs) have restrictions on file name and Path lengths. FAT16 has a
maximum path length of 255 characters and Joliet has the maximum filename length of 64
characters. This should be kept in mind if you ever need to transfer your data to CD-Rom
or a Win95 machine.
As a real life example of what is probably a too long path length;
H:\xxxxx\Experiments\ToF-SIMS\7.4.03 ToF-SIMS TiO2 (Philips) and ZnO (sol-gel)
gamma experiments\070401-calculations s mymi vypocty – isotopes not considered
(path = 157 characters) (file name = 64 characters)
Registry – Your PC’s manager.
Everything that happens in your PC is controlled by the Windows Registry from which
programs are installed, which files talk to these programs, where you like to save your
data – essentially every facet of your computer’s operation. Obviously, the registry
contains a vast amount of information; therefore it is essential that it contains only the
information that it needs.
Installing and uninstalling software – the right way.
Whenever a program is installed, it writes information to the registry which will stay there
indefinitely, unless that software is correctly uninstalled. At the same time as the
installation is making all of these changes, it writes a small file tracking all of the changes.
This file is used when uninstalling software, and ensures that all changes are undone. It is
essential that software is uninstalled, not just deleted, when it is no longer required. By
simply deleting the folder containing the program, additional files are left in a number of
different places around your system. Additionally, as all of the “keys” are left in registry,
your system thinks that the program is still installed, possible leading to errors and slowed
performance.
Cleaning up the mess – getting your registry back in shape.
Even if you install and uninstall software correctly, your registry will invariably pick up
some errors and contain unwanted information. Fortunately, there is a simple and
relatively painless way of cleaning up the mess using a program called Regclean.
Regclean was written by Microsoft to search through your registry for errors and registry
“orphans”, data that was intended for a long since deleted program. Whilst far from
foolproof, this program will significantly reduce the number of dead entries in your
registry, contributing to a faster, more stable system.
Minimising what you keep in memory.
There are hundreds of little programs which can be downloaded or installed onto your PC
which claim to do all sorts of magical things, but which, in reality, end up using up
valuable memory space. The only programs that are actually required at startup are
explorer and the system tray. Although it is not essential for the running of the system, we
also strongly recommend having your virus checker on-line. All other programs just take
up space, therefore we need to minimise the number of these gadgets. Removing all of
these programs is a very simple process. Firstly go to the start menu, select Run and type
in Msconfig and press the enter key. The following window should appear.
Click on the Startup tab to get the following screen;
Remove the tick from the check boxes to stop the programs being launched at startup. The
only programs that must be retained are explorer, systray and vptray.
Setting up the network connection.
A poorly configured network connection can severely affect the performance of your
system. The Uni has undergone a number of changes to network configuration in the last
few years, however, not all systems have been adjusted to reflect these changes. To check
your setup you will need to open the Network Control Panel (Win9x/Me) or the Network
Connections Control Panel (Win NT/2000/XP). In Win NT/2000/XP a window similar to
the following should appear. To get the connection details click on the Local Area
Connection with your right mouse button and select properties.
A window similar to the one below should appear. In windows 98, this windows will
appear when you open the Control Panel without the intermediate step. There are only 2
items that must be included in the network settings – “Client for Microsoft Networks” and
“Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). Having File and Printer Sharing installed is ok, but other
protocols such as NetBEUI or IPX should be removed (or uninstalled – depending on
O/S).
The next step is to ensure that the TCP/IP settings ar correctly configured. To do this click
on Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and then click on the Properties button. All settings in the
TCP/IP protocol should be set to automatic and that there are no DNS names programmed
in.
Matching Hardware and Software.
Whilst we all like to have the latest and greatest software, the simple fact remains that
despite a large number of cosmetic changes and some minor formatting issues, the
essential functions of the Microsoft Office suite have not changed since the very earliest
versions. This is also true for a great many other packages.
Most software comes with an advisory on the minimum system requirements to efficiently
run the software. Whilst most software will run on systems below the minimum
specifications, it will often be at the expense of speed and/or system resources. In many
cases there will be a version of the required software that is appropriate for your PC. As an
example, a Pentium 100 with 32MB of RAM and a 820MB Hard Disk cannot run
Windows 2000 and Office XP. It will, however, run Windows 95 and Office 97 quite
efficiently, in many cases as fast as a Pentium III 500 with 128MB Ram and a 10GB Hard
Disk will run Win2000 and Office XP.
Service Packs and Patches.
With software packages as big and as complex as Windows or Office there is invariably
bugs and enhancements that were overlooked in the testing of the package before release.
To fix these problems and to make other useful updates to the packages, the software
companies release patches and service packs. Microsoft produces service packs, which
incorporate all cumulative patches, for periods of up to 5 years after the release of their
products. These updates also fix security loopholes in the network connectivity functions
and are therefore important not only for performance and stability reasons, but also for
data protection reasons.
Summary.
Because the user is the biggest cause of PC problems, this means that most of the damage
can be undone. The hard disk is the biggest single cause of performance problems,
however, controlling the hard disk size, using scandisk and defrag regularly, and
controlling what is running on the PC will resolve most of the problems. Making sure that
the software installed on the machine is appropriate for a machine of this configuration
and application of service packs and patches will further assist in the maintenance of the
machine. Like all machines, your PC needs regular maintenance. The upside to this is that
by spending 15-30 minutes per month, your mental health will reap the benefits.