So you got your shiny new pre-installed Windows 7 computer over the holidays, but you want to have trusty XP standing by in a dual boot setup. Technology keeps you connected everywhere you go, helps you capture every moment & makes your life a bit easier; stay up-to-date with tips & tricks from eHow. Advanced Boot Options menu is a menu of advanced Windows startup and troubleshooting modes, including Safe Mode. Learn more about how to use it here. We'll show you how we made one system boot 30 percent faster--without any hardware upgrades. 5 things to do to speed up your PC and boot time 1 – Get Windows 8: Firstly, measure how many seconds it takes for your Windows to boot and compare to the general. We recently asked visitors to the Windows Vista magazine website how long it took for their PCs to start. The results varied from less than a minute to over ten! Wouldn't it be much easier and faster to just back up all your data and then reinstall windows? Of course if you have a lot of software installed, try this. Ways to Make Your Computer Blazingly Fast. Over the last several years working in IT for various companies as a Systems Administrator, Network Administrator, and Help Desk professional, I’ve written and learned about many ways to increase the performance of not only my PC, but also of the many PCs on my networks ranging from Windows 9. Windows Vista. In this article, I hope to compile a complete list of all the different methods and tricks that I’ve used to get the last bit of juice out of a slow PC. Whether you are using an old PC or the latest and greatest in hardware, you can still use some of these to make your PC run faster. Note that since I write two blogs, Help Desk Geek and Online Tech Tips, I have previously written about many performance tips already which I will link back to throughout. If I have not written about it, I’ve throw in a link to a relevant article from some of my other favorite sites. This list is in no particular order, just written in the order that I could think of them. There are probably a lot of great tweaks and performance hacks that I’ve missed here, so feel free to chime in with comments! Defragment your computer hard disk using free tools like Smart. Defrag. 2. You should also defragment your Windows pagefile and registry. Clean up hard drive disk space being taken up by temporary files, the recycle bin, hibernation and more. You can also use a tool like Tree. Size to determine what is taking up space on your hard drive. Load up Windows faster by using Startup Delayer, a free program that will speed up the boot time of Windows by delaying the startup of programs. Speaking of startup programs, many of them are useless and can be turned off. Use the MSCONFIG utility to disable startup programs. By default, the size of the paging file is controlled by Windows, which can cause defragmentation. Also, the paging file should be on a different hard drive or partition than the boot partition. Read here on the rules for best paging file performance. In Windows XP and Vista, the Windows Search indexing service is turned on for all local hard drives. Turning off indexing is a simple way to increase performance. If you don’t care about all the fancy visual effects in Windows, you can turn them off by going to Performance Options. You can optimize the Windows boot time using a free program called Bootvis from Microsoft. Clean your registry by removing broken shortcuts, missing shared DLLs, invalid paths, invalid installer references and more. Read about the 1. One of the main reasons why PC’s are slow is because of spyware. There are many programs to remove spyware including Ad- Aware, Giant Antispyware, SUPERAnti. Spyware, and more. If you have a deeper spyware infection that is very hard to remove, you can use Hijack. This to remove spyware. Remove unwanted pre- installed software (aka junk software) from your new PC using PC Decrapifier. Disable unnecessary Windows services, settings, and programs that slow down your computer. Tweak Windows XP and tweak Windows Vista settings using free programs. Disable UAC (User Account Control) in Windows Vista. Tweak your mouse settings so that you can copy and paste faster, scroll faster, navigate quickly while browsing and more. Read here to learn how to tweak your mouse. Delete temporary and unused files on your computer using a free program like CCleaner. It can also fix issues with your registry. Delete your Internet browsing history, temporary Internet files, cookies to free up disk space. Clean out the Windows prefetch folder to improve performance. Disable the XP boot logo to speed up Windows boot time. Reduce the number of fonts that your computer has to load up on startup. Force Windows to unload DLLs from memory to free up RAM. Run DOS programs in separate memory spaces for better performance. Turn off system restore only if you regularly backup your Windows machine using third party software. Move or change the location of your My Documents folder so that it is on a separate partition or hard drive. Turn off default disk performance monitors on Windows XP to increase performance. Speed up boot time by disabling unused ports on your Windows machine. Use Process Lasso to speed up your computer by allowing it to make sure that no one process can completely overtake the CPU. Make icons appear faster while browsing in My Computer by disabling search for network files and printers. Speed up browsing of pictures and videos in Windows Vista by disabling the Vista thumbnails cache. Edit the right- click context menu in Windows XP and Vista and remove unnecessary items to increase display speed. Use the Windows Performance Toolkit and the trace logs to speed up Windows boot time. Speed up your Internet browsing by using an external DNS server such as Open. DNS. 3. 5. Improve Vista performance by using Ready. Boost, a new feature whereby Vista can use the free space on your USB drive as a caching mechanism. If you have a slow Internet connection, you can browse web pages faster using a service called Finch, which converts it into simple text. Use Vista Services Optimizer to disable unnecessary services in Vista safely. Also, check out my list of web accelerators, which are programs that try to prefetch and cache the sites you are going to visit. Speed up Mozilla Firefox by tweaking the configuration settings and by installing an add- on called Faster. Fox. 4. 0. Learn how to build your own computer with the fastest parts and best hardware. Use a program called Tera. Copy to speed up file copying in Windows XP and Vista. Disable automatic Last Access Timestamp to speed up Windows XP. Speed up the Start Menu in Vista by hacking the Menu. Show. Delay key in the registry. Increase the File. System memory cache in Vista to utilize a system with a large amount of RAM. Install more RAM if you are running XP with less than 5. MB or Vista with less than 1 GB of RAM. Shut down XP faster by reducing the wait time to kill hung applications. Make sure that you have selected “Adjust for best performance” on the Performance tab in System Properties. If you are reinstalling Windows, make sure that you partition your hard drives correctly to maximize performance. Use Altiris software virtualization to install all of your programs into a virtual layer that does not affect the registry or system files. Create and install virtual machines for free and install junk program, games, etc into the virtual machines instead of the host operating system. Check out Sun openx. VM. 5. 1. Do not clear your paging file during shutdown unless it is needed for security purposes. Clearing the paging file slows down shutdown. If your XP or Vista computer is not using NFTS, make sure you convert your FAT disk to the NTFS file system. Update all of your drivers in Windows, including chipset and motherboard drivers to their latest versions. Every once in a while run the built- in Windows Disk Cleanup utility. Enable DMA mode in Windows XP for IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers in Device Manager. Remove unnecessary or old programs from the Add/Remove dialog of the Control Panel. Use a program click memtest. Prime. 95 to check for bad memory on your PC. Determine your BIOS version and check the manufactures website to see if you need to update your BIOS. Every once in a while, clean your mouse, keyboard and computer fans of dust and other buildup. Replace a slow hard drive with a faster 7. RPM drive, SATA drive, or SAS drive. Changing from Master/Slave to Cable Select on your hard drive configuration can significantly decrease your boot time. Perform a virus scan on your computer regularly. If you don’t want to install virus protection, use some of the free online virus scanners. Remove extra toolbars from your Windows taskbar and from your Internet browser. Disable the Windows Vista Sidebar if you’re not really using it for anything important. All those gadgets take up memory and processing power. If you have a SATA drive and you’re running Windows Vista, you can speed up your PC by enabling the advanced write caching features. Learn how to use keyboard shortcuts for Windows, Microsoft Word, Outlook, or create your own keyboard shortcuts. Turn off the Aero visual effects in Windows Vista to increase computer performance. If you are technically savvy and don’t mind taking a few risks, you can try to overclock your processor. Speed up the Send To menu in Explorer by typing “sendto” in the Run dialog box and deleting unnecessary items. Make sure to download all the latest Windows Updates, Service Packs, and hot fixes as they “normally” help your computer work better. Make sure that there are no bad sectors or other errors on your hard drive by using the Scan. Disk orchkdsk utility. If you are not using some of the hardware on your computer, i. If you have never used the Recent Documents feature in Windows, then disable it completely as a long list can affect PC performance. One basic tweak that can help in performance is to disable error reporting in Windows XP7. Disable short filenames if you are using NTFS by running the following command: fsutil behavior set disable. It will speed up the file creation process. If you have lots of files in a single folder, it can slow down Explorer. It’s best to create multiple folders and spread out the files between the folders. If you have files that are generally large, you might want to consider increasing the cluster size on NTFS to 1. K or even 3. 2K instead of 4. K. This will help speed up opening of files. If you have more than one disk in your PC, you can increase performance by moving your paging file to the second drive and formatting the volume using FAT3. NTFS. 8. 0. Turn off unnecessary features in Vista by going to Control Panel, choosing Uninstall a program, and then clicking on Turn Windows features on and off. You can turn off Remote Differential Compression, Tablet PC components, DFS replication service, Windows Fax & Scan, Windows Meeting Space, and lots more. Install a free or commercial anti- virus program to help protect against viruses, etc. Computer - Wikipedia. A computer is a device that can be instructed to carry out an arbitrary set of arithmetic or logical operations automatically. The ability of computers to follow generalized sequences of operations, called programs, enable them to perform a wide range of tasks. Such computers are used as control systems for a very wide variety of industrial and consumer devices. This includes simple special purpose devices like microwave ovens and remote controls, factory devices such as industrial robots and computer assisted design, but also in general purpose devices like personal computers and mobile devices such as smartphones. The Internet is run on computers and it connects millions of other computers. Since ancient times, simple manual devices like the abacus aided people in doing calculations. Early in the Industrial Revolution, some mechanical devices were built to automate long tedious tasks, such as guiding patterns for looms. More sophisticated electrical machines did specialized analog calculations in the early 2. The first digital electronic calculating machines were developed during World War II. The speed, power, and versatility of computers has increased continuously and dramatically since then. Conventionally, a modern computer consists of at least one processing element, typically a central processing unit (CPU), and some form of memory. The processing element carries out arithmetic and logical operations, and a sequencing and control unit can change the order of operations in response to stored information. Peripheral devices include input devices (keyboards, mice, joystick, etc.), output devices (monitor screens, printers, etc.), and input/output devices that perform both functions (e. Peripheral devices allow information to be retrieved from an external source and they enable the result of operations to be saved and retrieved. Etymology. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known use of the word . The word continued with the same meaning until the middle of the 2. From the end of the 1. The Online Etymology Dictionary states that the use of the term to mean . The earliest counting device was probably a form of tally stick. Later record keeping aids throughout the Fertile Crescent included calculi (clay spheres, cones, etc.) which represented counts of items, probably livestock or grains, sealed in hollow unbaked clay containers. The Roman abacus was developed from devices used in Babylonia as early as 2. BC. Since then, many other forms of reckoning boards or tables have been invented. In a medieval European counting house, a checkered cloth would be placed on a table, and markers moved around on it according to certain rules, as an aid to calculating sums of money. It was discovered in 1. Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated to circa 1. BC. Devices of a level of complexity comparable to that of the Antikythera mechanism would not reappear until a thousand years later. Many mechanical aids to calculation and measurement were constructed for astronomical and navigation use. The planisphere was a star chart invented by Ab. A combination of the planisphere and dioptra, the astrolabe was effectively an analog computer capable of working out several different kinds of problems in spherical astronomy. An astrolabe incorporating a mechanical calendar computer. It is a hand- operated analog computer for doing multiplication and division. As slide rule development progressed, added scales provided reciprocals, squares and square roots, cubes and cube roots, as well as transcendental functions such as logarithms and exponentials, circular and hyperbolictrigonometry and other functions. Aviation is one of the few fields where slide rules are still in widespread use, particularly for solving time–distance problems in light aircraft. To save space and for ease of reading, these are typically circular devices rather than the classic linear slide rule shape. A popular example is the E6. B. In the 1. 77. 0s Pierre Jaquet- Droz, a Swiss watchmaker, built a mechanical doll (automata) that could write holding a quill pen. By switching the number and order of its internal wheels different letters, and hence different messages, could be produced. In effect, it could be mechanically . Along with two other complex machines, the doll is at the Mus. It used a system of pulleys and wires to automatically calculate predicted tide levels for a set period at a particular location. The differential analyser, a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential equations by integration, used wheel- and- disc mechanisms to perform the integration. In 1. 87. 6 Lord Kelvin had already discussed the possible construction of such calculators, but he had been stymied by the limited output torque of the ball- and- disk integrators. The torque amplifier was the advance that allowed these machines to work. Starting in the 1. Vannevar Bush and others developed mechanical differential analyzers. First computing device. Charles Babbage, an English mechanical engineer and polymath, originated the concept of a programmable computer. Considered the . After working on his revolutionary difference engine, designed to aid in navigational calculations, in 1. Analytical Engine, was possible. The input of programs and data was to be provided to the machine via punched cards, a method being used at the time to direct mechanical looms such as the Jacquard loom. For output, the machine would have a printer, a curve plotter and a bell. The machine would also be able to punch numbers onto cards to be read in later. The Engine incorporated an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory, making it the first design for a general- purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing- complete. All the parts for his machine had to be made by hand — this was a major problem for a device with thousands of parts. Eventually, the project was dissolved with the decision of the British Government to cease funding. Babbage's failure to complete the analytical engine can be chiefly attributed to difficulties not only of politics and financing, but also to his desire to develop an increasingly sophisticated computer and to move ahead faster than anyone else could follow. Nevertheless, his son, Henry Babbage, completed a simplified version of the analytical engine's computing unit (the mill) in 1. He gave a successful demonstration of its use in computing tables in 1. Analog computers. During the first half of the 2. However, these were not programmable and generally lacked the versatility and accuracy of modern digital computers. The differential analyser, a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential equations by integration using wheel- and- disc mechanisms, was conceptualized in 1. James Thomson, the brother of the more famous Lord Kelvin. Hazen and Vannevar Bush at MIT starting in 1. This built on the mechanical integrators of James Thomson and the torque amplifiers invented by H. A dozen of these devices were built before their obsolescence became obvious. By the 1. 95. 0s the success of digital electronic computers had spelled the end for most analog computing machines, but analog computers remained in use during the 1. Digital computers. Electromechanical. By 1. 93. 8 the United States Navy had developed an electromechanical analog computer small enough to use aboard a submarine. This was the Torpedo Data Computer, which used trigonometry to solve the problem of firing a torpedo at a moving target. During World War II similar devices were developed in other countries as well. These devices had a low operating speed and were eventually superseded by much faster all- electric computers, originally using vacuum tubes. The Z2, created by German engineer Konrad Zuse in 1. It was quite similar to modern machines in some respects, pioneering numerous advances such as floating point numbers. Rather than the harder- to- implement decimal system (used in Charles Babbage's earlier design), using a binary system meant that Zuse's machines were easier to build and potentially more reliable, given the technologies available at that time. The engineer Tommy Flowers, working at the Post Office Research Station in London in the 1. Experimental equipment that he built in 1. Berry of Iowa State University developed and tested the Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) in 1. The German encryption machine, Enigma, was first attacked with the help of the electro- mechanical bombes. To crack the more sophisticated German Lorenz SZ 4. Army communications, Max Newman and his colleagues commissioned Flowers to build the Colossus. It had paper- tape input and was capable of being configured to perform a variety of boolean logical operations on its data, but it was not Turing- complete. Nine Mk II Colossi were built (The Mk I was converted to a Mk II making ten machines in total). Colossus Mark I contained 1,5. Mark II with 2,4. Mark I, greatly speeding the decoding process. Although the ENIAC was similar to the Colossus, it was much faster, more flexible, and it was Turing- complete. Like the Colossus, a . Once a program was written, it had to be mechanically set into the machine with manual resetting of plugs and switches. It combined the high speed of electronics with the ability to be programmed for many complex problems. It could add or subtract 5. It also had modules to multiply, divide, and square root. High speed memory was limited to 2. Built under the direction of John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania, ENIAC's development and construction lasted from 1. The machine was huge, weighing 3. Turing proposed a simple device that he called . He proved that such a machine is capable of computing anything that is computable by executing instructions (program) stored on tape, allowing the machine to be programmable.
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