PC Hell

Sinful scams

There are plenty of programs promising to optimise your PC, but many are not what they claim…

Be wary of programs that claim they can deliver big speed boosts for your PC – they aren’t always what they seem. Many will do nothing at all, and some could even make things worse.

Several tools say they can optimise your Windows Vista internet connection, for instance. But this is already self-tuning, and any tweaks are likely to reduce performance, not improve it.

‘Memory managers’ are another dubious category. No third-party program can ‘reclaim RAM’ or ‘fix memory leaks’, not in any meaningful way. In fact, if they’re running in the background then they’ll be using RAM, leaving you with
less than you had before!

Registry cleaners are a little better, but still suffer from overblown claims. Cleaning your Registry is most unlikely to result in a significant speed increase, or to prevent programs from crashing (and if the wrong thing gets deleted then it could actually cause instability).

Basically, if your PC is slow, don’t waste your money on this kind of software. You’ll get far better results by putting your cash towards something tangible like more RAM or a faster hard drive – upgrades that can make a real difference.

NO NEED Windows Vista tunes its own internet connection to deliver perrformance, so special network optimisers are no longer required

Short on disc space?

Unclog your hard drive.

Freeing up space starts with the Disk Cleanup tool. Type Cleanup in Start Search to find it, launch, then let it find and delete redundant files.

Browse your Program Files folder to see if there’s any data left from uninstalled applications. Don’t delete anything unless you’re 110 per cent certain it’s safe, though.

Use the Advanced Search option to search your PC for files larger than 100,000KB. This might reveal ZIP files, videos or others that are taking lots of space.

INFERNAL WASTE This PC was wasting 13.7GB. Could your hard drive be worse?

Installation overload

Trying out every program may seem fun, but your PC’s eternal soul could pay.

1 UNLOAD THE UNWANTED Most people have a few programs they don’t need, and this will waste space and slow down defrags. Click Control Panel > Uninstall a program occasionally, browse the list and remove anything that doesn’t get used.

2 FASTER BOOTS Some programs unnecessarily run at start-up, using resources and slowing down your system. Type Defender into Start Search, open it and click Tools > Software Explorer, choose any surplus to requirements and click Disable.

3 A CLEAN BROWSER Internet Explorer can become unstable if you install too many add-ons. Press Alt then click Tools > Manage Add-ons > Enable or Disable Addons, then select any non-essentials, click Disable, then restart your browser.

Wireless torment

Wireless networking is fun, convenient – and often horribly slow. But there may be a simple solution.

If your wireless network performance is rubbish, even though your PCs are reasonably close together, then if possible try adjusting the position of each antenna. The orientation matters, too: having the antenna straight out, or oriented at 90 degrees can make a real difference. Install a free tool like NetStumbler (www.netstumbler.com) that will give feedback on signal strength, and you’ll immediately see which positions work and which don’t.

One surprisingly effective technique is just to change the wireless channel on all your Wi-Fi kit (check its documentation to find out how to do this). If a neighbour is currently using the same channel as you then there could be too much interference, and moving away will make a real difference. Try channels 1, 5 or 11 for the best results.

HELLISH SPEEDS Too many wireless networks around will slow you down – unless you know the secret.

Forgotten user password

You’ve forgotten your log-on password, and this really is PC hell. If only you’d been prepared…

To prepare for this eventuality, click Control Panel > User Accounts and Family Safety > User Accounts > Create a password reset disk, then follow the wizard to configure either a floppy disc or USB drive. You’ll then be able to use this to reset your password, should you forget it in future. (Of course anyone else can, too, so be sure it’s kept safe.) If you forget your password and haven’t made a reset disc, then use another computer to locate a tool online that will fix the problem for you. The Offline NT Password & Registry Editor (home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd) and Login Recovery (www.loginrecovery.com) are usually very effective. Then remember to make a disc for next time!

Security sins

You turned off UAC – but also disabled Internet Explorer’s Protected Mode.

1 BACK TO NORMAL Type User in Start Search and click User Accounts > Turn User Account Control on or off. If you’ve turned UAC off before, check the Use User Account Control box to get it working again, then click OK. The prompts will return, but there’s another solution for that.

2 SECURITY POLICY Now to get rid of the UAC prompts, launch secpol.msc (only in Windows Vista Ultimate edition), go to Local Policies > Security Options, double-click User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt… and set it to Elevate without prompting.

3 EASY SHORTCUT If you’re running Windows Vista Home Basic or Home Premium editions, and don’t have secpol.msc, then run REGEDIT, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Policies\System and set ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin to 0 (use 2 to restore the default setting). UAC is still running so Internet Explorer 7 protected mode works, but the prompts have gone.

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