Drive defrag-speed up your pc(windows) with drive defrag.

Symptom for slow pc speed caused by increased file seeking time

Most of the users see that hourglass for minutes while exploring windows after 2 to 4 years of their continuous computer usage,

Try Disk cleanup wizard

1. Click start, then All Programs, then Accessories, then system tools, then Disk cleanup and choose the desired drive to be cleaned up and run this wizard, it will ask you first about the files which may be deleted.
2. You may also manually run disk cleanup, open My computer, right click on the disk/partition to be cleaned up, go to properties, under General tab run Disk cleanup.

Manual defragmentation of the Local Disk

1.	Open My Computer.
2.	Right-click the local disk volume that you want to defragment, and then click Properties.
3.	On the Tools tab, click Defragment Now.
4.	Click Defragment

Computer Management MMC

1.	Start Computer Management MMC (Compmgmt.msc).
2.	Click Disk Defragmenter.
3.	Click the volume that you want to defragment, and then click Defragment.

Disk Defragmenter MMC

1.	Start Disk Defragmenter MMC (Dfrg.msc).
2.	Click the volume that you want to defragment, and then click Defragment.

The version of Disk Defragmenter MMC that is included with Windows XP has the following limitations:

1.	It can defragment only local volumes.
2.	It can defragment only one volume at a time.
3.	It cannot defragment one volume while it is scanning another.
4.	It cannot be scheduled. If you need to schedule disk defragmentation, use the Defrag.exe command line tool.It can run only one MMC snap-in at a time.

Beware of spyware plugins installed by malicious sites on your pc.

You must have seen some sites often asking the users to install some plugins on their pc in order to view or use their sites, these plugins might be some malicious spywares which are actually third party traffic trackers and these automated downloader/uploader agents continuously transfer updates to third party companies which track user visit ratings to respective sites(they keep track on sites/web urls every user visits) and moreover they also keep on consuming your internet usage credit(if any limits apply), so before you install any plugins make sure you trust the site.

Common symptoms(traceable by common users)

1. The most common symptom of this is reduced browsing speed(as some speed is used up by these spywares while transacting with the trackers)

2. You can also figure out that your pc has been infected by a spyware when you see random sign up pages from unknown sites opening up on your pc without any effort made by you to open them, it usually happens while opening any sites that you visit often or you have just started visiting often for some days/weeks.

It is suggested to immediately scan your pc with antispyware and antivirus softwares.
as soon as you locate the infection, it is good to first disconnect your internet and then delete the infection at the moment and restart your pc.

The latest threat to networking/DSL security

There have been major issues regarding networking security these days, but specifically this one has emerged out to be the latest threat to networking security and it might have been affecting your DSL speed
and reduced it to its half as well. Its just like the ‘man in the middle’ address resolution.

Common Symptoms

1. Regular losses of router’s IP ping( this often
gets your net down).
2. Continuous data transfer speed lowering.
3. Unknown error messages.
4. Often errors while trying to log out of the ISP’s server or permanent logging
failure.
5. Broken downloads.

This problem cant be caught by your firewall, so it is suggested to contact your
ISP customer care or ask your network administrator (the personnel who installed
the net at your home) to resolve this problem and block the hackers.

Alternate causes can be network virus with in the sub-network area of the
router, so this is the soul responsibility of the network admin only

Optimize firefox browser, speed up web browsing.

Windows can’t be better than Mac but
when it comes to having software diversity Mac gets a loose character with all
the glitches and moreover web browsers created on the platform change the basic
appearance of the websites! safari is not a good one here! Every system on the
net endorses firefox which eats more memory than a mini os quota

while randomizing my tour I came across the super memory hungry firefox using my
pc’s 56,576k. almost multitasking banned for firefox users!

Optimize firefox

save your bookmarks first! transfer them
to an extra file in the hard drive.

Using profile management

1. Run
” C:/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/firefox.exe”-P
(specify your own respective installation path)

2. Create new profile but do not modify the existing default profile

3. restart firefox and first of all reboot the cache as firefox is really a cunning fox at showing you the same saved page again
and again even if you reinstall the default profile.

4. check if the speed has improved or not and if not switch back the useless
changes. and do fresh reinstall.