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Cleaning my computer
How do I clean my computer off? Its running really slow, last time it happened I had a virus. I don't want to get my parents involved. Any free computer cleaning products I can download?
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Want to answer more questions in the Technology category?
Maybe give some free advice about: Computers?
Arr.
I'm going to have a list of links, this is going to take a while.
A note, not one of these costs you a dime at any point.
Firefox
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Firefox is the browser you should be using. Download this after everything else on this list, but I'm putting it first because its important. If you already have it, ignore this. If you don't, download this and delete every shortcut to internet explorer you have.
No Script
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This is your first line of defense. After you get firefox, get this. Noscript blocks everything from running on new pages. At the bottom of the screen a bar appears where you can allow or disallow things. Youtube, viruses, javascript, this stops it ALL until you choose to allow it. The great thing about noscript is, alot of web pages will try to install shit the second you load a page. No script stops this when nothing else does. For pages like youtube, this site, you just click the bar at the bottom and tell it "allow all this page" and everything works fine.
Spybot Search and Destroy
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First program. Spybot is God. This one program keeps your computer safe from all kinds of crap that hurts it. The three biggest features are the spyware scan, tea timer and immunization. Update it weekly, run it every week or two, and keep the immunization current. Its help files give great explanations of what it does and how to use it.
Oh, and Tea Timer. Tea timer protects your registry from unwanted changes and lets you know when something is working in your system that you don't want. Its not a virus scan, more something that pays attention to a few sensitive areas that viruses can cause alot of damage in. I generally keep it running at all times. The one exception is, I shut it down when I am playing video games. Tea Timer uses a pretty large amount of memory while in use, and it doesn't interfere with movies and small games, running something big like Half Life 2, Bioshock, Gears of War, or any game thats come out in about the last 2-3 years usually slows my computer down alot unless I start shutting things down.
But then, I've got 512 MB Ram, 128 MB Video Card, a 2.66 GHz single core processor, etc. If you have a beast of a gaming system at your disposal, you probably don't have to worry about this as much. If you've got 2 gigs of ram, a better video card, and a dual core or better processor, ignore what I just said and let it run, unless you experience alot of slowdown.
AVG Virus Scan
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AVG Virus Scan. A quality virus scan thats freeware. Download it, use it, love it.
Though, if you've got some money, norton isn't a bad idea. Norton Antivirus has always been the best as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't cost a ton to get a subscription to it for updates, but if you don't want to spend money AVG is the way to go.
All this together should go a long way towards fixing your computer. Grab Spybot and AVG first. Update them, run them, fix what they tell you to fix. Then get the rest of this stuff.
One last trick, the paging file. If you don't know what that is, your hard drive keeps free space on it that acts like ram, when your processor and ram memory are full they save running programs onto your hard drive and recall them to ram memory when they need to be used. Its a way for your computer to manage resources better.
I keep a 1 gig paging file. That keeps my system running pretty well. To set your paging file, go to the my computer icon, right click, and select "Properties"
From there, Go to "Advanced" and click on "Settings" in the performance box.
In the new window, find the "Advanced" tab again and at the bottom it should have an option for virtual memory. Change it to 1024 MB, and make sure your hard drive has at least a gig free. You need to keep a gigabyte open on your hard drive at all times so that your computer can use the paging file, if you don't, slowdown city.
If your computer is still running crappily after this, its time to reformat and reload windows. You'll need a windows install CD, and you'll probably have to ask your parents about that.
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try to get it fixed or something......go to curcuit city they'll get it fixed.I dont know how much it costs but you could try it.
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You can download "CCleaner" scan it whenever you are offline and it will delete any temporary files for you and also fix any possible problems. You could also restore your computer back to an earlier date by going to Start-Programs-System Tools-System Restart. Restarting is recommended doing every few months. You could also try downloading Ad-Ware and scanning the computer to get rid of any possible pop ups.
xx
BahaiMa22
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There are programs out there to clean your computer, however they're not free. What I usually do is go through all of my files and delete what isn't important to me anymore, then rearrange and organize. After emptying the recycle bin it usually makes my computer a bit faster. Another thing you can do is go to your control panel and there should be a button called 'add/remove programs' go through that and delete what isn't familiar to you - some of the programs could be causing viruses which can ultimately make your computer a lot slower. Good Luck!
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