Remember the day when you bought your new PC with Windows installed? It was lightning fast. It took only about ten seconds to boot. When you opened the Start menu or the load/save file dialogs, they showed up
instantly. But, after a year of heavy use, you now realize that your PC has some serious performance issues. It takes more and more time to boot each time you start it. When you open your Start menu, file
dialogs or other Windows Shell powered components, also seem to always need more time. Your computer is grinding its hard disk for seemingly forever as if it was thinking whether you are worthy to see what you
had hoped to see.
Modern computers are very complex systems. They are much like the human body. By consuming large amounts of non-certified products from unknown sources, you increase the level of cholesterol in your blood very
quickly. Soon, you would have an obesity problem. You couldn’t run fast either. This is the same reason why your computer slows down over time. The truth is that there are no certified software products for
computers. All of the so-called software certificates can only guarantee the authenticity of a software product and not its quality. There are no PC medicine organizations that can certify software. Even large
software companies produce software that may harm your system integrity and leave some “cholesterol” in your computer’s veins. And, we won’t even discuss the software from unknown vendors that you download from
the Internet!
Unlike humans, computers may have many lives. All you need to do is to format your hard drive and install the system from scratch. However, this is not a good solution. By formatting your disks, you lose all your
installed programs, preferences and system integrity. Is there another solution? If you need a personal medic for your computer to provide required treatment without killing the patient first, you may want to
give SmartPC from SmartPCTools a try. It’s an all-in-one medicine package for your system. You can download it using the following link:
http://www.smartpctools.com/smartpcpro.exe
There are two versions, Personal and Professional. They differ only by the number of features available. I use the Professional version. Thus, I will guide you through its features. You will then be able to decide
for yourself whether you need the Professional or the Personal version.
Back to the “cholesterol” problem. What is considered to be bad “cholesterol” for your PC and where are the veins? The Registry is your computer’s blood system. All other organs rely on it. All the vital system
information is stored in this unified database and all Windows applications poll this information. But, there is a downside. Normally, users log into their Windows with full administrator privileges. You need
the administrator privileges in order to install new software and to configure your system and network settings.
All the applications that you run receive full administrator privileges as well. This means that
any program started by you can change almost any section of your Windows Registry, including the settings of other applications. This is how, for example, malicious scripts from the Internet change the Home and
Search pages in your Internet Explorer. With the passing of time, even normal applications from reliable vendors leave some records in your Registry that may cause an “obesity” problem. Most computer programs
never un-install completely! Users rarely complain about such issues and, as such, developers often ignore the problem. They don’t seem to be worried about such things.
No complaints – no problem. But this is a
problem. After a year of heavy use, your Registry becomes really fat. It occupies more memory, and it takes longer for every application to access the Registry. This can reduce the performance of many applications
and increase their start time. But, even worse is that some of the leftovers in your Registry point to non-existing or damaged objects. Here’s an example: When you right-click on a file in Windows Explorer, a
contextual menu pops up. It is called “contextual” because of the file type specific actions displayed in this menu.
When you install a program, it may add its handlers into system menus like the menu that pops up
for a file. You probably have some handlers there added by your image viewers (“Open with …”), archives (“Send to..”, “Compress with…”), printer drivers and more. If some of the Registry entries, like these,
point to non-existing objects, Windows will try to find them every time. There are also some Registry sections that contain programs to run on Windows startup. They are not shown in the “Startup” section of
your Start menu and you cannot remove them manually. Windows will try to start them on every boot.
Now, for the treatment. Get into a white doctor’s uniform and run SmartPC, your scalpel. The interface is very easy to understand. Click the “Fix” button and you’ll see two options available. Let’s start with
cleaning the Registry. In addition to fixing the problems described above, SmartPC will analyze and fix, or delete if necessary, broken links, device drivers, ActiveX components, fonts, un-install entries and more.
As a result, you will have a compact and a fragment-free database without obsolete and broken entries, resulting in increased overall performance of your system.
Not all problems come from the Registry. There is a special type of file, known as a “shortcut”. Your Desktop and the Start menu consist almost entirely of shortcuts. When you access your start menu or when
your Desktop is loading, Windows searches for the target objects that are referenced by your shortcuts. When a shortcut contains a broken link, or points to a non-existing object, Windows will try to find this
object, retrieve its icon, etc. The second option available in the “Fix” SmartPC section allows you to scan and fix all broken shortcuts on your disks.
Now, let’s move to the “Clean” section of SmartPC. This section allows you to clear all the junk files accumulated on your disks. Sometimes applications “forget” to delete temporary files, and sometimes they
leave temporary files due to software errors. SmartPC will empty directories of temporary files. It can also scan your disks to search for temporary files by extension. If you are anxious about security and
identity theft, you may want to clean temporary Internet files, delete cookies, IE autofill data, etc.
In the “Optimize” section, you will also find several useful tools to boost your system performance and tune-up some hidden settings. “Hidden” means that these settings are not available through the Control
Panel or standard Windows dialogs. For example, you can select whether you wish to log into your Windows account on boot without the need to enter your password, or whether you want Windows to show the login
screen with a passwords prompt. The Startup and Un-install Entries Editors also provide some advanced features that are not available in standard Windows configuration applets.
The “Boost Windows” option provides a tool that constantly monitors your memory, removes unusable blocks and de-fragments usable blocks for faster access. If enabled, it runs invisibly and optimizes your system
memory. In addition, this tool sets maximum processor use priority to the active window. When you watch a movie, you probably do not want it to make pauses when another application does something in background.
Normally, all running applications share processor time equally. But if you want to boost a multimedia application to its maximum, you need it to give it an exclusive access to your processor.
Does your computer experience the “obesity” problem? Is it full of junk files, broken shortcuts and obsolete registry values? If so, it needs a treatment!
Mykola Rudenko
