8 ways to speed up Windows XP - Day 8

Day 8 – Defragment your hard drive 

Your operating system works best when all of the files on the hard disk are organised into one (or a few) large blocks. When files are added/deleted, settings changed and programs are installed and uninstalled, files on the hard disk become fragmented and move on the disk. Therefore, when these files are requested by the user, the operating system must work harder to find the information which slows down the whole process. The more fragmentation the slower the machine.

Windows Disk Defragmenter reorganises these files and thus improves performance.

To use Disk Defragmenter: Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Disk Defragmenter

In the Disk Defragmenter dialog box, click the drives that you want to defragment, and then click the Analyze button. After the disk is analyzed, a dialog box appears, letting you know whether you should defragment the analyzed drives.

To defragment the selected drive or drives, click the Defragment button.

After the defragmentation is complete, Disk Defragmenter displays the results.

To display detailed information about the defragmented disk or partition, click View Report.

To close the View Report dialog box, click Close

To close the Disk Defragmenter utility, click the Close button on the title bar of the window.

So this concludes our mission to speed up XP and hopefully you have found some good tips for maintaining your PC aswell.

I'm always happy to have some feedback so please feel free to post a comment :-)

8 ways to speed up Windows XP - Day 7

Day 7 – Clean up your hard disk

Time for one last big push on cleaning up XP. This time we are going to use a tool built into XP called 'Disk Cleanup Utility'. By using the 'Disk Cleanup Utility' we can free up space on the hard drive and improve performance.

Disk Cleanup allows you to :

• Remove temporary Internet files
• Remove downloaded program files (such as Microsoft ActiveX controls
  and Java applets).
• Empty the Recycle Bin
• Remove Windows temporary files
• Remove optional Windows components that you don't use
• Remove installed programs that you no longer use

To use Disk Cleanup

1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, click Disk Cleanup and then click OK.

2. In the Disk Cleanup for dialog box, scroll through the content of the Files to delete list

3. Choose the files that you want to delete

4. Clear the check boxes for files that you don't want to delete, and then click OK

5. When prompted to confirm that you want to delete the specified files, click Yes

This process will take a few minutes to complete but it will free up a lot of useful space.

See you tomorrow for the final day of speeding up XP

8 ways to speed up Windows XP - Day 6

Day 6 – Get Windows updates

Now that you have ‘de-cluttered'and scanned your pc, you should now ensure that your operating system is up to date and secure. You achieve this using by Windows update.

Click on ‘Express' for the latest security updates. Click on Custom for all updates available for your PC.

Come back tomorrow and i'll show you how to do a big clean up of XP :-)

8 ways to speed up Windows XP - Day 5

Day 5 – Update and Run Anti-virus/Anti-Malware programs

I would hope that today's item is already happening regularly on your PC but if not then this posting should act as a welcome reminder.

My request is simply this "Get the latest updates for your Anti-virus/Anti-Malware software and run a full system scan to remove any malicious programs."

Simple :-)

8 ways to speed up Windows XP - Day 4

Day 4 – Reduce Windows Visual effects 

Windows XP has Visual effects activated by default to give it the appearance you are no doubt familiar with. These effects do have a performance overhead and may contribute to any slowness you are encountering.

The following steps will take you through how to optimise these settings to match your performance requirements.

Click on Control Panel in the Start menu (Ensure you are in Classic View)

Click the System icon

Click the Advanced tab and then click Settings under the performance option

The Visual Effects tab provides an easy way to set your preferences. You can select the 'Adjust for best peformance' or you can customise which features are applied.

Take some time to play around with these settings, you may like the results.

8 ways to speed up Windows XP - Day 3

Day 3 – Prevent unnecessary programs from starting 

Yesterday we looked at removing unwanted applications from your PC and today we are going to stop the valid programs from slowing us down when we don't need them. A good place to tackle these programs is at system start up.  Programs that launch themselves at startup not only delay the PC from booting up but they will continue to run in the background and act as a drain on other system resources.

There are several ways to stop an application from running when Windows loads, I will address the two that can be easily carried out without the risk of intefering with critical startup processes.

1. Open up the application and check the settings for an auto-start option that you can disable.

2. Check the startup folder for shortcuts to applications you do not want to start when the PC boots up. The startup folder can be found by clicking on Start and All programs.

Right click the shortcut in the startup folder for the appropriate application and press delete on the keyboard. By doing this you will only delete the shortcut and not the application itself.

Well done, another step completed. See you tomorrow for step 4  :-)

8 ways to speed up Windows XP - Day 2

Day 2 – Remove unwanted programs

If you're anything like me then you like to install programs, try them out and if you like them they become a regular part of your tool set. Other times, a program might not do exactly what you would hope and if you fail to remove it, it will take up resources and impair your PC's performance.

Follow these steps to remove your unwanted programs :

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel

2. Click Add or Remove Programs

3. Untick the ‘Show updates' option at the top

4. Scroll down through the list and examine each program and remove as appropriate.

* Do not Uninstall any program labeled as Update or Hotfix as these will be Windows Security additions from Microsoft.

Congratulations, you have started the clean up process. See you tomorrow for more improvements.

8 ways to speed up Windows XP - Day 1

There is plenty of talk at the moment about Windows 7 and how it is going to change the world blah, blah,  blah but what if you have Windows XP and can’t afford the much needed upgrade just yet. Well chances are you have had XP for sometime and if you haven’t been maintaining it, it has gradually been getting slower and slower.

One of the most common questions I get asked is “How can I speed up my computer?”. So for the next 8 days I’m going to provide some tips for restoring XP to it's former glory.

 Day 1 – Back up your data

Hopefully, you already have a regular backup procedure in place for your data i.e. photographs, documents, favourites, passwords etc. If this is the case, ‘Well done', if not then I urge you to create a back up before carrying out the following steps.  Backing up on this occasion is a good start but a regular back up routine (although rather dull sounding) will save you alot of heartache should the worst happen to your data.

This process may take you some time, so I’ll let you get on with it and i'll see you back here tomorrow for the next instalment :-)

How to add a new folder to Philips SpeechExec Pro 5.0

In this post I’m going to show you how to create a new folder in SpeechExec Pro. This will help you organise your dictations more effectively and can possibly form part of your automation.

 So let’s get started.

1.  Open the Philips SpeechExec Pro software by going to Start > Programs >Speech Exec Pro > Click the SpeechExec Pro icon.

 You should be presented with a view similar to the one below.

In this example, I want to create a folder called ‘SupportingTech’.

2.  To do this go to Settings > General settings > Work list> Folders

3.  Click new to create a new folder and you will see ‘New folder’ appear in the list.

4.  In the folder properties box, highlight ‘New folder’ and rename. See below.

Make sure the Visible status is set to ‘Yes’.

5.  Give the folder a path to link to e.g. mine is ‘C:\SupportingTech’

6.  Click apply and OK and you will see that it now appears in your folder list in the main interface.

Will my PC run Microsoft Windows 7 ?

Windows 7 was launched today and many people who pre-ordered PCs and Laptops will be up and running immediately. However, for those with existing computers that want to upgrade (especially from Windows XP) there seems to be some uncertainty as to whether they can make the leap.

Generally there are two ways of knowing whether your current PC is compatible with Windows 7.

Minimum system requirements :  The ability to run Windows 7 is determined by the type of hardware you have rather than the operating system you are currently using so Microsoft has released it’s minimum system requirements and these should give you an idea of whether you need to upgrade your hardware for Windows 7. Click here to see the requirements.

Windows upgrade advisor : The system requirements are fairly general and do not indicate what will happen to your existing settings and applications if you do go ahead and upgrade. Thankfully, Microsoft has gone some way to address this and have provided a useful compatibility tool ‘called Windows Upgrade Advisor’.

Microsoft’s description of the software :

“Just download, install, and run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Beta. You'll get a report telling you if your PC can run Windows 7 and if there are any known compatibility issues. If an issue can be resolved, you'll get suggestions for next steps. For example, it may let you know that you need an updated driver for your printer and where to get it “.

I have used this on a couple of my PCs and it does perform very well. Give it a go and see if you 'have what it takes'.

Download :  Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor.

Windows 7 system requirements

Are  you wondering if Windows 7 will run on your existing hardware ?

Well look no further, here are Microsoft's minimum system reqirements :

- 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
- 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
- 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
- DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Additional requirements to use certain features:

- Internet access
- Depending on resolution, video playback may require additional memory and advanced graphics hardware.
- For some Windows Media Center functionality a TV tuner and additional hardware may be required
- Windows Touch and Tablet PCs require specific hardware.
- HomeGroup requires a network and PCs running Windows 7.
- DVD/CD authoring requires a compatible optical drive.
- BitLocker requires Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 1.2.
- BitLocker To Go requires a USB flash drive.
- Windows XP Mode requires an additional 1 GB of RAM, an additional 15 GB of available hard disk space, and a processor capable of hardware virtualization with Intel VT or AMD-V turned on.
- Music and sound require audio output

How to find a computer name on a network from the IP address

How do you find the computer name on a network from the IP address ?

The solution is actually quite simple, you just use a MS-DOS command that will query the network and return the name. The syntax is as follows :

nbtstat -a "ip address"

Walkthrough

1. Go to the Start menu
2. Click Run
3. In the Run window type, “cmd”. This will pop up a black command window.
4. Type in nbtstat -a "your IP address here".
5. Press enter

Example

 nbtstat -a "10.1.1.73"

 Example Output

Local Area Connection :

Node IpAddress: [10.1.1.72] Scope Id: []

            NetBIOS Remote Machine Name Table

        Name               Type         Status

    ---------------------------------------------

    FELIX               <00>  UNIQUE      Registered

    DOMAIN         <00>  GROUP       Registered

    FELIX              <20>  UNIQUE      Registered

    DOMAIN        <1E>  GROUP       Registered

     MAC Address = 00-15-D4-E4-3C-83

 Taking the above example the computer name for IP address 10.1.1.73  is ‘Felix’.

Additional info

Nbtstat is a MS-DOS utility that displays protocol statistics and current TCP/IP connections using NBT (NetBIOS over TCP/IP).

There are many other parameters that can be used with nsbstat and they are as follows :

NBTSTAT [ [-a RemoteName] [-A IP address] [-c] [-n] [-r] [-R] [-RR] [-s] [-S] [interval] ]

-a	(adapter status) Lists the remote machine's name table given its name
-A	(Adapter status) Lists the remote machine's name table given its IP address.
-c	(cache) Lists NBT's cache of remote [machine] names and their IP addresses
-n	(names) Lists local NetBIOS names.
-r	(resolved) Lists names resolved by broadcast and via WINS
-R	(Reload) Purges and reloads the remote cache name table
-S	(Sessions) Lists sessions table with the destination IP addresses
-s	(sessions) Lists sessions table converting destination IP addresses to computer NETBIOS names.
-RR	(ReleaseRefresh) Sends Name Release packets to WINs and then, starts Refresh
RemoteName	Remote host machine name.
IP address	Dotted decimal representation of the IP address.
interval	Redisplays selected statistics, pausing interval seconds between each display. Press Ctrl+C to stop redisplaying statistics.