The starting point for fixing a slow computer is to attempt some best practices in PC maintenance. This article highlights the key maintenance tasks that can help along with a Reimage review to explain how repair software can optimize the registry for performance purposes. Suggesting hardware upgrades is left out of this post as the first approach should always be to plug the performance gap before resorting to hardware purchases.

The following steps are easy to perform and really should be done on a regular basis to keep up a computers stability and performance:

-    Keep more than 10% free disk space. Windows requires this amount to operate normally.

-    Close unused applications. Software on standby is still consuming processing/memory resources.

-    Run the Windows Update for device drivers and critical updates. Performance improvements are regularly part and parcel of updates.

-    Defragment hard drives. It takes longer for applications and the operating system to access fragment data blocks.

-    Scan for trojan viruses. A full anti-virus scan should detect any trojan files, some of which can hog processing power.

The above will go a fair way to establishing a well-performing computer. Extra optimization to the registry file should only really be done with specialized software like Reimage (an online PC repair tool).

The Reimage review stage scans the registry for missing settings, faults and non-optimum key settings. It uses a knowledge base consisting of thousands of healthy registry configuration settings to reset the keys appropriately.

In addition the file system is scanned for out of date files (for 3rd party applications, device drivers and the OS) and can replace them with the latest copies from the Reimage data store. This can improve internet connection speeds especially when newer device drivers are installed.

Fixing a slow computer can often be a simple operation. The above tasks should help resolve the bulk of performance problems.

What next?

Subscribe to the RSS Feed

This DLGuard review pulls together three years experience of writing ebooks and selling them online using DLGuard’s shopping cart and automated digital download functionality.

Back in 2007 I begun writing ebooks and software plug-ins (for music applications) and was looking for a way to sell them on my own web domain. A work colleague recommended DLGuard due to its functionality and ease of use.

Out of the box, the product installs scripts on the target web server that provides shopping cart & checkout screens along with processing payments (with the likes of Paypal, Clickbank, etc) and sending out confirmation emails. The product includes a secure download link in the auto-reply email for the customer to download the digital product (it handles any type of file that can be sent over the web).

Securing the download link is where the product shines. It is possible to put a time limit on how long the link can be used. In addition a cap can be put on the number of download attempts. This stops users from sharing the hyperlink and the product being downloaded by multiple users from just one payment.

Most users will wish to customize the DLGuard web pages to match up with the rest of their website’s design. This involves coding some PHP scripts which is basic enough to refactor (or easily outsourced to a PHP developer).

As a starter sales product, DLGuard is a cheap and secure way to start selling products from your own web domains. This will benefit anyone with a lot of traffic coming to their site. Users with low traffic volumes would be wiser to upload their digital products to one of the hosted services online. Admittedly, you do lose control of your product marketing and cannot capture customer email addresses at checkout (like with DLGuard) but at least there would be the potential of more people seeing your product.

What next?

Subscribe to the RSS Feed

In essence, the registry file stores all the configuration settings for your applications, hardware devices and operating system processes. Given the variety of applications users install on their PCs, the potential for the registry having faulty keys is very high. This article details how the tool Reimage has repaired a particularly tricky registry problem on my desktop computer that occurred due to application changes.

At the start of the year I cleared out unused applications on my PC to make some space on the drives. After rebooting the system I witnessed a fatal Windows error that stated the registry file cannot load the hive (a hive is a grouping of registry keys relating to a user that gets backed up to the file system).

While it is never good to see the blue screen of death, at least this time the message was self-explanatory. The registry had obviously been damaged as part of the application changes.

The first approach to try is to start the computer in safe-mode (by hitting the F8 key during the system boot) and attempt to swap the problematic registry for a backup copy I made previously.

This would have been the quick fix approach to the issue, but the system just wouldn’t start in safe mode, or regular mode for that matter. The next best thing to try would have been to start the system using the Windows boot disks to attempt some repairs but I’ve long since lost these disks so couldn’t attempt this approach.

I did some research on-line for a boot disk and/or pc maintenance software and the product Reimage looked to be a good fit. The boot disk can be downloaded from their site then burnt to CD. The faulty machine started up correctly using the repair CD and then uses an IE browser to run a system scan. The scan did pinpoint numerous registry key faults and omissions along with device drivers which it had newer versions of.

The reparation stage downloaded and installed the drivers and changed the erroneous registry keys. Thankfully the PC then rebooted and started correctly once more without issue.

In analyzing the issue it was clear that maintaining registry back-ups is something all Windows users should try to keep. Safely storing the Windows boot disks could have also helped in this situation. On the plus side, it is good to know that, as a last resort, registry repair tools are well able to fix fatal Windows errors like this if needed.

What next?

Subscribe to the RSS Feed