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this tutorial shows how to increase your pc performance, hardrive space, load times, and much more, also, everything in it is
free to download and use, although i will suggest some paid alternatives that are better. Now, to the tutorial:
you will need to download the following programs, if you have any of them, make sure you have the most recent update/verison of
them, as out of date sofware is as good as no software. I will explain what these programs do aswell:
JKDEFRAG - http://www.kessels.com/JkDefrag/
jkdefrag is a freeware simple to use defragmentation program, all you do is run the jkdefrag executable and let it do its thing.
an explanation of defragmentation - for example, when you download a program, it will put itself into a space into your
harddrive, then when you delete that program, it will leave a space where it was, making a virtual "hole" in your hardrive,
making it messy. then when you download another file, it will put part of it in the "hole" left from the last download and the
rest somewhere else. this will continue and continue until your data is messy and spread all over the harddrive. When your
hardrive is read, it is done in rows, and because of the data in lots of different places, it takes longer to load as it has to
read more rows.
When you defrag, it moves the data to be next to each other, so the data is organised and in rows, so when its read, its alot
quicker to load. thus making your pc faster. this is why you should defragment every month or so.
here is an example of a cluttered messy hardrive (notice the holes, and unorganised data)
and here is an example of a clean organised hardrive (this is my drive i use for music, notice theres hardly any holes, and the
data is in neat rows)
to use JKDefrag, all you do is run the jkdefrag.exe, and wait for it to finish.
ccleaner (formerly known as crap cleaner) - http://www.ccleaner.com/
this is another freeware piece of software that is good at freeing up space by removing unused and useless files.
to use this, all you really need to do is click analyze, it will speed up the cleaning process, and show how much space can be
freed up (usually on your first run you free 100mb+)
then click run cleaner, and click ok, and it will clean, depending on your system power this can be anywhere up to 10 minutes.
when done it will show how much space it has freed up (mine is only a small amount, as it was running on one of my hardrives
with almost nothing on it).
now on ccleaner, click issues, make sure all the boxes are selected, and scan
when the menu pops up, select fix all selected issues and then wait for it to complete
a-squared antispyware (A2) free - http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/free/
one of the best freeware anti spyware programs, also one of the fastest.
all you need to do is click update and makes sure it is fully updated, then click scan now
then use the following, quick scan, then do a smart scan, this should only take 10 minutes, and will detect most spyware and
malware. once a month you should do a deep scan, which will only takes 20 minutes or less.
avg antivirus free - http://www.download.com/3000-2239_4-10703202.html
this is simple enough and dosent require instructions, its a free antivirus and on demand virus scanner, just install it, let it
update, and scan every month.
other free av alternatives:
avast! - http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html
clamwin - http://www.clamwin.com/
------paid alternative----- a better and more reliable paid alternative is nod32 antivirus, do not use norton, as it is
unreliabe, it has a name and thats it, due to it giving out false alarms, locking out pc's, and using most of your processor
power. also, viruses are more likely to get past norton, as norton is the biggest antivirus around, hackers make their viruses
purposefully to get past nortons defences, as its what the target will most likely be using.
zone alarm - http://www.download.com/3000-2092-10039884.html
for a firewall i would recomend zonelabs zonealarm firewall free, it is a simple firewall, which uses low memory and only
requires you to allow or deny suspect programs, as with avg, this requires no pictures or tutorial.
. I use Roxio PerfectDisk also recommended by MS, it has done the best job over all other defragmenters I have seen. They have a free 30 day fully active trial which doesn't require sign-up as long as you get the executable from another 3rd party site.
