Slow PCs

I think you covered most of the bases there

 

Registry cleaners are a complete and utter waste of time and money. I have never seen one make an iota of noticable difference to performance. Disk defragmenters are the same - unless you've only got a tiny amount of free disk space left, in which case a defrag either won't work, or won't make any difference anyway.

Want to speed up performance? Format & reinstall, install programs, then take an image. Every three months, restore that image. Job done

 

I have seen a difference... a negative one! Ever seen a registry cleaner clean something it wasn't supposed to? It ain't pretty.

Other than that, my experiences have been the same as yours with respect to registry cleaners and defrag. Perhaps - and I emphasize perhaps - defrag made a difference with FAT16... but not with NTFS.

"RAM booster" apps and the like are similarly useless.

 

Explainations please as to why defrag apps are a waste of time.

 

because they don't make a jot of difference with NTFS

 

I never use reg cleaners I have never seen any difference either but I understand that they could cause more propblems than good.

 

You don't? Then why did you second the recommendation of CCleaner, above?

 

Defrag your own system and see for yourself. I haven't seen it make one iota of difference.

 

Thanks for the props, my friend. Still, I don't know everything. And, to be honest, I gave up defragging years ago when I didn't notice any real difference. Things could have changed in the last few years... but I doubt it. The only way to know for sure is to try it for yourself and report back what your stopwatch tells you. Can't argue with what your eyes see for themselves! ;)

 

I use ccleaner to get rid of the temp files and cookies that the one in windows and the browser ones miss out. I have used the reg cleaner in it in the past but never saw any benefit from it.

 

Umm... you do know that there are features in Windows and the browsers that do all that for you, right? Just checking.

 

Yep but I dont think it works aswell as ccleaner though.

 

Method A: deletes cookies
Method B: deletes cookies



What am I missing here?

 

I agree.

On the PCs here I have a consistent setup so there are not loads and loads of apps (which does slow stuff like said above and a fresh install is good here). I find that all the security patches / AV upgrades .. that m$ (etc.) release slows them down more and more over time. So I add ram, setup VMemory to system managed, and set the display effects to minimal.

I think the patch stuff is all just part of the upgrade to a new PC strategy!

Spy/etc.. ware will get on PCs, mostly users running with admin rights - so scanning for that is good too.