Formating my pc"or not"?

[vesuvius]

I am having so many probs with my pc,for example,very slow starter lots of spyware,continuus errors and lots of stuff i dont need.

I dont want to format as i have alot of work i need to complete before i do so is there an easy to use program that i can use that will help maybe with an online tutorial as well.

Thanx for any help

[Sirber]

if you have spyware, install "adaware".. and format as soon as possible :p

[Tuesday]

Ad-aware will get rid of all your spyware

http://download.com.com/3000-2144-10045910.html?part=69274&subj=dlpage&tag=button

edit: damn, sirber got there first :(

[bit-wise]

You will find that even removing programs via AdAware et. all, your registry becomes very corrupt after a while. Nor will it remove legitimate services that are not required, but are loaded when your system starts. (See the tail end of the AntiVirus (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=69830) thread about using CodeStuff's Starter to examine and remove these unwanted services.

I reformat my drives every 8 months to a year. Since it's such a pain to install everything each time (especially drivers), I've invested in Norton Ghost. I installed Windows, applied the service patches, drivers, and any other software I would install each time and then took a snapshot with Ghost.

Now, when I want to rebuild, I just pop in the CD with the drive image and click Install. 30 minutes later the drives are cleaned and my OS is back to the way it was when I took the snapshot.

[stax76]

use a OS with system recovery and test software on another OS with dual boot or a emulator and your install will last years (until you buy new hardware)

[mf]

A windoze reinstall doesn't have to mean a format. Free some diskspace (about a GB to be safe), install a fresh version of windows alongside your current, transfer any settings, start menus, whatever you want to your new install (but leave the unnecessary stuff alone ;)), and then delete your old windows directory. Either that or split your HD up (you need quite a lot of free space to do that on a non-empty HD) in several partitions, keeping your OS isolated on the first drive (C:), so you can format that partition on a need-to-reinstall basis, while keeping all your files.

[SeeMoreDigital]

I would suggest you have a minimum of three partitions.

2No boot partitions (at around 6GB each. One as a 'Main Boot' and the other as a 'Test Boot') for your O/S and applications. And...

1No partition (at what ever GB size is remaining) for all your files, encodes, personal info etc

Although I have not tried it myself, bit-wise's suggestion of using Norton Ghost sounds like a great idea.

Cheers

[Wolfman]

you could even make it quicker and have your image on your hard disk. Use partmagic to make a hidden partition with your unblemished windows install on it. Also search out a registry defragmenter. And defrag your disk frequently.

[bit-wise]

I used to use dual-boot dual-OS configuration both with the dual boot option with Win 2k, and later, System Commander.

However, there is one *huge* flaw with this method. If you merge your boot partion with another partion that has an OS installed - the boot record gets trounced and then nothing will boot. In this case, I was dropping an OS so merged Partion 0 (boot) and Partion 1 (Win2k).

The end result is the HD could not boot, Windows could not recover, so I reinstalled Windows so it would not overwrite existing files, backed up my critical data, re-formatted the drive, and reinstalled Windows a second time.

It sucked. One OS for me now - less troubles when something goes south.

[mf]

Originally posted by Wolfman
And defrag your disk frequently.
Hyped. I'm an experienced windows user and defragmenting doesn't affect daily use. I once left my drives fragmenting for a year, then defragmented them all. No performance gain. Currently they look like this:
http://mf.creations.nl/defrag2.png
And I'm having no problems, except that my windoze installation is aging with all the crap I install on it.

[r6d2]

Originally posted by mf
Hyped. I'm an experienced windows user and defragmenting doesn't affect daily use.
Well, I'm probably not that experienced as you are, but I have noticed significant improvements in encoding when disks are properly defragged. (To me that is daily use.) :)

You have very full disks. You won't be able to defrag them by normal means, perhaps that's why you did not notice any improvement. ;)

[OvERaCiD23]

Originally posted by bit-wise

I reformat my drives every 8 months to a year. Since it's such a pain to install everything each time (especially drivers), I've invested in Norton Ghost. I installed Windows, applied the service patches, drivers, and any other software I would install each time and then took a snapshot with Ghost.

Now, when I want to rebuild, I just pop in the CD with the drive image and click Install. 30 minutes later the drives are cleaned and my OS is back to the way it was when I took the snapshot.

I must say, this really does decrease re-installation time. Download 2-3 new updates from Microsoft, install any new programs you've gotten, and you're set. It's even better if you have a separate partition for your personal files (I have "My Documents" on another partition), so if I re-format or lose my boot partition, I'm out nothing (aside from 30 minutes to an hour).

As for spy-ware, stop using IE6 and use a real browser (i.e. Mozilla/Mozilla Firebird). I swear to god, I don't use IE anymore and haven't had spyware on my computer since I"ve stopped using it (over a year). I don't install a whole lot of shareware/shady software either, but it usually has a notice if it does contain spyware. In that case, it's removed immediatley.

Basically, stop using IE6 on your new install (it sucks anyways, it has no features at all). See if some of the crap on your computer goes away. I'm sure you'll find it nice. www.mozilla.org

[stax76]

imho it's better to keep the system clean in the first place and use system recovery if something is flawed, I never had to reinstall the last couple years except because of a new mainboard (I know newbie tend to reinstall at least once a month :D, at least I did)

[Wolfman]

If you ever use p2p and download more than one thing at a time.. that is when you will find your HD very very fragmented. In fact the more items you d/l the more fragmented you get. If your system never needs defragging for a year then that is amazing.. everyone else seems to do it.;)

[Hiro2k]

Originally posted by mf
Hyped. I'm an experienced windows user and defragmenting doesn't affect daily use. I once left my drives fragmenting for a year, then defragmented them all. No performance gain. Currently they look like this:
http://mf.creations.nl/defrag2.png
And I'm having no problems, except that my windoze installation is aging with all the crap I install on it.

I am going to have to agree with r6d2, for the disk that I do encoding on, it's much faster when all the data is not fragmented. Also why are you using FAT32? The main problem I have with it, is that everytime you have to restart the computer manually it has to run scandisk on those FAT32 partitions. Using NTFS it doesn't ask to run scandisk.

@OvERaCiD23
Mozilla/Firebird doesn't have a damn IESpell :( I had just discovered IESpell for the forums when I finally decided to switch to Firebird because of the tabbed browsing. :angry:

I also have 6 partitions. I keep one for backups and so I am not afraid to nuke my c drive on a weekly basis if need be. I should start using Norton Ghost, that could save me so much time.

[r6d2]

Originally posted by Hiro2k
I am going to have to agree with r6d2...
Man, that sounds like it is too much trouble! :D
I should start using Norton Ghost, that could save me so much time.
I wonder... Do those tools do some sort of optimization when backing up the registry and the like? I mean, if the system is cluttered, would it be a solution to back it up and restore it again?

[Wolfman]

ALso a disk with no free space cannot be defragged, or if you tried to use the windows defragger it would take 20 revolutions of your planet around your sun. It needs some free space(pref 15%+) to consolidate the files. The amount of red shows that your HD is heavily fragmented.

[Wolfman]

backing up and resoring would be a great way of defragging your hard disk .. as long as you wiped it clean b4 the restore.

[Hiro2k]

Originally posted by r6d2
Man, that sounds like it is too much trouble! :D

LOL it is very hard for me to agree with anyone on this board :p

Originally posted by r6d2
I wonder... Do those tools do some sort of optimization when backing up the registry and the like? I mean, if the system is cluttered, would it be a solution to back it up and restore it again?

Well the point is that you store the image of the drive as soon as you install it with all the drivers you want and such. The image is saved as a file. I would just nuke the drive and then copy the image back to the harddrive. BAM! No more having to install drivers or service packs. For that matter I don't even have to install windows again..... assuming I didn't change something major to the computer (motherboard). So it might be faster copying the image to my HD than it is to install windows all over again. Just windows, not including the patches and stuff.

[sysKin]

Hi,
About three years ago I was a bit of a maniac about filesystem speed. I wanted everything to run as fast as possible - so I read lots of information, tested defragmentation software and generally learned a lot.

Let me share some info - it's *mostly* on topic, I hope you don't mind about the "mostly". I'm not saying you should use these information, some have bigger speed impact and some have almost none. I might be wrong about some stuff too...

First of all, it's very good to have several partitions to forcibly separate different types of data. You have to decide which data is speed critical for you, and which is not.

Now, a fact: beginning of the disk is faster than the end. This is because beginning (like c:, usually) is at the physical rim of disk, while final partition will be closer to the hub. Rim is faster simply becuase it moves faster - access time is the same, raw transfer is higher. (note: on a CD, rim is last. this is because data protection is more important than speed, and it's easier to damage the rim).

Another fact, more obvious: when different files are accessed together, they are accessed faster if they are on the same partition. This is simply because they can't be far away, regardless of fragmentation.
I'm sure you don't want two DirectX files separated by a 700MB movie - it's slow and also makes your HDD live shorter (at least in theory).

Third fact: partition gets fragmented faster for some uses and slower for other uses. Imagine a temporary folder - creates files all the time, deletes files all the time, everything gets fragmented quickly. It's a good idea to make sure this won't affect speed-critical files.

My conclusion, AKA "what I have done on my system and am happy with":
I have four win32 partitions:
- windows partition, with the system. It also has a swapfile and all programs which start at boot time. These files are most speed-critical for me, I keep this partition defragmented and clean. It doesn't get fragmented much, and defragmentation is fast anyway. It's 2GB big and that's more than enough for windoze2k.
- programs partition. Simply second speed-critical for me, and just has one big "Program Files" on it. A bit too big to be defragmented too often, but doesn't suffer from fragmentation too much. Programs run quickly enough.
- TEMP partition. This is where my system's temporary dir, IE's "temporary internet files", mozilla's "Cache" dir etc are located. It also has a nice "Downloads" directory - a target for all download proggies. This is where I compile programs or decompress archives.
This partition is always fragmented but I don't care. The easiest way to defragment is to delete the damn files.
- A partition with all my documents, movies, music and other stuff. The biggest partition of all. Probably fragmented a bit but I don't care - defragmentation would take ages. As you can guess, these files are the least speed-critical, and are moved away from other files so that they don't stand in the way.

The last two partitions can be merged into one, especially on a system that doesn't use internet. I wouldn't join the first two into one, except if you don't use too many programs and games. Especially games - they are big and I don't like the idea of a 2GB game mixed with my "system32" dir ;)

Note that I'm aware of a problem with many partitions - if one gets full, you'll move some files to another and this creates a huge mess. Setting them to right size is important, I don't have this problem anymore (120GB disk) but I used to have on 30GB disk.

OK I'll finish this too-long semi-on-topic post. I can tell you just as much about defragmentation - how to do it right, with some tips giving huge speed boost for me. Tell me if you're interested.

Regards,
Radek

[Emp3r0r]

Nice post and great advice!

If you have the money or equipment, do the same with hard drives. For example, get a fast 10,000rpm Raptor for your OS. Get a 7200rpm 8meg Cache for the program files and finally have a huge but slower 5400rpm for the audio and video files.

Also, never install anything!

[Hiro2k]

Originally posted by Emp3r0r

Also, never install anything!

LOL

So true though. *sigh* Looks like it's time for me to reformat. :(

[lakedude]

I'm with bitdude. Make an image with Ghost or Drive Image of your system when it is like you like it. Burn the image to a disk or just keep one around on another drive or partition. It takes less then 5 minutes to completely restore windows compaired to how long for a full install? The more programs you add the longer a restore will take. It takes me about 2 days to load and configure a system the way I like it from scratch. Once an image is made it takes less then 10 minutes (win98/drive image) to completely restore the c: drive to like new condition. Everything is on the image. Great idea.

Compare:

Load OS, chipset driver, audio, modem, lan, and video drivers.
Configure windose to single click, customize send to menu, configure folder options for details, show extentions, show all files, etc.
Load apps, Office, GKnot, FairUse, Paint Shop, Internet access, Deskshop, Street Atlas, etc.
Load drivers/software for printer, scanner, camera, etc.
Load codecs.

or

Load drive image and be done in 10 minutes.

[mf]

Originally posted by Hiro2k
I am going to have to agree with r6d2, for the disk that I do encoding on, it's much faster when all the data is not fragmented. Also why are you using FAT32? The main problem I have with it, is that everytime you have to restart the computer manually it has to run scandisk on those FAT32 partitions. Using NTFS it doesn't ask to run scandisk.
I'm the type of person that shuts down windoze properly, so I never need scandisk. Also, I encode over 100mbit LAN, so the bottleneck isn't my HDs. Also, like Emperor said, my biggest speed gain so far was installing a 7200rpm 8MB cache drive. I could squeeze more performance out of it by using an actual ATA133 cable, but it's already fast enough for me :).

[r6d2]

Originally posted by mf
Also, I encode over 100mbit LAN, so the bottleneck isn't my HDs.
Disk transfer speeds are on the order of 100 MBps, that is 8 times faster than a LAN, not considering the inability of a LAN to sustain 100Mbps.

So, unless you are encoding remotely, meaning using the server's CPU as well as the disks, you may be missing a great deal in encoding performance.

BTW, there are no performance reasons to prefer NTFS over FAT32, but there are improvements in the security and flexibility area. You may want to give it a try.

[mf]

Originally posted by r6d2
Disk transfer speeds are on the order of 100 MBps, that is 8 times faster than a LAN, not considering the inability of a LAN to sustain 100Mbps.
I know. That's why I said the bottleneck isn't my HDs. Remotely serving a VBLE file usually drops about 5-10fps from the speed (from HD I can decode VBLE realtime), but the main speed issue lies in the original AVS filtering, where the bottleneck is the CPU's cache (filtering goes at 2fps, as the people that have tried my AVS filters will know :D). So for filtering network load is around 10 to 20 times lower than for the final XviD passes processed from the remote VBLE file, which take such a short time (15mins first pass, 30mins second) it doesn't pay off to actually take the effort of placing my 120GB HD in the PC I encode on. Also, if I did that I'd have to put it on the second IDE controller (which is actually a RAID controller that can also do vanilla IDE), that takes about half a minute to initialize upon bootup. Needless to say, I'll keep my current setup.

[unmei]

mf if the promise controller nags you, you should consider booting less often (would require you system to be halfway stable) :p

[r6d2]

Originally posted by unmei
mf if the promise controller nags you, you should consider booting less often
I used to use suspend to disk mode. It's great, it takes almost nothing to boot. However, I don't use it anymore because the USB devices have trouble after a resume. I've not been able to fix that. :(

[Mnl]

Allright, Norton Ghost have been mentioned a couple of times in this thread. So here goes my version of how to use the program :D

I never burn my images to a CD or DVD. If you compress your images (an option in the program) they only take up half the space of the data on the partition you are backing up. Also storing the images on a HDD makes restoring the system partition a matter of minutes (This is heavily dependent on the speed of your HDD though - on my work PC which have an old 5400rpm disk restoring a 4 GB system partition takes about 25 - 30 min, while restoring a partition of the same size on my encoding PC (7200 rpm discs) takes about 3 min)

I always have at least 3 images: One with only my OS installed - no drivers or anything. One with OS+service packs+drivers and one with OS+service packs+drivers+programs which doesn't have to be updated very often and maybe an image of my system with all programs installed. This way I can always go as far back in the installation process as needed if something goes wrong - and believe me when you have spent the time it takes to make the images in the first place, it is just incredibly easy to keep your machine in perfect condition - If I experience problems with a driver, a virus, anything - I just load one of my images - and Wham! my system is in prime condition after about 5 min. :)

I know that many people will consider this idea of restoring your windows installation so often rather excessive (I do it about once a month), but believe me it is really nice to always be runing a new installation of your OS and you avoid a lot of problems with confliction programs, versions of codecs etc.

[r6d2]

Originally posted by Mnl
I know that many people will consider this idea of restoring your windows installation so often rather excessive (I do it about once a month).
I'm curious. Is this a common practice? I used to suffer from having to reinstall every two months with W95, 4 months with W98, but XP really surprised me. Only had to reinstall once because of a major system upgrade.

[lakedude]

Actually I do the about same thing as Mnl with Drive Image. Having a few images of your system at various "restore points" is a good idea. Personally I think it a good idea to burn the images after a clean install (no virus/conflicts/etc.) because the image on a hard drive could get infected/ruined by a virus or disk crash. I keep images on seperate partition on a hard drive but keep burned copies in addition. My cycle for 98se is normally about a year but if I'm troubleshooting I may load several images in just a day or two. The point is that they are nice to have whenever you need them. They will save a ton of time and make maintenance way easier. XP as "restore points" built in so you may not need Ghost or Drive Image if you are running XP.

[Wolfman]

I am in the process of creating my backup partition. But one does have to be quite strict about what you consider safe and essential programs. Also your documentation has to be pretty good, otherwise how do you know which version of which drivers you have.. gFx, M/b, mem and also programs that need updating..I have rolled back to a very early version of a program only to find that the web update for that early version had been deleted from the companys website! gnash. Imagine rolling back to pre-blaster xp, connecting to the web and whammo.

[lakedude]

Good point

I keep the updates on a seperate parition so they can easily be loaded after a restore.

[bit-wise]

@r6d2

Is it a common practice? Yes and no. Most people (I'm speaking general world computer population here) don't, because they don't know how to. Let's face it, doing an OS reinstall is rather daunting to someone who just knows how to turn on their computer and use Word/IE/IM. For the more technically savvy, the art of the reinstall is easy - restore from a drive image. But you still always face the "drat, I don't have XYZ program on the restore image and need to reinstall it now" problem.

The main bottleneck on any machine these days is drive speed and throughput. I don't care how fast the CPU is, how overclocked you have the machine - if you have bad fragmentation, old drive cables, cable echo, a corrupted registry, or just too many things running on the PC (read: excessive swap) your machine is going to run slow.

As you use your machine more and more, the registry becomes bloated, the drive becomes fragmented, and you inadvertently get more services installed at start-up. And of course, the easiest way to combat this "software bloat" is to drop a new image every eight months to a year.

I've seen some posts about people who have placed their temporary files on a separate partition and just blow it away every now and then - that's a great idea. You won't have temp files physically between your OS files (the first thing that went on the disk) and some new program you just installed.

And for those that don't shut down the machine - think about this. Only about 1% of the applications out there can pass the Bounds Checker test for unreleased memory. An application failing this test means memory allocated by the app is never released. Over time, if you don't shut down, you start loosing available memory. One of my clients uses Win2K servers for their website. Runs nothing more than Tomcat, Java, Crystal Reports and IIS. It has to be restarted every 7 days because of memory issues.

[r6d2]

Originally posted by bit-wise
As you use your machine more and more, the registry becomes bloated, the drive becomes fragmented, and you inadvertently get more services installed at start-up. And of course, the easiest way to combat this "software bloat" is to drop a new image every eight months to a year.
Well, I got used to let my XP system to be updated automatically with Windows Update. I have never needed to install a driver. XP even detects a printer when you turn it on, really plug and play.

I have a firewall and an anti-virus. I'm the kind of user that installs/uninstalls lots of software. I'm a gamer, and I'm subscribed to get any game demo released. They are usually bigger than 100-MB and I dispose of them often.

I have a partition for encoding, which I wipe after I finish the jobs. I have a system partition and swap on a second faster drive. I defrag the other partitions with Diskeeper "Set it and forget it" mode.

I also control adware. So, my only problem remaining would be the cluttering of the registry. Perhaps there is a tool for fixing just that. If anyone would recommend one I'd appreciate it.

About shutdown... I had a Sun Workstation for quite a while at work. I never had to reboot it. :) Now Sun is planning to take over the desktop with a product called Java Desktop System, which is basically a Suse distribution with GNome and other stuff. Finally a decent alternative for those users not too techie may be available. :)

[unmei]

I'm curious. Is this a common practice? I used to suffer from having to reinstall every two months with W95, 4 months with W98, but XP really surprised me. Only had to reinstall once because of a major system upgrade.

Yeah, similar experience here. However, i win98 days i used to install and deinstall many more programs than nowadays. The worst i ever came across was windows ME. There i actually had to reinstall about every month to keep it fast enough to play q3a :) Now i have XP (int'l pro) on both my machines and i only reinstalled once recently to get rid off old DS filters (nimo pack etc) and all the audio programs and DX/VST stuff i had from back the days i made compu music. The 'fast' box i turn on and off once a day (when i use it on that day) and its mainly used for q3a, graphics, encoding and to play the videos my workhorse PIII is too slow to play fluently (with HE-AAC, styled softsubs, res > 640x480)- and Eclipse which is also too slow on the PIII)(slow). The workhorse PIII runs apache, bittorrent and i use it for websurfing, normal video and all that other dirty stuff. It only gets rebooted once every 5-20 days as like bit-wise pointed out, some apps leave a mess and that's why i reboot it at all as it gets slower after a certain time of running. The apps i found most guilty are _explorer_, bittorrent, firebird (of those i use in the first place of course).

One thing i think noone mentioned that can greatly influence the stability of systems is - oh well its soo bovious, but anyway - : don't run IE, Outlook, mIRC and any sort of instant messeger but use alternative programs. I haven't seen a single trojan or virus on my systems in ages and i only put up a firewall some weeks back and dont need to run symptom-fighting software like registry cleaners, ad-blockes etc (which would also slow down the system).

[duartix]

I'm curious. Is this a common practice? Sure. Maybe not as often as you do it, perhaps every 4-6 months but regularly. Never use opticals. Always make an image to/recover from another partition.
By the way, let me tell you that Ghost allows you to browse your image files like Explorer. You can take the Program Files within your image file and zap an entire directory if you like. :D

[lakedude]

Never use opticals. Why not? An optical will still be there if your system gets a virus or has a hd crash.

[r6d2]

Originally posted by lakedude
Why not?To save them for the movies? :D

[dani82]

try TuneUp Utilities 2k3, it had a RegistryCleaner "Removes invalid entries and references in your system"; don't know if it really helps, nor do i know what it really does (beside what's stated)