[aklug] OT: WUG XP startup performance maintenance (was: re: Digest V11 #146)

From: Royce Williams <royce@tycho.org>
Date: Sat Oct 13 2012 - 14:04:03 AKDT

OK, this is totally WUG territory ... and more than you asked for, but
since I'm light on GUI fu in the Linux world, this is how I can best
contribute to the larger computing ecosystem today. :-) Plus, my last
day at ACS was Friday and my first day at Alaska USA is Monday, so I
gotta do something in between to stay sharp. :-)

Piriform makes Defraggler; Farrin, maybe you're thinking of
PageDefrag? (also strongly recommended for XP; defragments otherwise
undefragmentable files at boot.)

Some other cleanup tips:

- Delete the USN journal prior to defrag (with 'fsutil usn
deletejournal /d c:' or whatever the drive letter is). This thing can
sometimes be huuuuuge and super-fragmented, and if the filesystem is
up and happy, it's safe to delete.

- Strip tempfiles and other junk with CCleaner. Uncheck stripping of
cookies (and saved passwords, if she can't be convinced to stop doing
that) ;-)

- If the system is in good operating condition, use the Disk Cleanup
tools to delete all but the most recent system restore point. These
can also be giant and super-fragmented.

- Look for other big wads of stuff to delete based on the disk hogs.
I recommend the old, free version of SpaceMonger.
http://www.sixty-five.cc/download/ ... then switch to the "Free
software" tab and download SpaceMonger 1.4. Delete with care, of
course - but if she says, "Oh, I didn't know about that ripped Blu-Ray
of Transformers, you can nuke that", it's worth it.

- The best post-boot defragmenter is MyDefrag, hands down.
Super-customizeable, but with sane defaults - and totally fun to
watch. It will also run when the disk is fuller than the Microsoft
tools will defragment.

- Hover over any big red areas in the MyDefrag disk view. If it
becomes clear that one of them is the paging file and it's
super-fragmented, just disable it while doing the cleanup (reboot
required) and then re-enable it when you're finished. Set it to a
fixed size (min and max at the same value) so that it stops bleeding
all over the place. If it's in a generally contiguous block, install
PageDefrag and reboot to have it defragmented. If it's
super-fragmented, though, just nuke it - otherwise, PageDefrag will
take a loooong time to run at boot.

- If she's not running Avast, switch to it - it's lower-impact than
the other commercial offerings and faster than AVG.

- Install Secunia PSI and hunt down any security issues and patch
them. If she's not technical, set it to auto-patch stuff - very
handy. Get all that patching clean and out of the way before the last
defrag below.

- When you've done everything else, boot from a Windows boot disc
(like a Windows 7 disc in recovery mode), and run MyDefrag again from
a USB stick so that it can operate on an entirely quiescent
filesystem. This last pass is good to save until after you've got
everything else cleaned up.

Asked for $0.02, got $2.00 ... darned dyslexia ... :-)

Royce

On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 1:35 PM, Farrin Reid <blakmatrix@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> They also happen to make defraggler which is better than the average defragmenter, I forget if do had this issue but you might look into it
>
>
> On Saturday, October 13, 2012, Royce Williams wrote:
>>
>> I also strongly recommend the Sysinternals 'autoruns' command as a cross-check - free.
>>
>> http://www.filehippo.com/download_autoruns/
>>
>> Royce
>>
>>> On 10/13/2012 2:21 PM, B Everitt wrote:
>>>
>>> msconfig
>>>
>>> -Ben
>>>
>>> On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 12:05 PM, Bob <bob@estimations.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Another WUG question here.
>>>>
>>>> I'm trying to help a friend improve performance of an older Win XP laptop. I couldn't talk her into scrubbing it and installing Linux, and she doesn't have her Win XP install disk any more, so I figure the best I can do is to scrub some of the crap that gets launched on startup. There used to be a command that would bring up a list of startup programs with check boxes, but I can't remember what it was. Does anyone else remember?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>>
>>>> Bob Crosby
>>
>>
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Received on Sat Oct 13 14:04:31 2012

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