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Building the Ultimate Gaming System VIby Kirk, 2005-10-04 |
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1. Clean your Hard Drive
Nothing will slow a computer down than a bunch of programs that don't matter all running simultaneously trying to slow you down like a bunch of ninjas trying to kick your ass. Realistically, your whole PC's performance is somewhat based on what your Hard Drive has on it. By this, I mean that even your Windows version can determine how fast your PC runs in a given situation. The first step to cleaning your hard drive is getting rid of the "Big Chunks"- the programs you don't need themselves. The typical person has at least 5 to 10 programs on their PC they keep for some reason- be them sentimental value, they forgot about them, or some other stupid reason. Obviously, this is something that isn't good for your computer. Go to Control Panel in My Computer and open up "Add or Remove Programs". Ta-da, you now have a list of the BIG programs on your computer. Not only do you have that, but Windows XP users will be blessed with the ability to organize them according to size, and determine what's taking up 10 gigs of hard drive space. As well, Web Browsers, be them IE, Firefox, Opera, or whatever, all have the wonderful ability to clear Temporary Internet Files/Clear Cache/the like. Do this many times and often. One of the most common ways to get spyware is for your web browser to download it, and deleting your cache periodically is the fastest way to prevent this from happening. Keep in mind, though, that not everything can be fixed through Add or Remove Programs or Clear Temporary Internet Files. In fact, you will rarely, if ever, get rid of everything extraneous by doing this. Sometimes, programs will leave log files or the like on your computer, and never remove them. These can vary from files saying you used to have the program on your computer to files tracking you for some myriad reason. Either way, you want to get rid of them. This is not to say you should go into C:/ and delete everything in sight. You must be VERY CAREFUL when doing this, because even the slightest mishap could destroy your PC. This rarely happens, but if you went into /Windows/ and deleted everything, obviously there are going to be "some problems". So, to give you an idea of what to delete: (Keep in mind these assume you have the industry standard C:/ main drive. If not, just replace C:/ with whatever you actually have) Common places to find stuff not on Add or Remove Programs C:/Program Files/ /My Documents/ (The location differs on Windows version) /My Shared Folder/ NEVER TOUCH THESE FOLDERS /WindowsNT/ /WINDOWS/ This should be pretty simple. If it says "Windows" on it or something like "ATI", "nVidia", or something YOU KNOW BELONGS THERE, don't touch it. This isn't that hard. It's like being a little kid in Kindergarden, except instead of that glass of water you want to touch, it's a glass of acid. Use common sense. A program called "PokerWin" is definately not going to be a system file. A file called "config.ini" might be more important to you. (However, you should NEVER delete singular files from folders. If a program is in a folder, delete the folder. Leaving fragments sitting around is kinda stupid.) As well, once you're done with this, you need to go through Defragging, Microsoft's way of tidying up your Hard Disk. Typically, it runs under Start > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter. Simple, huh? Run it. You'll save tons of speed by cleaning up your hard disk. I won't go into a long explanation of how it works, but simply, it shoves clusters neatly into areas where they fit instead of them being all over the damn place.
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