Comments on: PC Maintenance – DIY Tweaks

By: admin

admin — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:35:49 +0000

tonyfv,

I’m relieved to hear that you found (most of) your missing folders!

I’m not familiar with AusLogics but a good defrag is important and I often run mine a half dozen times or more, depending on how long its been since the last one.

If it’s in your budget, you might want to think about adding more RAM as well. Most applications are so feature-rich that they require greater RAM and/or cache and newer computers are packaged with 4G RAM these days so that should tell you something. RAM is considerably cheaper than it used to be and I’d bet that you’d find it would make a big difference to speed issues.

Also, in earlier comments, ‘Dancing Caveman’ and ‘Project51′ recommended formatting the hard drive. That is definitely something to consider and will more than likely eliminate a lot of speed issues from contaminated sectors. But it’s not for the faint-hearted. If you decide to go that route, make good use of your external drive to back everything up (that’ll prob’ly eat up most of your time).

Your 4-yr-old Dell still has some life in it so don’t give up on it. I applaud you for plugging away. You certainly don’t have to be a “geek” to learn this stuff (although the fun-factor tends to climb a bit).

By: tonyfv

tonyfv — Wed, 06 May 2009 03:03:15 +0000

Well, odd indeed. I run XP Home 2002 version with SP3.
I did a search in the C: drive for “cookies” and the only folder that came back was in
C:\Documents and Settings\[user_name_here]\Application Data\Apple Computer\Safari
The user_name was my login (I am the administrator).
Did not find any folder named UserData, LocalSettings.
I must have messed up the list I posted above, because there are folders for C:\WINDOWS\Offline Web Pages and C:\WINDOWS\Temp
I must also have missed the C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download folder because it is there – I deleted the contents.

I guess being in the mood, after all that I ran my spyware app (Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware), and defragged with AusLogics Disk Defrag. After running that last one, it pointed out some problems and suggested I use their Auslogics BoostSpeed (which I looked up on CNET and was well-reviewed), and restarted.
Well, there might be some overall speed improvement but nothing to write home about…
I think I need a full reimaging to get this 4-yr old PC back to acceptable speed standards.
My system is a Dell DIM4600 desktop with Pentium 4 3.06 GHz, 1GB RAM. I’m certainly not a geek – I don’t know what all that means, but I think it should be OK for me per what savvy friends tell me. I also have an external drive in which I keep all my documents, with 111 GB.

By: vbasic

vbasic — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:14:47 +0000

hmm…off the top of my head, I don’t know what to tell you, tonyfv. Those are some pretty fundamental folders. If they’re not there…???

Have you tried doing a search for them (from the start menu)? Do you have more than one user profile? Might they be found under Administrator?
…I’m just winging it here.

I see that I’ve managed to delete the related post regarding the original source of the content of “PC Secrets “(didn’t realize that til now) so would have to Google the info myself into the problems you are having finding these files.

I’m now using Windows Vista and the file organization is considerably different from XP. I’m afraid I’m of little help today. I’m curious though as to where those files/folders would be on your machine..?