Topic: Need to reformat

[PyroMenace]

My system is long due for a format, its been well over a year. Im starting to take notice in how long my system hangs when getting into windows and even launching Firefox there is significant lag. Plus I keep getting odd memory spikes. Problem is I need something to throw all the stuff I want to save after the format, burning it onto CDs takes forever since I have a lot of music now I want to save, last time my friend's computer was handy and I just moved all my stuff onto his hard drive momentarily, formatted, then moved it back over. I'm halfway tempted to buy a small, cheap hard drive to do this with.

[scottws]

Yeah external drives are awesome for this sort of thing.

Me, I've moved to using two internal drives: one for the OS and applications and one for data. 

That way when I reformat, I only have to mess with the OS and apps.  It worked perfectly for when I went to Vista.

[Cobra951]

I was going to suggest an external drive.  They really are painless anymore, except for the wallet.  Even there, they don't hurt nearly as much as they used to.

[PyroMenace]

You guys know of any good programs that will clear out your memory?

[scottws]

Huh?  Like flush your RAM?  A reboot will do that.

[Pugnate]

Yea I am a little confused.

This is why I have separate partitions for my stuff and a smaller one for my OS. When I need to format, I don't really go through any hassle.

[Cobra951]

I was confused too, but eventually thought he meant zeroing out the contents of the drive, to protect from future prying eyes.  I don't know of any offhand, so I didn't reply last night.

[scottws]

If that's the case, then dban is the answer.

[PyroMenace]

I meant flushing my RAM, thought perhaps there was a quicker way than rebooting.

Anyway, Im having trouble defragging too. Im using Norton's Speed Disk and I let it run over night and that usually does it. Now I let it run and when I come back to it after I wake up its only at 3%, so then I go to work and come back, its at 6%. I wonder if I should try Window's defrag program.

[scottws]

OMG delete that Norton crap right now!  Norton is horrible and I've personally seen three systems lost to Norton products.

If you're worried about defrag, use either the standard Windows defrag utility or use Disk Keeper.

As far as flushing your RAM, you can't really flush your RAM while your system is up.  Critical stuff is running in there.  I've seen some programs that claim to optimize memory while the system is up, but I think it's just snake oil.

[Pugnate]

I really like Disk Keeper, though haven't tried on Vista. And I agree about Norton.

And your OS can't function without constant use of RAM.

[PyroMenace]

Should I switch to MacAfee?

[Pugnate]

If you use Vista, then Windows Defender isn't too bad. Also try Spybot for spyware cleansing.

As for McAfee, I use it and find it better than Norton by miles... even if it does attempt to take over my system.

[PyroMenace]

Im on XP right now, and I typical like having some virus protection. I've never had a problem with Norton, but its better than nothing right?

[scottws]

If your long-term goal is to have your system hosed, then yes, it's better than nothing.  I would use AVG over Norton.  It sucks too, but at least it won't break your system.

McAfee is better, but not great either.  I use NOD32, which is one of the best.  TrendMicro is good too but very slow.  I've heard Kapersky or something like that is good.

Pug, I think Windows Defender is just a spyware client.  It's not an anti-virus client as far as I know.

[Pugnate]

Ohhhh... I felt it was pretty cool because it was so light. I thought it was a virus scanner too. Now I feel moronic.

[Cobra951]

I have good personal experience with AVG (virus scanning) and Diskkeeper (defrag).  I don't run the active components of AVG, however, so I can't comment on how many resources it hogs.  I only use it as a passive scanner when I feel the need.

I don't understand the need to flush RAM.  Windows uses all of it, then makes it available as needed.  The philosophy is that free memory is wasted memory.  Windows memory management has grown very sophisticated, and now can even run code directly from its cache.  In other words, it doesn't need to move things around when a running application which had been cached by Windows earlier becomes active.  It works out the mapping and goes.  In any case, you can't mess with it at the application level, meaning you can't simply run a program to flush it without involving the system-level management of it.  Having all your memory in use is a good thing under Windows, as unintuitive as that may seem at first blush.

[scottws]

I say that AVG sucks because it only detects about 75% of known viruses (last I checked anyway).  Most other scanners are much better.  AVG wins points in that it's free and that it doesn't ruin your system.

[Cobra951]

I was not aware that AVG wasn't doing a full job.  That does concern me, although so far, so good.  But one failure which could have been prevented is all it takes to make it a bad product.  "Close" only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades.

[Quemaqua]

Meh.  AVG is sufficient.  How many viruses are you really worried about getting, and where are you worried about getting them from?  I go all kinds of places on the internet hunting stuff where there's potential for me to get stuff, and I've never had a problem just using AVG for a long time now.  It isn't a memory hog in my experience, doesn't do anything weird to your computer, it's free, it does a pretty decent job with the common stuff, and... it's free.

But yes, discontinue use of Norton products ASAP.  I swore by them for years and years, and I honestly don't know what happened, but at some point they just became total shit and all their products did was muck things up.  They used to be great.  I used their full program suites and they took care of all kinds of problems, cleaned things up, made your system run nice and smooth... but somebody over there dropped the ball, because my blind faith took the leap to an updated version of some programs and they nearly destroyed my PC.  I don't know about the virus scanner, I just stopped using their stuff altogether.  Thankfully Diskkeeper is a good replacement for Speeddisk and AVG is free.  The one thing I haven't found that I wouldn't mind having is a good registry cleaner.  The old ones Norton had were bloody awesome, cleaning up leftovers from uninstalled programs and that kind of thing, but that went south like everything else.

[scottws]

The best registry cleaner I ever found was something called RegClean.  It's automatic clean is awesome, and it's pretty easy and safe to use to get rid of stuff you know you don't have anymore.

Unfortunately it got bought out and integrated into some sort of optimization suite, and it sucked then because the automatic registry clean wasn't safe (I had to do a System Restore after trying it out).  Luckily I still have an old version.  I put it up on my web server.  Just click the link above.

CCleaner is decent too.

[Quemaqua]

Sweet thanks, I'll have to give that a whirl.

[Pugnate]

Personally I find RegMechanic to be the best. It is very safe, and has helped me out of a lot of bad uninstalls, or installation crashes.

http://www.download.com/Registry-Mechanic/3000-2094_4-10190447.html?cdlpid=10742905

From the guys who brought us Spyware Doctor too.

[PyroMenace]

Well I was at my moms place over the weekend and in my brothers room, which is now a storage room, I found various old PC parts and came across a hard drive. Its a 40 gig one so it worked out nicely. I spent the majority of today updating, installing, and downloading and got nearly everything I want done. I took Scott's suggestion and went with NOD32 for antivirus protection and so far it working out great. Gonna run Diskeeper before I go to sleep. As of now the machines running tons better, it feels like windows is loading 20% faster.