A Cure for the Common Slowdown

By MIKE BERMAN
Scripps Howard News Service
October 17, 2001

A cure for the common cold may still elude us, but there are a few things we can do to stimulate a sluggish computer.

One of the most common things that can cause computer slowdown is a fragmented hard drive. According to the Webopedia (www.webopedia.com) "Fragmentation refers to the condition of a disk in which files are divided into pieces scattered around the disk. Fragmentation occurs naturally when you use a disk frequently, creating, deleting, and modifying files. At some point, the operating system needs to store parts of a file in noncontiguous clusters. This is entirely invisible to users, but it can slow down the speed at which data is accessed because the disk drive must search through different parts of the disk to put together a single file."

Defragmenting hard drives is a fairly simple process and should part of your computer maintenance routine.

There's a decent defragmenter included with every version of Microsoft Windows and it does a great job. The only problem is it can take hours for it to move all the bits and pieces of your files if you have a large hard drive. I've had the same problem with Speed Disk, which is what Symantec includes in Norton Utilities.

Enter Diskeeper 6.0 Second Edition ($49.95) and Diskeeper 6.0 Second Edition Server ($259.95) from Executive Software.

Although this program was originally developed to work only on computers running Microsoft NT, this new version can handle any version of Windows from Windows 95 through XP. And it's fast!

I was able to defragment my 12 gigabyte and 30 gigabyte hard drives in about half the time it had previously taken me. And I was able to use my computer while it was defragmenting because Diskeeper uses fewer system resources than its competitors.

Among its other features are:
" Its ability achieve a balance between performance and fragmentation by splitting large files into two pieces.
" It can be set to track fragmentation as you use your computer and then defragment your drive when it reaches a given threshold.
" Frag Guard prevents fragmentation of critical system files by allocating extra space for them.
" System files that cannot be moved are defragmented when you reboot your computer.
" It can analyze multiple drives and partitions.

Another factor that may be slowing down your computer, especially when you're on the Net, are files written to your hard drive as you do your daily surfing.
You can delete these files using either Internet Explorer or the disk cleanup utility that comes with Windows 98, Me, 2000 and XP.

In Explorer, all you have to do is right click on the Internet Explorer icon and then click on "Delete Files". The disk cleanup utility can be found under Accessories and System Tools in your program listings.

Both of these programs do a great job of eliminating these files and you should notice a big difference in performance the next time you boot up.

The last thing to do is a scan of the registry that tells windows what's on your computer and how it should operate. Unfortunately, this is something a novice may want to stay away from, because one wrong move could really screw things up.

But the more adventurous - or more experienced - computer user may want to use either Norton System Works 2002 ($69.95) from Symantec or a registry scanner (which can be found at www.download.com) to check to see if there is anything in the registry that could be slowing things down.
These programs actually scan the registry and will point out errors such as references to shortcuts that no longer exist, drivers that are no longer used or links to bits and pieces of programs you may have uninstalled.

All of these can cause your computer to slow down to an agonizing crawl.

System Works asks you if you want to "fix" these inaccuracies, but it may be a good idea to check them first. I've found that some of the "errors" it finds refer to programs that run off of CDs or other external devices where it can't find the executable files. If these are deleted, you have to reinstall the programs.

The key here is to be careful. If you're unsure o