Thursday, November 17, 2005

techno head..but very cool!

Hi all...neil here, just before matt starts his blog i want to put you in a very important direction...i have added a link just under the pics on the right hand side to Pete Townshends blog...YES, THE pete townshend!...its a great read...enjoy

Matts done a great job on this blog and i advise all of you to download his special programme!..here's Matt!



I have been thinking over the last few weeks that I ought to do another little spot on keeping your PC running like it was meant to. This has been highlighted to me over the last few weeks by an annoying number of little glitches that make life in front of a monitor more stressful than it should. Every one knows the feeling that all is not quite right. Slow start-ups, ages to shut down or when you shut down programs will not respond and you have to manually stop them. Programs not responding and little random freezes. All these and more happen to any PC that is on line or has software loaded or removed or indeed happen just as a matter of course after time and updates.

The problem was bad enough for me to consider backing up my important info, address book, photos, and music and doing a fresh install of my operating system. And as anyone who knows me will tell you I take my PC very seriously I surf the net through a Software Firewall, a Hardware Firewall, Updated anti virus, Ad aware SE, Microsoft anti spy ware, Pest patrol, a Surge protection system and now battery back up(Yes I have my own UPS). And it still happens. I know both Neil (Piddy) and Gina (GX) have experienced these little problems. I even had to go around to Gina’s one weekend and give her a quick tweak!!!(The PC you dirty minded lot). So just before I ripped the heart out of my life and did the deed to my PC I thought there is no harm in having a few last goes at all the little niggles going on inside my case. I spoke to my son and between us, with two computers two brains and twice the Google searching power we dedicated the last half term to the problem.

I wanted the solution to cover a number of basic problems. And preferably in one package. Defragging now if you don’t do it you’re being foolish and if you do you probably need to do it more often. The trouble is that the Defrag utility that comes with windows is crap. It only ever does half the job and sometimes does not even do that. A decent defrag tool will also run in the background allowing you to carry on with all the other important stuff.
Speeding up your Internet access. By cleaning out and optimizing settings.
Registry cleaning and optimizing is not for the inexperienced or faint hearted. It can also be a fiddle so something that does it for you would be great.
Repair windows security holes (These are the back doors that hackers like to enter by.
Stopping dangerous programs from starting, the cause of many a slow PC.
. Locking your Home page, There is nothing worse that finding Google has been replaced by Search big Tina’s tits .com. Stopping popups and those little adverts fom appearing when the kids are trying to find the home of the Telytubbies.
Make windows boot faster, and shut down correctly.
Clean up clutter. And finally do all this at regular intervals in the background so you can enjoy the web and your computer as Bill Gates intended.

Quite a tall order and one that had Oliver and I trying programs and tweaks for days. Did we need several programs or just one? because lets face it there are millions out there and some do more harm than good. Oliver pressed into service people he talks to in programming forums and gaming sites. Out of all the things people recommended and the places and programs we tried one name kept on coming up System Mechanic6 from iolo.

http://www.iolo.com/sm/6/index.cfm
Alternatively just put System Mechanic into Google. Just make sure it’s version 6 you try. This is a fantastic bit of software that has won loads of awards. And the best part is it’s free. Well free to trial in full for 30 days and after that the licence cost $49.99 that’s dollars so when you buy it “and you will” it cost just under £30 for the licence that lasts the life of the product. Go on visit the site and download the trial let the program do its thing and enjoy the results. The Defrag utility on its own is worth the price but if you work through all the utilities its just fab. You might have to run the “Total Care a number of times and the first few sweeps take time to complete. But after that you can schedule set and forget most things. The Owner iolo will send you tutorials to your Email during the trial and answer questions though a very helpful online “Help engine”. Are there down sides? well you become obsessed in checking the health of you system with the Analyze feature on the home page. And it does cost you £30 after the month, and it will because you will not be able to live without System Mechanic 6. So Ten out of Ten and I am happy again. Look at it this way it will cost you about the same as a Friday night in the pub but it will last longer.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you earning commission Matt?
There was no need to mention how much your PC means to you, some of us know you love and care for it nearly as much as you love and care for Mrs M.
Thanks for the tips, I am seriously thinking of giving it a try as I probably could do with a little more protection! Gx

Anonymous said...

you havent been in my PC Matt lol but thanks for the excellent blog I will be checking out that website Lisa xx