Do any of these 'PC booster' progs really work?

[swee'pea99]

My elderly PC is slow - especially to get started. I already use a range of progs like registry cleaners and anti-spyware progs, as well as the obvious anti-virus stuff. Would there be any point/advantage in installing PC Booster, or any of these other 'tune-up' prog you see advertised?

 

[thomas]

A lot of those types of things are just spyware in disguise. You can do a lot of stuff yourself, uninstall things, use the system tools like defragging, disk clean up, etc.

I'd use the tools on the computer (go to accessories, system tools and take a look).

 

[Bman]

A lot of those types of things are just spyware in disguise. You can do a lot of stuff yourself, uninstall things, use the system tools like defragging, disk clean up, etc.

I'd use the tools on the computer (go to accessories, system tools and take a look).

+1

Some people swear by some of these programs "regcleaner" and "ccleaner" and all that rubbish. I dont trust them at all. There are websites about that pretend your pc has malware or is running slower than it should. Most if not all are bogus, they just want you to install their malware and/or make money.

If you've got loads of malware on your pc, the best way to get rid of it is by starting fresh (re-installing windows). Or preventing them being installed in the first place.

 

[Bman]

I just remembered an advert I saw on TV a while back, it claimed that their software fixed errors made your pc faster and even claimed it would make Internet Explorer downloads faster! For a price of course

Another one sold you "secure" access to your pc from anywhere in the world. Anyone can set this up themselves (for free), following a few simple tutorials and free programs (VNC/MSTSC/etc)

It frustrates me that these companies are charging monthly for something anyone can setup themselves.

 

[peanut]

I seem to remember that we have been here before .

You have my condolances. My PC is slowly dying . Nearly lost the hard drive this morning again.
Could you let us have a bit more info and we might be able to suggest something.

Firstly how big is your hard drive and how much space have you free ?
second how much memory do you have installed ?
lastly could you download this little program and let us have the report which will tell me a lot about your PC recources.
http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

please don't waste your time on miracle downloads they don't work they just sucker you in with ridiculous promises. They claim to find faults and then demand payment in order to fix the imaginary faults .

 

[woohoo]

ccleaner (from Piniform) is fine for getting rid of crap and freeing up disk space. I've found it has no impact on the speed of the OS but I still use it to keep things "tidy". Assuming that you have no spyware, you could look at what is being loaded at startup.
If you run MSCONFIG you'll probably find that various installed software updates are being fired up e.g. HP, Java, Adobe, etc. There are also other programs loaded at startup that you might not need e.g. Windows Defender (not needed if you have a decent AV/security program), Bluetooth, sometimes the PC manufacturer's "Customer Care" software. If you untick those that you don't need, it will help to increase available memory for other applications.

Defragging, and if necessary getting a larger disk if required, will help.

 

[peanut]

Defragging, and if necessary getting a larger disk if required, will help.

we,ve been all through this before woo and a certain somebody doesn't get back for days with any response then i believe a friend has a twiddle .......

 

[swee'pea99]

Firstly how big is your hard drive (30) and how much space have you free (15) ?
second how much memory do you have installed ?

512 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot 'DIMM 1' is Empty
Slot 'DIMM 2' has 256 MB
Slot 'DIMM 3' has 256 MB
lastly could you download this little program and let us have the report which will tell me a lot about your PC recources.
http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

please don't waste your time on miracle downloads they don't work they just sucker you in with ridiculous promises. They claim to find faults and then demand payment in order to fix the imaginary faults .

Thanks all. I kind of thought that was probably the case. I do actually run ccleaner quite often, and I defragment the drive every few weeks, tho' recently it seems to leave quite a lot un-de-fragmented.

I downloaded the little Belarc prog, and got a report, but I'm not sure what to post - there seems an awful lot of it. Is there anything in particular that would be helpful?

 

[peanut]

[quote name='swee'pea99']Thanks all. I kind of thought that was probably the case. I do actually run ccleaner quite often, and I defragment the drive every few weeks, tho' recently it seems to leave quite a lot un-de-fragmented.

I downloaded the little Belarc prog, and got a report, but I'm not sure what to post - there seems an awful lot of it. Is there anything in particular that would be helpful?[/quote]

yes most of it would be helpful. You could send it to me by PM if you like as Helen did. Have a quick look through and blank out anything that you would prefer to keep private.

I'll tell you right now that you have very marginal memory to run Win xp and other recource hungery software It would cost you about £10 to double your memory to 512Mb or better still 1Gb but frankly your PC is so old you shouldn't spend too much on it. You would be better off saving it for a better computer.

Your hard drive is ok size wise but you have quite a lot on there. I'm sure you could burn some of that rubbish to CD or DVD and free up your hard drive a bit. You should only need about 4Gb tops the rest could be stored on a slave or USB drive or CD/DVD

I could suggest some changes swee'pee and make some worthwhile changes as I did for Helen's machine but it is several hours of work. Are you up for that ? I don't want to waste loads of time again on this if you are not serious about the commitment.

 

[HJ]

...

I'll tell you right now that you have very marginal memory to run Win xp and other recource hungery software It would cost you about £10 to double your memory to 512Mb or better still 1Gb but frankly your PC is so old you shouldn't spend too much on it. You would be better off saving it for a better computer.

...

You can find out which memory up grades are available to you by using the Crucial System Scanner tool...

 

[swee'pea99]

"frankly your PC is so old"

Don't beat about the bush, man, give it to me straight.

Thanks very much for your replies. I think the bottom line is that the answer to my original query is no - there is no 'magic bullet'. Which comes as no great surprise, but I thought it was worth asking. I don't think I am really up for hours and hours of faffing round with the thing...I'll probably just limp on more or less as I am. It's not like I *need* sooper-speed.

I will check out that link tho' Hairy Jock, and if I can up the ram at not much cost I might give that a go.

Oh, one last baffler you might just be able to help me with....

I did try clearing stuff off the HD onto a backup - I had 20+ on there before I started. But one of the folders has me stumped: if I check the size of each of the folders that's still in there, the totals I get add up to about 600mb - but if I 'go up a level' and do a 'properties' check on the folder as a whole, it says it's almost 3gb. I've done this several times, and it comes out the same each time. Um...how can that be?

Thanks again guys - much appreciated.

 

[peanut]

well its pretty much the same response that i got from you last time sweepee.
if you can't be bothered how the hell do you expect us to be bothered spending hours trying to help you .

suggest you 'limp on' as you put it

 

[swee'pea99]

Seems a tad on the snotty side if you don't mind my saying so. I never asked anyone to 'spend hours bothering to help me', I just asked if any of these miracle programs worked. I'll go check out that ram tester now.

 

[swee'pea99]

Turns out a 512 upgrade - the only one that seems likely to make any difference - will be the thick end of $60 (on the US site, needless to say) - so I'll stick to limping for the moment.

 

[Ben M]

When did you last do a full format and OS and programmes reinstall?

You'll find that doing a full format and starting from scratch will leave your computer noticeably quicker.