RE: Giveaway of the Day - Memory Washer, a smart memory and process manager tool...
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/memory-washer/
The link posted by #23, Boyd, is a very good article covering popular "performance tweak" advice (thanks Boyd!).
Here is another article related to Windows memory boosting:
http://www.bitsum.com/winmemboost.htm
It may help shed light on the techniques used by various memory performance enhancers.
#27, PeneloP, "My system needs help":
You probably aren't the only one with that problem, but since my comments about your performance issues are somewhat "off topic" (since they don't discuss today's offer), please see my comments on the General Discuss pages of the GAOTD forums (as "My system needs help. I was hoping Memory Washer would give it" -- original title, eh?) on things you can try.
If you haven't done any system maintenance for a while, it sounds like you need to perform a scan for malware/spyware, followed by something to clean the clutter out of your system's temporary file folders (and Registry), then maybe a defragmentation of your hard disk drive.
Be sure to "Create a restore point" (using System Restore) between each set of actions (unless otherwise instructed NOT to do so by the malware cleanup tool(s) you choose) in case something goes wrong.
Also, don't do everything in one big session -- it is better to take small steps you can easily recover from -- so restart your system at least after each major step, say, between the malware cleanups, the temporary files/Registry cleaning, and the defragmentation. That should help you detect steps gone wrong, as well as better re-initialize/prepare/stabilize your system for the next action.
There's a decent listing of links to several free, reputable, major-brand online and downloadable virus scanning/detection/removal tools towards the bottom of this Acrobat PDF file:
http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/removal/avc_removal_2009.pdf
After reading the other reports on that web site, you can decided for yourself which anti-virus products are worth using. (Interestingly, if I read the test results correctly, Microsoft's own anti-virus is one of the best at actual malware REMOVAL (if not DETECTION, which surely has to be most important), but perhaps that should not be surprising because who better should know how to get around Windows intricacies?)
(I'm not trying to endorse any particular brand's products as there are many fine ones, and they seem to trump each other's features and effectiveness every few months or so. However, I have had pretty good experiences with the following free ones:)
That listing does not include (among others) either Spybot S&D or Lavasoft Ad-aware, since they are not billed as mainly anti-virus products, so you might consider installing and scanning with the free version of either or both of them to remove and protect against resource-consuming ad-ware/spyware. (These both seem to work OK simultaneously on my system, but be sure to only perform a "scan" with one product at a time to go easy on your disk drive! The same advice goes for scanning with any of the anti-virus products as well: one-at-a-time!)
CCleaner is available for free from Piriform, which has other relatively-safe-to-use products as well:
(One caution I noticed with CCleaner (and others) is that if you have a JAVA-based application (like, say, "Phelix", a duplicate music-detection product previously offered here by GAOTD), it may get cleaned out with the other "temporary" JAVA stuff mostly accumulated from simply surfing the Internet. CCleaner will first scan and then present a listing of what it will delete or fix based on your settings, so inspect the lists carefully.)
MyDefrag, a good, free, hard disk defragmentation utility that works great in its screensaver mode is available here:
If you perform just one "slow optimize" (quite time-consuming -- run it overnight, and not very often or you may prematurely wear out your hard drive!), then choose the MyDefrag screensaver to perform "fast optimize" maintenance passes, you should notice a fair difference in file loading times after just a couple of days. (The MyDefrag screensaver still allows you to choose and run your other screensavers after it finishes its own run, a nice touch!)
For additional performance, consider adding a process "priority manager" which will help prevent CPU-hogging processes from reducing your system's responsiveness. "Process Lasso" is a very good one that continues to perform its basic functions for free after the trial period expires:
http://www.processlasso.com/prolasso.php
A similar function is built into Anvir Task Manager (a previous offer by GAOTD) as can be seen on its options page "Performance" "Balance CPU Utilization". I don't know how well it compares to Process Lasso which is used by many professionals for web site servers, gamers, etc., but I would think it is better than none at all if you already have Anvir (which is otherwise a very good "swiss army knife, do-it-all" system utility).
Also, if you don't use the built-in "Windows Search" feature (otherwise known as "Indexing Service") to search the text content inside your files, yet you somehow activated it, you can disable it to gain a fair amount of system responsiveness. (Just Google for help how to do this.)
Finally, if your "Winsock" is messed up from obtaining or getting rid of ad-ware/spyware/etc. the following MAY help if you suspect you have network connection issues (slow or non-functioning connections to the Internet or to other machines on your LAN, etc). (Amazingly, it also affected the functioning and responsiveness of several other things as well on my system.) Read about the issues and repair safely/easily using "Winsock XP Fix" and "LSP-Fix":
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/winsockxpfix.html
http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.htm
(DISCLAIMER: I don't have either Vista or 7, so I don't know about using these on those versions of Windows -- your homework is to Google to find out!
But I repeat, be sure to create your own "restore points" often using System Restore, or use the various tools' built-in feature to do so if available (enable the option in CCleaner and others) before performing each of these major actions, and you should be OK.)
Personally I'm baffled why the OEM-load of software on pre-configured systems is not better optimized out of the box (locations on the hard drive of the swap file and oft-used files/folders, etc.), but you may be surprised to discover how much more responsive your system can get without new RAM upgrades or faster hard drive or processor.
I even took an ancient 128 MB RAM, 1GB drive PII system that was taking about 5 minutes to load Windows 2000, and by using the above-mentioned tools (including MyDefrag) improved that to a 45 second startup time, making the system usable once again for basic surfing, word processing, etc. -- not a bad salvage project at all.
Hope this helps you or someone else!