Computer problems

[Haya emaan]

found this

 

[Ramadhan]

i m using chrome at the moment and m ok with it but my bros says Firefox is better but mine one isn't.. i will try installing firefox 8..

It is important that you uninstall your current firefox. It might have unnecessary add ons which slow it down. Restart your computer before you downloading/installing the new firefox.
If you install the new firefox without uninstalling the old one first, the new one will only import everything you have on your current one, including all the add ons.

 

[AabiruSabeel]

^ I don't think Intel Atom processors come with more speed. 2.13 GHz is the max I think.

Maybe its better to switch to a laptop or desktop instead of netbook.

 

[Dagless]

found this

View attachment 4449

What do you use your netbook for? If it's just surfing the net, you could try Lubuntu; it's really fast on lower powered machines (far lower than yours, so it should fly).
Or if you want Windows I guess try a clean install, since if you've never done that before there will probably be a lot of bloatware from when you bought it.
(and add another gig of ram if it's Windows 7 and you feel particularly adventurous).

 

[Haya emaan]

What do you use your netbook for? If it's just surfing the net, you could try Lubuntu; it's really fast on lower powered machines (far lower than yours, so it should fly).

no its not just net surfing.. need it for my studies and some other things.. have a desktop at home but its not personal so feel comfortable with this..
something is better than nothing...

Or if you want Windows I guess try a clean install, since if you've never done that before there will probably be a lot of bloatware from when you bought it.
(and add another gig of ram if it's Windows 7 and you feel particularly adventurous).

my system has become really very very slow..
i got the windows 7 with it when i bought it last year.. now i dont think i could get the original window so i dont want to lose this one..

 

[Muslim Woman]

Can you try this again and see if it works.

no luck

 

[marwen]

sorry to hear that, my sister. I can't think of another solution at the moment.

May be if you make a fresh reinstall of IE it resolves the problem.

Using another browser is also a good idea as brothers mentioned above.

 

[Tilmeez]

my system has become really very very slow..
i got the windows 7 with it when i bought it last year.. now i dont think i could get the original window so i dont want to lose this one..

Clear your temporary files and prefetch files.

> WinKey + R
> Type %temp% press Enter
> Ctrl + A
> Shift + Delete

You are done with temporary files. It may resist deleting some files, ignore them and try deleting all other files.

Same goes for Prefetch files just replace point 2 with following:
> Type prefetch press Enter

 

[Abz2000]

good tip on the temp folder brother tilmeez,
hope i don't arouse bad feelings from a supermod for the second part though!
because the prefetch folder is apparently useful to load pages that you use most as quickly as possible.
some claimed performance tests have been run to check this and it apparently shows slower load times after deleting prefetch
but maybe if things are badly corrupted and the prefetch log is messed up - it can probably be a good idea to delete.

some sites and magazines say it's a good thing but others have said it's a no-no

XP systems have a Prefetch directory underneath the windows root directory, full of .pf files — these are lists of pages to load. The file names are generated from hashing the EXE to load — whenever you load the EXE, we hash, see if there’s a matching(exename)-(hash).pf file in the prefetch directory, and if so we load those pages. (If it doesn’t exist, we track what pages it loads, create that file, and pick a handful of them to save to it.) So, first off, it is a bad idea to periodically clean out that folder as some tech sites suggest. For one thing, XP will just re-create that data anyways; secondly, it trims the files anyways if there’s ever more than 128 of them so that it doesn’t needlessly consume space.
So not only is deleting the directory totally unnecessary, but you’re also putting a temporary dent in your PC’s performance.

another great benefit of prefetch is that XP uses .pf files to create and update the layout.ini file. XP’s disk defragmenter then uses layout.ini to optimize the placing of certain boot and application files on the outside of your hard disk. It does this each time you run disk defragmenter manually and also automatically in the background no less often than every third day. This causes your computer to boot up and load applications faster.

a good way of doing it if you need to delete prefetch is:

You can delete it if you made big changes otherwise the layout.ini will have a lot of old data.1. Delete all the files in the folder2. Turn on the Task Schedule service to automatic and start it if it isn’t already.3. Open a cmd window and type or paste this:Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks4. The folder will be rebuilt with the current apps and drivers.Also:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Session Manager \ Memory Management \ PrefetchParametersdword value = EnablePrefetcher0 = Disable,
1 = App launch prefetch
2 = Boot Prefetch
3 = Both (recommended)My recommendation for the prefetcher is based on the amount of RAM that you have:128MB – Disabled (reg value 0)
256MB – Boot only (reg value 1)
512MB or more – Both (reg value 3)

this is all based on research of others though as i have not run any tests myself,
will be happy to edit if corrected,
peace


​

 

[Abz2000]

my system has become really very very slow..
i got the windows 7 with it when i bought it last year.. now i dont think i could get the original window so i dont want to lose this one..

check the bottom of your netbook to ensure it has the product key sticker and all the 25 characters are still clearly visible, if so - i would advise you to put a piece of sellotape over it in order to keep it laminated.

if your key is there, you can reinstall windows 7 using your original product key, i can send you a disk (free) if you require one.

however if you're not too familiar with re-installing - the best option to check for is a recovery partition,
click on
"start" icon (bottom left)
"all programs" bottom left of pop up.
folder with the name of manufacturer on it (acer/vaio/dell) etc.
see if it has a "recovery" folder,
back up all documents and pics etc - run the clean install.

if your pc has a clean install of windows and still doesn't like the weight of the o.s,
you can slim it down,

your windows 7 netbook has an ssd:
http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/win...-ultimate-solid-state-drive-speed-tweaks.html

(xp only)
i found this to be quite a useful guide for turning genuine xp into a customized "performance edition" if your pc can do with a slimmed down edition:

http://www.graphixanstuff.com/Forum/index.php?showtopic=4958


vista:
http://www.vlite.net/

http://www.mydigitallife.info/tips-to-slim-down-vista/

 

[Tilmeez]

Nice Research abz2000.

hope i don't arouse bad feelings from a supermod for the second part though!

No way for bad feelings akhee, partially because I never went too deep, just knew often prefetch keeps pf files for EXEs we have removed ages ago. And partially because they are nice to members only and very rough to staff

 

[Abz2000]

phew hew at least i didn't get in trouble (only joking)
dunno - this is third hand knowledge but apparently it only keeps 128 files,
though it seems as if it's a good idea to clean it at least once in a blue moon and then rebuild

 

[Dagless]

You can delete it if you made big changes otherwise the layout.ini will have a lot of old data.1. Delete all the files in the folder2. Turn on the Task Schedule service to automatic and start it if it isn’t already.3. Open a cmd window and type or paste this:Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks4. The folder will be rebuilt with the current apps and drivers.Also:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Session Manager \ Memory Management \ PrefetchParametersdword value = EnablePrefetcher0 = Disable,
1 = App launch prefetch
2 = Boot Prefetch
3 = Both (recommended)My recommendation for the prefetcher is based on the amount of RAM that you have:[/FONT][/SIZE]128MB – Disabled (reg value 0)
256MB – Boot only (reg value 1)
512MB or more – Both (reg value 3)

this is all based on research of others though as i have not run any tests myself,
will be happy to edit if corrected,
peace

Btw if you have an ssd you should disable prefetch and superfetch because it decreases the life of your drive and is unnecessary. I also disable it on normal installs; I'm willing to take a small performance hit as long as I don't have to listen to that awful random paging of the hard drive it does every 5 mins

 

['Abd Al-Maajid]

I bought a new hard disk, Seagate 1 TB some months back. it's pretty new, with about 150 days of power on time. and for about a week now it's started making sounds, screeching and grinding sounds. It's worrisome to me as i have collected huge data overtime... I tried defragmenting the drive and performed filesystem check. What else i can do...? :exhausted

The power-on hours for my HD is 24x7 as opposed to barracuda's usage profile 8x5.

I am sure it started since i used virtualbox and created huge files (about 8GB fixed-sized images), that might be the reason for it? the head had to travel a long distance to read the scattered file? is that even possible?

I have another hard disk Maxtor 80 GB, old one with about 2.4 years of power on time and it's working smoothly with one bad sector. please advice.

 

[Dagless]

I bought a new hard disk, Seagate 1 TB some months back. it's pretty new, with about 150 days of power on time. and for about a week now it's started making sounds, screeching and grinding sounds. It's worrisome to me as i have collected huge data overtime... I tried defragmenting the drive and performed filesystem check. What else i can do...? :exhausted

Check the SMART status of it, and back everything up. It might be about to die.
I hate Seagate btw. I was forced to buy one recently after WD prices shot up to triple what they were, but Seagate had not then gone up.

I am sure it started since i used virtualbox and created huge files (about 8GB fixed-sized images), that might be the reason for it? the head had to travel a long distance to read the scattered file? is that even possible?

I would say no because that is their purpose. Company servers thrash such drives 24/7.

 

['Abd Al-Maajid]

Check the SMART status of it, and back everything up. It might be about to die.

Oops! I forgot to mention SMART status, SMART status says, it's healthy. but the Airflow temperature test failed, 43 degrees Celsius

 

[Abz2000]

what did you use for smart monitor? and have you tried hard disk sentinel?
you can also run a complete repair with hdat2 and if it's not too bad - it should isolate all those bad sectors and not show up second time.
it's all on hiren's boot cd v15

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

i've also cushioned mine with sponge mat and put twin 12v fans from a broken xbox and an old cut 12v router adapter on top of it to ensure it doesn't burn out.
you could possibly pull one out of an old desktop and tape it to blow air outwards, and either hook it to your internal 12v pins or an external adapter.

 

[Abz2000]

lookee here what i made for water cooling with ice!

i used a low power fish tank pump and a metal bottle, some copper sheet and plastic pipe and heat resistant sealant.
throw the ice pack into the bottle, draw that to the pipe going to the bottom of the green cpu bottle with the bottom cut out and joined to the copper with a rubber phone case as a washer, the warm water rises and comes out of the pipe near the top,
into the graphics cooler box, and back into the ice packed water bottle.
can also add another one for the hdd but wanted to keep it simple.
a bit impractical but i just wanted to make it with no heatsink or fans involved.
totally silent and super cool - and i think it can take an e8400 at 4ghz easily

the crude radiator can be added on the way back to the ice, but will need more twists.

 

[Dagless]

a bit impractical but i just wanted to make it with no heatsink or fans involved.
totally silent and super cool - and i think it can take an e8400 at 4ghz easily

That's quite impressive - a watercooling kit you made yourself... although I think you should have just bought a waterblock (it'll look nicer than a big bottle and perform better ). Btw why did you add the icepack? The icepack temp. cannot be maintained for even an hour with all that heat. Post up some temps (after an hr and 2 hrs)!

 

['Abd Al-Maajid]

what did you use for smart monitor?

I used Ubuntu's native disk utility to monitor SMART.