IT by Mike Services for Individuals and Small Businesses

How to Beat PC “Old Age”

There are a number of reasons why your Windows PC may slow down with age, but I'm not going to use this post to explain why; it just happens. What can you do to combat old age? The following, which I recently performed on a four year old laptop I received from one of my clients. Before, it was hardly usable. After, it's as good as new. Most IT professionals will simply tell you to format the hard drive and start from scratch, which will work, but will also cause you to lose all of your data unless you've backed it up or had your hard drive partitioned correctly in the first place (chances are you didn't order it from Dell like this and you didn't do it yourself). You'll also then be faced with reinstalling all your programs. If that sounds painful and like something you'd like to avoid, read on:

Note: This guide was written specifically for Windows XP, but the basic ideas and locations of most programs on newer and older Windows operating systems are the same.

1. Remove old programs. This can be done by going to Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel. Locate anything you know of that you haven't used in a while and uninstall it. To further clean up, contact a professional who can recognize the multitude of unnecessary applications in the list. This not only frees hard disk space, but likely speeds up your boot process by removing applications that start with Windows to monitor for updates and inputs.
2. Run a spyware removal tool. Both Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware will do the job here. The web is a dangerous place, and through the many security holes in operating systems and software over the years, malicious software (malware) can infect your machine and slow it down. These are not viruses per se, but they typically aren't up to any good. Each respective program will guide you through the process of safely removing items.
3. Run a virus scan. If you run one regularly, ensure your virus definition is up to date, and skip this. If you don't, go ahead, and at the very least, install a free tool for a one-time scan. AVG Free is my favored free tool. As with the spyware removal tools, this software will guide you safely through the steps necessary to clean your machine.
4. Run Disk Cleanup. Most applications, and the operating system included, create temporary files in various places and don't clean up after themselves, which can really eat up your storage space. Running this tool will  delete those temporary/unused files, compress old, unused files, and even empty your recycling bin, allowing you to regain your once "lost" disk space.
5. Defragment. Hard drives are basically a collection of fancy vinyl records that are able to store songs in broken-up pieces. The problem, with regular use, is you're moving and removing these bits and pieces of songs (data) all the time to and from various "records" in your collection. Your hard drive is smart enough to know where all the pieces of a "song" may reside across all of your records, but it is much more efficient to have it all in one place. To put all the pieces back into an efficient formation, you need to defragment your hard drive.
6. Run CHKDSK /F. As smart as hard drive controllers are, they are always at risk from errors and bad data. Unfortunately, this can greatly slow performance. Fortunately, Windows has a built-in function called CHKDSK that can find these problems and fix them. If you're old-fashioned, you can run the command from the command prompt, but most users ought to follow the steps outlined in the link provided.
7. Run MSCONFIG. This final step is bit more advanced and is really "the cherry on top" of this cleaning process. If you're not particularly tech-savvy, skip this step or contact a professional to help, as it is incredibly powerful, and incredibly easy to cause harm with. MSCONFIG is a tool built-in to Windows that wields great power in the hands of a skilled user; it not only allows you to greatly speed up your boot process and general computing by disabling unnecessary programs, but it can also be used to solve hardware or software conflicts.

After having followed those steps and rebooting, you should find your machine performing quite a bit better than before. If it is not, you likely have another issue and should contact a professional for help. If you have found this guide particularly useful or have anything to add to it, please leave a comment.

OS X Shortcuts

Apple fans, don't fear; I use Macs too! OS X seems to have a ton more shortcuts than Windows, as you can see in this article from Apple, but good luck remembering them all! Aside from the usual file and text manipulation ones, I find myself using APPLE+Space to use Spotlight for finding applications and documents, APPLE+M to minimize windows, APPLE+W to close windows, and APPLE+I to look at file attributes.

Windows Shortcuts

Interested in becoming more efficient in your day-to-day computing? Shortcuts can save you time and even calories by reducing the effort required to perform certain functions. Microsoft provides an exhaustive list of shortcuts on their support site. Aside from the basics that everyone knows, I find F2 (rename), F5 (refresh), ALT+TAB (switch program), and WIN+R (run dialog) to be most useful.