photo credit: The Rocketeer
Mr. Boomer’s Christmas gift list had only one thing on it — making his computer faster. It’s several years old and at one time was the family machine meaning it survived a teenager who probably wasn’t as discerning as us in selecting download sites. The computer had become unbearably slow.
I mentioned to my brother, a Network Engineer, that I was going to call the Geek Squad for a PC cleaning. He told me to save my money and sent email directions on how to get the same results for free. I ran four programs in the exact order listed below.
1. ComboFix.This cleaning utility removes spyware and malware that is not found by your antivirus program (you do use an antivirus program, right?).
2. Malwarebytes. This program is designed to quickly find and remove malicious code from your computer.
3. CCleaner.To remove unnessary files and free up space run this program. It cleans the following files up in internet explorer: temporary files, history, cookies, Autocomplete form history, and index.dat.
4. Defraggler.Made by the same company as Ccleaner, this one defragments the hard drive and according to my brother is “much better than the standard windows version”.
Results
After a couple of hours work I was ready for Mr. Boomer to take a test run. He was so happy that I wished it was done years ago. With those results I took these steps on my laptop. These programs are now part of our annual maintenance.
Not only did I make my spouse happy but saved at leat $50 and gained some knowledge. It was a win-win-win!
Bonus
Jim @ Bargaineering had a similar post a couple of weeks ago and listed some of his favorite programs for optimization. Comments include other recommendations so be sure to read those as well.
Tired of shelling out for anti-virus software? I’m switching our three computers over to AVG (free version) as the current programs expire. How do you keep your PC optimized?
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