Registry Defrag

Program Of The Week

Registry Defrag

Windows registry is the most often used part of your computer. All configuration data of both your hardware devices and software applications are stored in the Windows registry. Although CCleaner is an excellent program in cleaning the junk, it lacks an important functionality called Defragging the Registry.

Defragging is a short form of Defragmentation which means Rearrangement. It becomes necessary because after the removal of invalid registry keys by CCleaner, Windows Registry somewhat becomes fragmented (disarranged files). Fragmentation can cause problems in running some applications and thus slowing down your PC.

Registry Defrag is a FREE software. It analyses your registry and defrags it if the fragmentation is significant (more than 2%).

Speedtest

Website Of The Week

www.speedtest.net

You can test your bandwidth usually with your Internet Service Provider's website. If, for some reason, you want to test your bandwidth somewhere else, there are many sites available in the web. But, most of them are inaccurate because they do it with only one server located somewhere in the world. Since the Latency (pinging time) varies according to the distance between the server and the user, test results are usually atrocious.

Speedtest website utilises 100s of servers located all over the world and minimises the latency as much as possible and hence the test results are good. If you retain their cookie, you can even view all of your previous results, share them easily, and compare them to others in your immediate area or around the globe.

Tips Of The Week

Tip 1:

In CCleaner Options -> Settings, "Wipe Free Space" is different from "Wipe MFT Free Space". Although the second one gains some space in hard disks which use NTFS file system, don't run it too often. May be, once a month will do. While performing it, you should also select the "Wipe Free Space" option in the advanced section of the cleaner module. MFT means Master File Table.

Tip 2:

You can use System Restore in SAFE MODE when your Windows has a booting problem. Restart your computer, press and hold F8 until you get to the boot menu. Use the arrow keys to select the SAFE MODE WITH COMMAND PROMPT option. At the command prompt, type

%systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe

and then press ENTER. Follow the instructions that appear on the screen to restore your computer to a functional state. But remember... when you restore your system through Safe Mode, the result will not be reversible unlike the System Restore function in Normal mode.

How To Use System Restore?

Question Of The Week

How To Use System Restore?

System Restore can undo harmful changes in your computer and restore your settings. Such a harmful change might come from a virus or you yourself might have done something inadvertently. System Restore returns your computer to an earlier time (called Restore Point) without causing you to lose your recent works, saved files, history etc.,

Although your computer automatically creates Restore Points, you can also create Restore Points using System Restore function (Start -> Programs ->Accessories -> System Tools -> System Restore). Then if you want to restore your system, use the same path, select Restore my computer and choose the date and restore point. That's it.

System Restore is enabled on all drives by default when the operating system is installed. Since System Restore is essential only in C drive, you can turn it off in other drives (Start -> Control Panel -> System). In the System Properties dialog box, go to System Restore tab (System Protection in Vista). Now highlight each drive and turn it off. For C drive, allocate around 1 GB for System Restore. It will be taking 12% of your drive space by default but that much is not necessary.

Antivirus programs can affect whether your system can be restored to a previous point or not. If a restore point contains an infected file because the Antivirus program is not set to clean the file within the restore point, or if an infected file has been removed from a restore point by an Antivirus program because it could not be cleaned, System Restore will not recover the computer to this partial or infected state.

The final point is... all changes made by System Restore are completely reversible. Thus, if you are not satisfied with the changes after effecting System Restore to a particular Restore Point, you can simply revert the changes by a single click (Use the same path).

CCleaner

Program Of The Week

CCleaner

There are two important modules in this program. Its cleaner module finds out temporary and junk files in your PC and deletes them with our permission. Its registry module scans and removes the invalid registry keys from Windows Registry (Uninstallation of programs and deleting the stored files will result in Invalid registry keys).

It also has some optimisation settings of which I am impressed by... 1.TOOLS -> Startup Manager (You can disable unwanted applications starting with Windows) and 2.OPTIONS -> Cookies (You can keep important cookies).

I am using this program once in a week or so, to clean and speed up my system (If you are not using your PC frequently, once in a fortnight or a month will do). Once you know what this program is doing, you will become addicted to it. Just taste it. It's a FREE software. And it takes your PC to a new level of performance.