I have been working in an IT environment since high school and so I have learned a few tricks. Below are steps that if you follow and maintain them your PC is guaranteed to stay at tip top shape and will never slow down. I never leave the house without the following small applications on my flash drive. All of the applications below work on all OS versions including Vista x64.

#1 - Download and run CCleaner from http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/. This small (2.61MB) freeware application works wonders. I run it multiple times per day, but that is just because I am obssesive. If ran once a week, you would be fine. After downloading and installing there are two things you will want to do. First, run the cleaner and second, scan for issues in the registry. Depending on how old your computer is and the amount of time since you have cleaned it up, CCleaner might take up to 20 minutes to finish. Normal scan and clean is around 30 seconds if preformed regularly. I have seen this little application remove up to 20GB, yes 20GB!!, which is just absolutely amazing.

#2 - Second, download this small (0.98MB) free application SmitFraud Fix from here http://siri.urz.free.fr/Fix/SmitfraudFix.exe. This program runs directly from the .exe and starts in DOS. Once running, select #2 for clean (safe mode). It will shut down all of the unneeded processes including the explorer. Also, a little weird thing is that it removes your wallpaper. Other than that, wait for it to scan and then select “Y” to clean the registry. After that your explorer will start back up and you can close SmitFraudFix. This tool has worked wonders for me. This is mainly used to remove any unwanted spyware. I have thrown Spysweeper, Spybot, etc. at certain spyware and this is the only tool that always works.

#3 - A classic and yet still useful tool. Go to your start menu, applications, system tools, and run the disk defragmenter.

#4 - Right click on “My Computer” icon and click the advanced tab. Go to the performance options “settings” tab and unselect every option except for the last two. These last two are the only two that you will notice and so you will want to leave them on.

#5 - And of course, your startup items. Clearing out the startup folder in your "Program Files" is a definite must. More advance users probably can take advantage of msconfig.

If you run through these 5 steps, and keep repeating steps #1-3 at least once a week, your PC will keep running at its finest, I promise you.

No offense, but I've been a member of this forum since you've been in 7th grade... and I can tell you 98% of the people here know this. Hell if im not mistaken, I remember seeing a post from one of the creators of CCLEANER.

As for smitfraud, It is good for certain things, and only those things. It removes rogue AntiSpyware programs. You know, the fake Anti-Spyware software that tells you, you NEED it to remove threats, all the while its downloading trojans on your computer. As for removing run of the mill spyware, it ignores it.... use Spy Sweeper. 9 of 10 things that require smitfraud come from porn sites, so if you need it.... be ashamed

My system seems to run faster after I quit using CCleaner. I don't know about smitfraud, and I don't think you really need to uncheck all of those items in the performance tab unless your computer is really slow, but the rest is good.

I'd be suspicious about the 2nd executable, but CCleaner is good. If you feel your PC is running slower then you might be deleting prefetch data (make sure it's unchecked) or running it too often.

I think the performance gain is negligible at best from CCleaner. Windows is able to manage its own registry now, with vista.

You're correct about most of the users on Neowin knowing about this, but really, cut Brian some slack here, He's just trying to pass along what he thinks is some useful info....

Oh and BTW .. Ive been involved in the IT profession since before you were BORN

its fine, its really meant to be a virus removal tool

Does vista even really need a registry cleaner, like CCleaner?

Don't really need any of these If i see vista getting a little lazy i just format

Remember, one format a month keeps the doctor away something like that

McAfee Site Advisor reports: http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/siri.urz....fe&aff_id=0

One "Red Zone" link was discovered linking from website.
And a "Bio-Hazard" Symbol on the wepage isn't exactly inviting either.

Yes, SmitFraudFix will be detected by some software as spyware or a virus however, these are false reports. The reason they consider it a virus is because because "process.exe is detected by some antivirus programs (AntiVir, Dr.Web, Kaspersky) as a "RiskTool". It is not a virus, but a program used to stop system processes. Antivirus programs cannot distinguish between "good" and "malicious" use of such programs, therefore they may alert the user."

You can actually read more about how SmitFraudFix works here http://www.beyondlogic.org/consulting/proc...processutil.htm

And I agree with you JaMDKinG I reformat so often that I hardly use any of my own procedures I just wrote about. Reformatting can be very addicting. But they come in handy for the average user who only reformats every year or two.

Question: Why are you reformatting so often? Properly maintained a Windows install can last years without having to reformat.

Why would you run ccleaner two or three times a day? Just have it clean automatically at startup and you won't have to deal with having to starting it up manually. Create a shortcut on your desktop and for the location, enter:

Place this shortcut in your startup folder, and your computer will be clean with every startup.


And on a side note, if you are using Windows Vista and you've never used the disk defragmenter, then don't touch it. Vista is set to automatically defragment all volumes and it will always find to the time to do so. Either that or you could set up your own custom schedule for Vista to defrag your volumes.

The answers to your questions. I had been reformatting at a more frequent rate recently due to a hardware issue I was having. And when I have a hardware issue, especially on my own system, I can't stop thinking about. But due to work and classes it took me about a week to diagnose the problem because of my time restraints. Lets just say my grades probably dropped that week
But in the end, it turned out to be a bad stick of ram which I returned to Newegg. You gotta love those guys.

And yes, I do actually have ccleaner already in my startup script however, a nice feature of CCleaner is that it integrates into the context menu of your recycle bin if you choose to and instead of frequently emptying the recycle bin I simply run ccleaner in the background to empty it for me.

Wow man. I don't think I'll read one of your posts again. Alot of useless information there I have to say, and TOTALLY NOT Guarnteed to do anything. Nonsense.

I'd never heard of 'SmitFraudFix' before .. thanks for the tip !

@sn00py .. are all your posts as useless as that one ? .. get a life mate ..

Man, some harsh people here. It was like his second post. What a rude welcome to Neowin.

Anyways, while I knew all the info there, I welcome you to Neowin and celebrate an internet user that can use correct grammer and real words.

Yes, Please Ignore everyone who thinks they are too 1337....
I'd say this is solid advise.

Yeah man, really rude and ignorant people we got here.
Thanks for the SmitFraudFix tip.

wtf. people CCleaner does more than just clean your registry. and it does give (usually major) performance increases and fixes many issues on most computers because most people don't know what a registry or temp files are, let alone know how to clean them out

and although most people on neowin know these 5 steps, it's VERY good advice to give your computer illiterate friends / family / boss. they all work (yes smitfraud is a real program) and they all help

Ugh.

Never use msconfig.

I'd rather use something like StartupCPL or even the inbuilt Startup tool in CCLeaner

However, Vista is great at managing it's own registry and seems more keen to let temp files go too.

Quite frankly if this is your attitude towards someone who is trying to impart some useful knowledge, regardless of how limited it may appear to you, I would suggest that you go someplace else and deliver you ill mannered caustic remarks there!

Good advice... always good to see others who are trying to help others and I am sure that others will agree. Don't let other comments blow the wind out of your sails because of others derogatory comments. I'm sure you meant no malicious intent by wanting to share advice. Keep learning and contributing here and Welcome to Neowin.

I'm defragmenting it now and will be leaving it on over night so that it doesn't have to 'find the time'. (It's a fairly new system, had it for a few weeks so everything is installed and the temp files are all set up, etc.)

But yeah, I think that Vista seems to run much happier if I leave the temp files alone. I don't really feel that CCleaner is 100% needed on a Vista system. I used it on XP and loved it.

Anyway, welcome to Neowin-try not to feed the trolls now.

What about those programs that compact your registry? I used to run them every once in a while and they would compact it by 5% or something. I don't know if it helped the speed, but I think they are supposed to do that.

You have to be very careful with dealing with the underpinnings of the OS. One corrupt key can mess up something and then it corrupts an application, or worse crashes your system.

I would like to add a tip. Disable about 20 vista services you will never use.

I don't know the original poster from Adam, but I'll confirm the usefulness of Smitfraud Fix. My sister in law's laptop got infected with that nasty bug and it was the only thing that could take care of it. I found it by Googling the problem and found multiple recommends on it. A few days later a friend of mine that works in a computer repair store confirmed it's a legit and excellent tool. He ends up having about one computer a week brought in for that thing infesting a computer.

thanks for the advice