Hello all. It has been a while since I have made a post. Probably because I was on-call this past week and a slew of personal and work related things going on I haven’t had time to do much else as far as side projects, reading or anything like that goes. I just wanted to mention a few of the things in the queue for the site and what I am currently working on.
Aside from all of that my job has been keeping me busy right before the Winter Holiday freeze and there are other things going on in my life as well that have kept me very busy. I wanted to make this post to let everyone know I didn’t forget about this site and am working on things just not as fast as desired.
I also want to wish everyone a happy and safe Holiday Season! I know around my neck of the woods it has been very, very cold the last few days and the road conditions have been iffy to say the least. Hopefully everyone has a great Christmas and a good break heading into 2009, I can’t believe it’s already here, where did 2008 go?!
We all have seen the advertisement for FinallyFast.com and their software that cleans up several temp items on your computer making it run faster, or at least reduce the clutter. I recently downloaded this and once I ran the scan it wanted me to pay for it to fix the issues which is their ‘gotcha’. Well I am here to tell you NOT to buy that but instead download CCleaner which is essentially the same thing but it’s free! I use it on my rig at home, my laptop, and even computers I fix for family and friends.
Once you download the cleaner I recommend you run it once through the Cleanup scan and fix, and then twice for the Registry scan and fix. Sometimes once the first pass of the Registry completes it will find new errors the second time.
Another thing you can do once you have ran through the cleaner is navigate to your control panel and use Windows Update to search, download and install any updates that you might be missing. One thing I find with a lot of PC I am asked to fix is that people don’t keep their OS and Programs up-to-date which could be a big reason your computer is slower than it was before, especially if they are updates associated with Windows.
One last thing that will help keep your machine running fast is an anti-virus software program and securing your home wireless network if you have one.
To be honest I have been using a free anti-virus program for almost 4 years now and I have had no issues causing failure on both of my laptops, or my desktop. I use Avast Home Edition and it works great and is absolutely free! Some of the features it has is a monitoring system that will alert you immediately if it finds an issue so you can address it right away. Avast automatically updates it’s virus database to keep up with new versions of harmful virus’. There is also a boot time scan that works very well as far as getting rid of a virus if you manage to get one. Aside from having to register for this product it is well worth it, especially there is hardly any if any spam at all from Avast.
To secure your wireless connection at home you can do one of two things. You can use the instructions that should have came with your wireless router to setup some type of security on your wireless. If you are like most people instructions are for the brainless and they were likely discarded with the packaging. If this is the case you can find most router models manuals online, just Google your router brand and model number.
Hopefully this is helpful and let me know if you have other questions.