tips on speeding up my PC

aside from running ad-aware and defragmenting my hard drives, are there any relatively uncomplicated things i can do in order to get my PC working at top speed? half life 2 will at last be a part of my life tomorrow, and i want to be totally, totally prepared for it.

okay...warning...I cannot be held responsible for anything you might do to your machine due to my post. with that being said...

yeah, if you are familiar with editing your registry, i recommend you clean out HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

delete all the programs you don't want running when you start up the computer. of course, don't delete anything you want/need...or don't know what it is.

if i see something that i have no idea what it is there, i google it to find out if it's something i need or not. you'd be surprised how much difference this can make depending on what is there.

also, ad-aware doesn't find all the spyware out there. you might also want to try spybot.

other than that...i can't think of anything else besides upgrading hardware.

keep HD defragged, once every ther day if you're a heavy downloader

buy more RAM, its easy to install, and relatively cheap

keep your startup programs to a minimum, Ad-Aware is not needed, Quicktime manager isn't needed, etc. (virus scanners and software firewalls)

ask this question on Anandtech WAY huger nerds there than the nerdiest of nerds on SG

*cop_n_blow is trying to help, but unless you've played with it before I'd advise to stay out of your registry

** I reiterate the best ideas

What setup do you have?

[Edited on Nov 15, 2004 by Sexdwarf]

stop all th' downloadin'

Throw it out the window. That's what I'm going to do to mine.

Reinstall windows baby... lord of all fixes. You have 4 hours, 41 minutes.

But simpler things if you're looking for max game performance, update all your drivers. This is really obvious, at least for the video card drivers, but there may also be newer drivers for your motherboard chipset (depending on the vendor) and sound card.

Also make sure there's nothing obnoxious in the Startup folder on the start menu- like MS Offic Fast Find and shit like that. And any programs that run in the taskbar that you don't use all the time, see if the options allow you to prevent them from running at startup so they aren't running in the background.

Nick

help computer

I dunno muchabout computers othathen- otherthan the one i got at my house my mom put a couple games on it -

Get a massive heatsink for you CPU. Zalman or Thermaltake. Use Arctic Silver thermal paste to aid in heat transfer. Then start bumping up your core speed till you find zen. BTW this will void your warrantee. Check out [H]ard OCP.

reformating your hard drive always works. just make sure you back up all of your data.

hahaha, that is great!!

Ram is pretty cheap nowadays. You should invest in more of it. besides that probably need to see your system specs. Usually software improvements are negligible compared to hardware upgrades.

this works because over time the registry in windows becomes bloated if you install and remove a lot of apps. many times apps don't properly remove their registry settings when you uninstall...so you can see how you would end up with a lot of stuff in there that you don't need especially if you install a lot of things.

Or a Flux Capacitor