Windows XP Slow Startup Problems.

Windows XP Registry File | 3 Comments »

Windows XP Services

Windows XP Services perform certain tasks on your computer on behalf of other programs. For example the fact that you are reading this article means that a number of Windows XP services were used that enabled your browser to go out on the internet to retrieve the article. If these were not running then your browser would come back with an error saying it could not connect or access the site with this article on it.

So why doesn’t a program like your browser have these sort of Windows XP Services built into them? There are a couple of reasons. One it would make the programs a lot bigger and more cumbersome. It would make updating them more difficult if there had been an update to Windows XP as every program on your computer would have to be updated so they would continue to run.

When one considers that a lot of programs use the same Windows XP services wouldn’t it be better to have one copy that is used by all of them? Of course it would.

There are two types of Windows XP Services, those that need to be running all the time and those that only need to run when they are used by a program. One big problem with windows XP is that a lot of Windows XP Services are running that do not really need be running. A lot of the time they may be there because a program you have subsequently removed needed a particular one running. It is not always removed when the program is removed. There are also Windows XP Services running that Windows XP installs and sets to run automatically as a default when Windows is installed. The consequence of this is that they stay in your PC’s memory taking up space.

How do you stop the Windows XP Services running that you don’t need thus saving valuable memory space? Fortunately it is easy but being easy has also ramifications if you stop a Windows XP Service that is needed. To help you with this I have supplied a list of the Windows XP Services that you can safely disable or put in the manual mode. You can find them by going to the Windows XP Services Page.

I have also provided the instructions on how to disable them using the Windows XP Management Console. This list of Windows XP Services will be continually updated as I review each service again Microsoft’s recommendations.

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USB Memorysticks have been around for a long time now and most people have at least one. What do people use them for? Well for one thing they have replaced the old “floppy Disk” drive. Just about every PC you can buy these days doesn’t even have one installed. A USB Memorystick is generally used for transporting stuff just like the floppies were used for. Do you know that they can be used for a heap of other things as well? There are some that anyone can use them for and some where you need to be a bit more au fait with Windows.

You now can get a USB memorystick up to 32 gigabytes these days and they keep getting bigger so why not use one for backing up your most important data. There are several programs (free ones as well) that can be used to automatically backup your critical information. One free on I use and think it is excellent is “Karen’s Replicator”.

Windows comes with it’s own media player so you can listen to music on your PC and also copy music files with it. It can be used to build a library on your USB memorystick that you can then plug into any PC running windows and listen to your favorite music. You have then effectively a MP3 player. Listen on your PC speakers or plug in headphones.

Like to speed up your PC. Using a USB memorystick if you are running Windows Vista, you can speed up your system using ReadyBoost . You can use the space on a memory stick as additional memory cache to aid the cache on your hard disk. Flash memory is faster than a hard disk, with its physical moving parts. The memory cache provided by ReadyBoost can greatly improve system responsiveness. Using ReadyBoost is easy. You just insert your USB memorystick into your Vista system and follow the on screen prompts to configure and use it.

Want to make your PC more secure? You can use a USB memorystick as a “key” What it can do is lock up your PC whenever you remove the memorystick from the USB port. No-one can then use or access your data until you plug the memory stick back in. There is a little utility called “Predator”  that you can download for free it will key your USB memorystick to your PC.

You can run what are called “Portable Applications” from a USB memorystick. Just think you can take your most used applications and run them on any PC specially useful if you do not own a laptop. Applications such as “OpenOffice”, Firefox can be made portable. Others can be found at PortableApps. You can virtually install just about everything you need to run things as if you were on your own PC.

If you want the complete thing you can even run a whole windows or linux operating system from a USB memorystick. Not for the faint hearted though and can be a bit ticklish to do. There are some guides around to assist in this endeavor.

Are you a Web developer? did you know that with Server2Go, you can run a Web server that supports Apache, PHP, MySQL, and Perl from a memory stick. Server2Go runs on all versions of Windows, supports all the common browsers, and is free. The benefits of having a portable Web server on a USB memorystick are numerous. You will find more information on the Server2Go site.

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You have a PC with a windows xp slow startup problem. At first your spanking new Desktop PC or laptop was running like a dream. Fast as lightning. Then as time progressed things started to happen. It takes a while to startup when you switch on. Occasionally things just seem to go at a crawl. Hah, Lets try one of those amazing fixit programs advertised. Shell out bucks and she’ll be OK. Humm…. That will fix the slow startup windows xp problems. Things seem to be a little bit better. What about that program that says you have a registry problem. That will fix it. Well believe it or not they may fix a lot of problems but they may not be the one you have got. They most probably not be what a lot of people have got.

I will tell you something about new PC’s and laptops. They have something in them that is mechanical.
Yes a hard drive. They are these days a sophisticated item but they are still mechanical.

My first PC was made by Wang. My first laptop was made by Wang. (I have still got it. Probably a collector’s item now). Some people may remember Wang. They were one of the original Word processing systems companies. Way before MS Word and they were good. (At the time) Well, they produced a PC. It had a 10 megabyte disk drive and I thought that was BIG. Yes it was mechanical and yes today’s disks are still mechanical. Now we consider gigabyte disk drives small.

Eventually disk drives will disappear as static (means it does move anything but bits) ram (for the un-initiated “random access memory”) becomes so cheap that this will do away with them.

In the meantime you have your mechanical disk drive.

Well to get these “bits”, in which a number of them make up your file, a mechanical head has to move over a recorded surface. Occasionally it may pick a bit up wrong. That’s OK the manufacturers knew this would happen so put in things called “checksums” that can up to a certain amount actually figure out what was missing and replace it. Good, that’s fine.

What about those it can’t? Well hard luck you have a corrupted file! The only way to fix that is to restore it from somewhere. But that is another subject. The main thing is that if this is some sort of system file it may cause some problems and slow down your PC until it either sorts itself out or gives up. (WOW a system crash) That makes a system really slow (like stopped).

Back to your slow system.

Let me explain the manufacture of hard disks. One thing the manufacturers know is that the disks they manufacture will have defects on the surfaces of them. They produce millions of them. Do they chuck away the ones with defects? No! Each one goes through a test. As they are tested and a defective part of the disk is found they use a bit of smarts and make that bit of disk unavailable. If the number of defective parts go over a certain number then they reject the disk.

It may be that you have a labeled 80gbyte disk. But in actual fact you may have only a 79.9999 gigabyte disk. What the heck, what’s a few bits between friends.

Unfortunately, sorry I had to say that word. Parts of the disk surface may become defective afterwards. You may not know it until months (or even a year) after you have bought your state of the art PC or laptop.

Why?

Well when you first got your PC you may only have used 6 or 7 gigabytes of your 80 gigabyte disk. Over the months or year you put on all your good stuff, (photo’s, games and such) Your disk gradually uses 30 gigabytes. (Got lots of photos you know) Then bingo one photo is written across the defective part.

One thing about windows xp is that it goes checking all the time around the used portion of the disk. It hits the defective part and hey hold on have a look at this again, and again, and again as it tries to recover the file. Eventually if it can’t it times out. Wow your system springs back to life again. Now if this happens to a system file it may take longer. Your system may not crash but it will take longer checking it out.

This can manifest (yes, I know some posh words) in a slow startup when you first switch on. This is because windows does a lot of checking at this time. Unfortunately windows keeps a lot of this stuff to itself.

That’s what these purveyors of good stuff to fix everything up for you depend on.

Now I have got all the crap out of the way I had better tell you what you should do first before forking anything out. (money that is)

This is pertaining to windows xp but most of it is also relevant to other windows OS’s

The first thing is checking that damn disk for bad spots and corrupted files.

Perform the following:

1. On your start menu (bottom left corner) place your mouse pointer and click the right mouse button.
2. Place your mouse pointer on “explore” and click the right mouse button.
3. You should now have a screen showing your file structure.
4. Place your mouse over the part that probable says “Local Disk (C)
(Whatever it is called it should have the (C)

5. Left click and it should highlight. Right click the mouse while it is selected.

6. You should get another menu. Right at the bottom you will see “properties”. Left click it.

7. You should get a box that shows a pretty circle with blue and pink segments in it. (If you have more pink than blue then you are in a good state space wise on your disk. If you have only a small sliver of pink then you are in some other trouble. Send me a comment if you want)

8. At the top of the box there is a menu. Click “Tools” with your left mouse button.

9. You should come up with another box. In it there should be a selection “Check Now”. Left click it.

10. In the box that appears tick both of the “check disk” options with your left mouse buttons and then click “start”

11. You should then come up with a message with a load of waffle. Just click “yes”

12. Your system will now restart and start doing good things. You can what if you want. You may or not see some errors coming up. It may say restoring, it may say deleting things but just let it ramble on.

13. What it will do is make unavailable bad parts, it may be able to restore some parts from a special segment of disk.

14. Eventually it will restart. This may take a while depending on the size of the disk so it is best to schedule it when you do not want to use it.

Now your windows xp slow startup may have improved may even be fixed. There are other factors that affect windows xp slow startup which I cover in other articles in this blog.

If after doing all the things that are recommended (and don’t cost you anything) then maybe you should look at the registry file as this can be a prime source of Windows XP slowing down.

Windows XP Slow Startup | 1 Comment »

Windows Regedit Registry Editor

The windows regedit registry editor is a utility provided by Microsoft that enables you to change information in the windows registry file.

The Windows registry file is a database that contains all the configuration settings in the Windows operating system. It holds the profile for every user who is registered on your PC, information about all internal and external hardware attached to your computer, information about all of the applications installed, and the details on every configuration setting made throughout windows.

Because the Windows registry is an essential part of the operating system, you need to be extremely careful anytime you make a change to it. You should only do any altering if you are proficient and/or have explicit instructions how to alter a component within it.

Below are a few of the things you should know about the windows registry. This will help you avoid the consequences of making a mistake when editing the windows registry.

How the registry is laid out.

The Windows registry is contains five main sections. Theys are called “keys”, each containing specific kinds of information about windows. Each section has a nested folder structure containing files which has settings called values. Here are the five main keys in the Windows registry:

• HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT – Contains information about file types.

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER – Contains copies of data stored in HKEY_USERS about the user who is currently logged on.

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE – Represents information about all the hardware and software that is installed on the computer.

• HKEY_USERS – Contains the account information of users installed on your PC.

• HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG – Contains copies of all the information from all the other root keys that pertain to the currently session.

Backing up the registry.

It is essential that before attempting to change anything in the registry you should make a backup copy of it. You can then restore it to it’s previous state if you make a mistake. There are several ways of  backing up the registry.

• Use Windows XP’s Backup Utility and select System State.

• Create a Restore Point.

• Launch the Registry Editor, select the key you plan to edit, pull down the File menu, and choose the Export command.

The Regedit Registry Editor.

To view and modify the registry, you can use the Regedit Registry Editor. To startup regedit click on “Start” – “Run” and then type “regedit” in the run text box, then click OK

Searching the registry.

If you know the name of the subkey or value you want to edit in the registry, but you don’t know exactly where it’s located, you can use the “find” tool. To access it from within the regedit registry Editor, just press [Ctrl]F. When you see the find box, type the name of the subkey or value you want to search for in the box. You can also check the boxes in the “Look At panel” (Keys, Values, or Data) for better targeting of your search.

Using registry favorites.

If you regularly edit the registry, you can use the favorites menu to save yourself time looking for any deeply nested subkeys. The Registry Editor’s Favorites menu allows you to bookmark any location you find. When you make a registry change that you may want to return to later, just pull down the Favorites menu and select the “Add To” Favorites command

Cleaning the registry.

After a period of time, the registry can become full of orphaned or corrupt keys and values, This can make the registry inefficient and slow yet still function. There are many registry cleaners out there that perform admirably. One I recommend and use is “Errorfix”. This cleaner not only cleans up the registry but provides a lot of other functions as well such as removing unwanted files from your recycle bin.

Monitoring your registry activity.

When you installing new applications, the installation process can make a many changes to the registry. If you would like to keep track of how the registry is changed there is a free Microsoft utility you can use called RegMon. It runs in the background and tracks registry I/O operations. It will then provide a report on the status of those operations, which can come in handy if you need to track problems.

Just remember the regedit registry editor is not to be fooled about with as you can create havoc if not used correctly.

Windows XP Advanced | 2 Comments »