Five Controversial Ways to Speed Your PC

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Alright, I am just going to point you guys in the direction of this article titled Five Controversial Ways to Speed Your PC and let you have at it. Thank [H] reader Taylor Holmes for the link to this one.

Uninstall your antivirus software. I’m serious. Symantec Norton 360 spent so much time trying to protect me from problems I’ll never have that it dragged my Toshiba’s performance to a crawl. I tried turning it off, but it kept rising from the dead. So I uninstalled it. Instant speed boost.
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I got the the part where he said he had Norton installed, wrote him off as an idiot, and moved on.
 
I would say revoke that writer's geek card, but I doubt he ever had one. But I do agree with getting rid of unnecessary resource hogs like Norton 360.
 
Interesting.

I dunno how controversial those are, though.

I disable System Restore and on-access/real-time virus protection on ever PC I administer and fix. Surprised he didn't mention System Restore at all.
 
Although he wasn't exactly brilliant for having Norton in the first place, I'll have to defend him and note that he wrote this article for the general consumer, not for us. Norton is installed on majority of OEMs, so yeah the guy's right. First step is to get rid of it. Second step is to put in Avira or NOD32. That part he neglected, thus makes him an idiot.

As for UAC, maybe if he would stop fucking around with the system to try and make it go faster, he wouldn't be prompted as much as he makes it out to be. :rolleyes:
 
controversial indeed. UAC doesnt slow down your machine. blogging software doesnt make it faster. having no AV is only faster until your machine is infected.
 
Azhar said:
Although he wasn't exactly brilliant for having Norton in the first place, I'll have to defend him and note that he wrote this article for the general consumer, not for us. Norton is installed on majority of OEMs, so yeah the guy's right. First step is to get rid of it. Second step is to put in Avira or NOD32. That part he neglected, thus makes him an idiot.
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This. Telling the general consumer to uninstall antivirus, and probably their firewall with it, is just ridiculous. That said, I avoid antivirus on any that doesn't absolutely need it.
 
kumquat said:
Interesting.

I dunno how controversial those are, though.

I disable System Restore and on-access/real-time virus protection on ever PC I administer and fix. Surprised he didn't mention System Restore at all.
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Why disable System Restore? You're going to regret that when you have to spend three days fixing a borked system in exchange for the extra minute of so of time not having it on saves you every day.
 
maademperor said:
controversial indeed. UAC doesnt slow down your machine. blogging software doesnt make it faster. having no AV is only faster until your machine is infected.
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UAC might not slow down your machine, but it does slow you down. There are extra boxes to close. It's poorly worded, but I get what he's saying.

As for readyboost, what kind of laptop is going to get a 30 second boot up time reduction from readyboost? I was always under the impression readyboost made little difference, but maybe that's only for machines with the recommended amount of RAM.
 
This article is fail. I didn't see anything in there about adding racing stripes and Type R stickers, which are the most obvious speed enhancements for any enthusiast PC.
 
My thoughts...

1 - YMMV...

2 - Generally agree.

3 - Nothing wrong with this recommendation.

4 - Idiot. Keep your thoughts on Symantec's product line separate from common sense. Get Avira, NOD32, AVG... even the "Gaming" edition has managed to renew (a small amount of) the faith I lost in Symantec.

5 - Not going to debate the author's personal opinion of Windows Live. Though if his biggest complaint is accidentally hitting the "Back" button too often, then you got to question his ability to be a "tech" journalist.

Bonus Tip: ReadyBoost only performs moderately well on sub-1GB RAM machines. The performance gain from ReadyBoost (assuming you actually got a ReadyBoost-certified USB drive) do not match actually putting some more RAM into the machine. And the cost difference may be negligible as well (depending on hardware). In the bigger picture, ReadyBoost is worthless IMO.


Side thought: I wonder if his UAC grievances really started after the time he uninstalled his antivirus...
 
I think Steve linked this just to whip you guys into a frenzy.
 
HOCP4ME said:
Why disable System Restore? You're going to regret that when you have to spend three days fixing a borked system in exchange for the extra minute of so of time not having it on saves you every day.
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Because "System Restore" is CRAP!

Sure it MIGHT make your system work well enough to be able to get your files off.. but in the end, you are gonna haveta wipe and re-install anyhow.

Seen way to many borked systems because the user used system restore to try to go back before the computer started messing up.

And any time I have tried system restore, it always made the system just useable enough to pull files off and that was it. It is easier and quicker to just slave the drive to pull needed files off then to have to deal with "System Restore"
 
As a pro-admin and a pro-nerd, I always DISABLE System Restore. The benefits in performance is justification enough.

Your end-users should have backups of all their files and YOU should be making sure there are backups (network shares, tape, etc.). If something happened severe enough that I would need a System Restore I would rather just C:FORMAT, re-image, and restore the backups.

People work better with refreshed systems anyway.
 
I actually agree for the average non idiot home user. Take off the anti virus stuff. It is a system hoge and if you OS gets hosed it is likely because of the AV software. I have seen so many systems having problems because of AV software. I just point out a few things if you do not run AV software...

1. Install Windows XP SP2 or sooner and have the firewall and auto updates turned on.

2. Do not download from anything but well maintained trusted sites.

3. Do not open ANY e-mail attachments... EVER!

4.Be vary careful with going to any links in spam e-mails... No matter how tempting that porn ad is.

I have six computers and have NEVER had a virus. Out of all my family, friends, and neighbors, only one neighbor has had a virus. He has dementia and constantly was opening EVERY e-mail attachment... and loved installing all those free malware apps. Now that is not necessarily true. Two of my brothers have had viruses several times. They have AV software running and thinks it makes them safe. See the biggest problem with AV software is they have to get a hold of a copy of the virus and work to find a way to detect, protect, and remove the virus. This usually takes weeks and by then your system is hosed.

Now business machines must have AV software. It is as simple as that. Also idiots need it too. It will not protect them for long, but it will help a little.
 
HOCP4ME said:
Why disable System Restore? You're going to regret that when you have to spend three days fixing a borked system in exchange for the extra minute of so of time not having it on saves you every day.
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I don't know about doing it to customers comp's. But for me a format / reinstall is not a big deal. Obviously, just keep all your working files / custom config.'s on a separate drive (at least, yeah, backup your stuff). If my system takes a dump for whatever reason I can simply wipe & reinstall everything squeaky clean in a couple hours. Dunno what you're doing that takes 3 days. /shrug.
 
The newest Norton Internet Security 2009 is very good and very fast for those saying that Norton sucks. Very small foot print and not a resource hog like their older products. I used to hate Norton but now love it. It installs in under a minute too, seriously and I have an older computer.
 
oh and how about a nice defrag every once in a while ;)

i recommended UltimateDefrag
 
That's a nice combination: Turn of UAC and your AV.

This guy trying to set up a botnet?
 
I too disable systerm restore, but only because my box backs up every night to my WHS rig.

But I do run A/V, but not Norton. Employer has a site license that extends to home use for a no frills enterprise solution without all the crap the retail solutions inflict and doesn't nerf perf, at least not perceptively. seriously, with Norton is so bad I think Intel slips them some cash on the side to keep machines slow and drive upgrades.
 
TheCadaver said:
start -> msconfig -> turn off junk you don't need? WHERE IS THAT? HM?
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The average user (who this was obviously written for) has no idea what they do or don't need, especially in an application like msconfig. Telling them to access that would likely have catastrophic consequences.
 
Proof of how flawed System Restore is: the backup files it creates can get infected.

I'm not advocating shutting it off; however, I do go and change the restore space on the HD to 1% in XP (unfortunately there's no option to customize it in Vista without resorting to cmd prompt stuff, IIRC, and I don't really care that much to bother with it).

As for UAC prompts, seriously...people kill me. What are you doing that you see endless numbers of UAC prompts? You know how many I see in a week? Two, tops, when I'm trying to run PeerGuardian (which is unsigned) or install a font. "ZOMG UAC PROMPTS!!!!!~!" like people see a hundred of them a day. Ridiculous.
 
HOCP4ME said:
Why disable System Restore? You're going to regret that when you have to spend three days fixing a borked system in exchange for the extra minute of so of time not having it on saves you every day.
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Nothing pisses me off more than trying to install a 2MB app, but having to wait 45 minutes as a restore point is made. System restore never works for me, so I just turn it off.
I've never had an issue that I couldn't fix that wasn't hardware related. I'd rather fix the problem instead of rolling back just to have the underlaying problem still present to pop up at a later time.
 
HOCP4ME said:
Why disable System Restore? You're going to regret that when you have to spend three days fixing a borked system in exchange for the extra minute of so of time not having it on saves you every day.
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There's no reason whatsoever to spend 3 days fixing a borked system when backing up, reinstalling, and restoring takes a few hours.

System restore is the single biggest system-slowing piece of software I've ever experienced. It even slows down higher end systems with boatloads of RAM.

And it's basically worthless. If it gets to the point you need to use it, formatting and reinstalling is much more foolproof.
 
InorganicMatter said:
Probably because System Restore takes up hard disk space, not CPU cycles. :p
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All that hard drive thrashing is a significant source of slowdown.

The speed and responsiveness of a system is not dependent solely on CPU cycles.
 
does anyone use ReadyBoost? with 4 gb of ram does ReadyBoost really help speed up your system?
 
MavericK96 said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheCadaver View Post
start -> msconfig -> turn off junk you don't need? WHERE IS THAT? HM?
Click to expand...

The average user (who this was obviously written for) has no idea what they do or don't need, especially in an application like msconfig. Telling them to access that would likely have catastrophic consequences.
Click to expand...

Exactly... not to mention that there are only few things that should ever be disabled using that method. Anything you want disabled when you "gut" Windows (which I do in totality and only have about 12 processes running, including GPU CP and NOD 32) should always be done in Services. Never just disable something vis "msconfig".

System Restore = system hog, as well as Help & Support, and quite a few other services running in the background that are both unnecessary and many of which are actually security hazards.

Even for beginners, it's not difficult to write up something that's actually easy to follow in order to make it safe for people to do themselves, and all around will help system performance but perhaps more importantly, system safety. SSDP discovery service, for example, should always be disabled, as is even recommended by the FBI Cybercrime Unit. Anything "Remote" should be disabled, unless you need to access the system via another, but rarely do people do such on their home systems.

Either way, it's a weak "article", and advising anyone to just simply remove their a/v without going into details about consequences, possible replacements for Norton etc. is just out-right stupidity..
 
For people who want to uninstall Norton, you all should try out the new Norton internet security 2009 and 360 v3. Both software are much faster compare to older version, and takes up less memory.
 
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