hi, sorry to be a pest but..pc is running real slow and am off to Uk tomorrow (mums not well) and need to keep in contact with OH, thing is just seen www.registry patrol.com and i run it and it said i had a lot of probs on my pc but would have to buy the program, anybody know this firm???? or anybody know how to make my pc run faster,thanks in advance,pat

Hi Im not clued up that much either but you could try doing a disc defrag. and run ccleaner free download I use THESE for downloading free stuff, you could also try Spybot search and destroy,I use all of them , they are free and you run them once a week..........Im sure there will be more suggestions on the way.If you need any help feel free to PM me.Good luck.

thanks v much,pat

Wipe everything and reinstall the Windows with only the programs you want on it, It might then run better than when new

Bit dramatic aint it ?

Do what jandy said.

Registry patrol is naughty stuff, says there are loads of stuff wrong to make you buy it.......

maybe JDR, but I suppose Im used to doing it ten times a day, so its nothing to me, lol

Adaware and Spy bot certainly reccomend then, Remove antivirus software see the difference

Im tickled pink heee heeee who would ever of thought it..

That`s the proof of the pudding, you have been helped, done it and now you are helping somebody else get rid of their crap.

Mmmm thanks learnt a lot in six months,Im always tweeking about with it,still away to go though but Iv pretty much got it set up now with all the bits and bats.

I wouldn't even think about wiping your hardisk and reinstalling windows unless you know exactly what you are doing.
You will likely find you need drivers disks for motherboard, sound, video, etc. and unless it's an actual restore from a separate partition on the disk then it can be a real pain locating the correct drivers on the Internet.

But doing this is like knocking down your house and rebuilding it just because you've broken a window. Once you start down this path then you'll always be re-installing everything and photos and other personal stuff will be lost forever.

Much better to locate the source of the problem. But then what do I know, I'm just a software engineer.

Everyone is different, I can do reinstall sometimes quicker than it takes a bad PC to boot, The stuff I have to hand installs most drivers in one hit, its only the late hardware and I mean the gear that has just come out in the last 6 months I have to hunt for.

some people are happy to sit round people house's all night doing what you think is best.

I can say its easy because I do it everyday.

The lady asked how to make her PC Run faster, removing a few problems wont guarantee that.

I couldn't agree more. Just doing a quick reinstall is often only the start of the problem.

I've done it many times for people and to do it properly, backup and restore all the data, reinstall and test all the programs and settings (if you can find the Cds) takes at least 10 hours of my time and I'm pretty good at it. And that's only if you have the original hardware drivers.

For a novice it could be a nightmare and you could lose the lot.

A slow system is better than a dead one!

The most common culprit I have seen is the anti virus/security programs especially Norton and McAfee. They keep upgrading themselves to the point where they slow the PC to a crawl. The first line of attack is turn them all off and see what happens. Spybot and Adaware should sort out any other nasties.

A good general cleaner and registry cleaner is CCleaner - its free.

Andyrich666
Unless the lady knows what she is doing a complete reinstallation might stop her pc from running altogether.

You're dead right Fred, there are so many pc "experts" around. Unfortunately with pcs the old saying "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" rings very true.

OK, but people here are saying do this do that, your just adding more software and rubbish to possibly make it worse. Removing AV Software is good, its probably better not to install any in the first place.

I can say in my experience adding more cleaners and stuff like that if you dont know what your doing can lead to the blue screen of death, then you have to reinstall anyway unless your sh*t hot like me.

So IMO and I have done this with people over phone before will always say that a Clean install is best.

I see you all beg to differ, thats fine but Fred James if you do it right its impossible it can be the start of a problem.

Also we are all assuming this is a software problem, it could not be, The OP has not really given any of us in the know enough info on her setup, it could be a PC running XPP with 128Mb, so that could be the problem and we are just adding to it with bad advice