Blade Watch

I’ve been busy over the last few days working with a local charity helping out with their pcs and it made me think about writing this post.  The complaints about their IT were as follows:

• PCs were slow and unresponsive
• Anti virus software was out of date
• They needed to check their firewall settings on each pc

I’ve posted some tips before about how to keep windows xp healthy and how to re-install windows xp the ‘industrial’ strength way.

With this in mind, I’ve outlined the advice and steps taken below:

1. PC’s were slow, first steps:
   1. Cleared down user temporary data c:\documents and settings\username\local application data\ contains temporary files, all your internet history etc
   2. Cleared down the $foldername$ (themicrosoft uninstall files – they’re blue or compressed) – we don’t need those, they’re in case we need to uninstall hot fixes
   3. Cleared down c:\windows\temp
   4. Checked applications running at startup and disabled ones we didn’t need – this is stored in the registry, hk_local_machine\software\windows run once.
   5. Run a chkdsk with fix option and rebooted computer to run
   6. Now closed all applications and run defrag of the disk
2. Anti virus software was out of date – update the definitions and checked all the settings – removed the scan on read and write options, set it to scan on write, also removed scanning of the page file.
3. Firewall settings – enabled and verified the windows firewall was ok – control panel, windows firewall – this is part of service pack 2.

I also upgraded the firmware on their dell pcs and checked their specifications so the charity knew what bits the pcs could have fitted. Macupgrades.co.uk is simply wonderful for this if you’ve got a mac – I really can’t praise them enough. Also if you’re looking for a few pcs, the sites I buy from are:

• Euro pc – they’re service is outstanding – they sell refurbished Dell/HP pcs and everything else
• 2ndchance pc for mac – bought a refurbished iMAC from them and they run MacUpgrades.co.uk
• PC Efficient on Ebay – I bought a few IBM laptops from them – brilliant service

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