Optimizing your computer.

[sunspot]

What are some good, free software programs that help get your computer up to speed?

There's a couple I can think of:

A-squared
AVG
Driver Cleaner Pro

[Jerrod]

Malwarebytes http://malwarebytes.org/

Crap Cleaner http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

If it takes more than that I am probably rebuilding the machine

[Jesse B 707]

Avast anti virus is pretty cash

[Dig It]

Also, don't underestimate the effectiveness of re-installing your OS. As long as you backed up your important data the fresh installing of your OS is the best way to speed up your computer through software for free.

[BLURR]

Avast anti virus is pretty cash

Malwarebytes http://malwarebytes.org/

I work in IT and I use these two products religiously. I highly recommend them.

[Jesse B 707]

Avast anti virus is pretty cash

Malwarebytes http://malwarebytes.org/

I work in IT and I use these two products religiously. I highly recommend them.

yeah i use those 2 along with the Crap Cleaner and my rig stays pretty snappy

[some call me...tim?]

I like malwarebytes too, but have gotten hit by several trojans lately that go in and delete the mbam.exe file to prevent malwarebytes from opening. I've gotten the workaround random .exe file to use which seems to do the trick, but man, it's a pain in the ass to have to do. The last one I just had to get rid of also did something in my LAN settings to prevent it from updating properly. I hate fuckin' malware, and it seems to be a more common headache for me, even though I don't d/l pirated media and avoid sketchy sites. Almost makes me want to get a Mac! (Probably would try Linux first though....)

[Parks]

Reformat, reinstall!

Works best if you restore from a recent, known to be good back-up.

If you can't do that, then purging with UBCD4Win will do you a lot more good than just running an Anti-virus and Malwarebytes.

Remember kiddies, if you have malware/trojans/viruses then you have to assume they have root access, and can hide themselves or disable your stuff that can clean them.

Running a setup like Firefox w/NoScript on Linux will help a lot for browsing, but an uninformed user will always be a weak link.

This is all a little off-topic from optimizing, but most "optimizers" are snake oil or worse anyway.

[Luke]

Still nothing like getting rid of that pesky System32 folder.

I'm just kidding, don't do that.

[Jerrod]

Almost makes me want to get a Mac! (Probably would try Linux first though....)

Definitely try Ubuntu Linux before you fuck with Mac. I use Ubuntu on my work laptop and the only reason I don't use it at home is because I do too much gaming.

I am also an Avast user, though believe it or not I have heard good things about M$ security tools and might give that a try.

[Parks]

Ubuntu is supposedly the easy to use Linux, and it was still kind of nasty for me install.

Took me a while to get my video card even working, and then took even longer to get it working well and to get dual monitors rocking.

After the initial mess, it is pretty sweet though.

Of course, I play games fairly often so I'm usually in Windows.

[jubuttib]

Ubuntu is supposedly the easy to use Linux, and it was still kind of nasty for me install.

Took me a while to get my video card even working, and then took even longer to get it working well and to get dual monitors rocking.

After the initial mess, it is pretty sweet though.

Of course, I play games fairly often so I'm usually in Windows.

Huh, really? I've installed it on lots of computers and I've never had problems, everything has always worked right out of the box. Well, there are too many part combinations around the world to take everything into consideration, there are always bound to be some problems.

[Jerrod]

My experience falls closer to jubuttib's but I have had a couple small hardware issues. Though it was more uncommon hardware. What video card were you using Parks? I assume this was primarily a driver issue?

[Frank Delicious]

Ubuntu is nice but Win7 is so so tasty that I uninstalled Ubuntu on my machine and put Win7 on there.

At home I run Superantispyware/Spybot/CCleaner

At work we have the server side edition of AVG so I don't really have to worry about running my own thing.

[Parks]

My experience falls closer to jubuttib's but I have had a couple small hardware issues. Though it was more uncommon hardware. What video card were you using Parks? I assume this was primarily a driver issue?

Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT, so not exactly a rare card with impossible to find drivers :D

Part of it stemmed from the proprietary drivers, although I remember there was more to it than just that.