I've owned an Imac for awhile. I learned on Mac's, and did pretty much everything else with them, but I own a PC now. (Not exactly a replacement, just an upgrade. I still use my Imac) Over the years I have had it I learned to fix various problems and other things about how the OS works.. etc.

I could actually use some advice with my new PC. I'm not exactly new to PC's or XP either. I've always been the Tech savy one and have had to fix other peoples PC's before, so I do have some experience. (Don't ask me how I pulled it off. I just knew what I was doing.) I actually know about how to replace parts, do maintenance inside, assemble... but that's all the physical parts. What I want is to learn more about the software side. I know XP has to have some tricks or shortcuts (Like taking screenshots?)

Could anyone give me some good advice or some links to good websites that would help me to get the most out of my computer?

How's this (http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1681)?

How's this (http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1681)?

Just giving it a glance. It looks good! Thanks a lot. That should help.

To add to Caps excellent link;
To make sure everything is running fine run both anti virus and anti spyware apps in normal AND safe modes. (make sure that they are updated first ! ;)) (AVG (http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1) is good and free AV)
(A couple of good removal tools are Spybot (http://www.safer-networking.org/) and Adaware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/))

ALso an on line virus and spyware scanner is Trend Housecall (http://housecall.trendmicro.com/)

Just a note; actively running two AV's on one machine can cause problems.
So if you are thinking about it make sure your current one is disabled first.
SAme thing applies to online scanners as well.

Removal of junk files is easy with CCleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com) a free app that does exactly what you need.

Thanks Curly. Having good antivirus and spyware program the first thing any PC owner should do. That was one thing I learned on my Imac that also holds true on a PC.

Let me actually tell you alil more about my PC. It's actually 2 years old, although it is new to me. It once belonged to my cousin. He told me it was in good shape and he barely used it. I bought it from him in October for $200 (I made sure that it was worth it and I wans't getting something I couldn't upgrade or play any games that I want to play) . Upon initial inspection tower itself was full of dust and needly to be cleaned badly. I waited to set it up until I bought an antivirus program and compressed air to clean it. Once it was cleaned I set it up. It loaded windows OK at first but it wouldn't le me do some things on it. I couldn't even instal Anti virus on it. I eventually did a software restore and that fixed the initial problems I had. Then I was finally able to install the anti virus only to find out it had a small handfull of viri and a lot of adware and dialers. (Well you don't need a program to tell you that you have adware on your machine when you constantly get bombarded with ads) The Anti virus program I bought was Norton 07. So luckily I was able to clean that, but my PC still had problems. From my exp with a mac, I knew that the next thing most likely would be error in files, etc.. So I went looking for a utilites program. I heard good things about System mechanic 6 pro, so I bought that. IT's pretty good and it helped make me aware of start up problems and some things got fixed. I actually did have A lot of errors on the PC. But even after all of that I still didn't get even %80 performance from my PC.

My last step was to completely restore everything... I didn't have much on the PC and I figured that there was probably some stuff deep in the system from my cousin, and I didn't know what should be there or not so I just did the destructive restore. After that I got my PC just the way I wanted and it runs perfectly now.
Anyway, Thank you Curlyben, for making sure I got my security taken care of. BTW, I have heard a lot of people say bad things about symantec products but I haven't had any problems at all with it. Maybe it's just 07 is better than last years or something?

Dragonfire, as this was a used machine you would have been better of completely reinstalling Windoze from a FULL format.
This would have saved you time, effort and above all, money.

When it comes to Norton and XP I'd say steer well clear.
About 75% of the people I know who have Norton/XP have had noting but problems, until that is they replaced it.
Also try and avoid all-in-one Anti-virus/Firewall/security/maintenance apps as these can cause problems as well.
You are much better off going for separate apps and make sure they are kept up to date.

To Capuchin,

I've looked over that site and found some really amazing stuff in such a short amount of time. Thanks again for that link. I would probably have never found that site on my own.

To capture an image of your screen all you have to do is hit the "Print screen" button, and it gets saved to your clipboard. Then you can paste it into a program like Photoshop or Microsoft paint.

Some of the best things in life really are that simple. :-)

That's what we're here for :)

Dragonfire, as this was a used machine you would of been better of completely reinstalling Windoze from a FULL format.
This would of saved you time, effort and above all, money.


LIke most things in life this PC didn't come with an instruction manual. Also maybe I had alil too much faith in my cousin, hoping that he didn't do anything nasty with the PC. Fortunately I eventually got things running properly. My only expenses in security and maintence of this PC were Norton and system mechanic so it really didn't cost me anything it would have cost me anyway. I know good anti virus is important to have as well as a good utilty program. Also I only paid $5.95 for Norton 07 anyway. (On sale, plus rebate.) I can't complain about that.

I can't complain about the time and effort I spent on it either. In the end I did learn from that experience. Not only that but I feel more like it is really "Mine" now because I had to pretty much ressurrect it and give it some TLC. Nothing quite like bonding between a man and his PC :D

I also forgot to mention that my cousin didn't give me any discs with it.

Back up your register manualy by going to regedit make sure you are at top of register go to file / export and save file ( I like something like regrestore(datesaved)
To restore your register manually by going to regedit make sure you are at top of register go to File / import and choose the file you saved. It has worked when reg restore failed. I like using C:\ to save file to it makes it easy to fine

Psst Ernest, it's called a registry ;)

It's been awhile but I recently had a problem and plan on scrapping Norton. Sometimes you have to learn the hard way. Appearently Norton does not pick up all virus' out there.

I ended up scanning my system with Windows Live one care free scanner online and that showed some problems... I heard Kaspersky is pretty good and I downloaded their free trial and found stuff Norton missed. Any thoughts on Kaspersky?

Also I have learned a little about how the registry can seriously slow down your PC. Can anyone recommend a good FREE program to clean and fix registry problems?

I always use "Tune Up Utilities"

It has a whole host of useful programs to make your system run smoother (and is good fun to play about with too).

It's commercial but really good, maybe someone else uses some free alternatives.

There's a free trial here: TuneUp Utilities 2007: Optimize, repair and customize your Windows XP, 2000, Me and 98 (http://www.tune-up.com/products/tuneup-utilities/)

Capuchin,

Your right. There are a lot of useful programs here. And it shows that I have A lot of errors that need to be fixed... sheesh... Why don't programs like this come standard with Windows?

This program is a little pricy but definitely worth it and thankfully the trial is even full featured for 30 days.

Sheesh.. just looking over the list of crap here... 642 problems.. and a lot of them are files that belong to programs I removed months ago...

Anyway, thanks for suggesting this program. I'm definitely going to give it some consideration

When it solves some registry problems, it can often recreate other problems (as links are deleted, other links are now referencing nothing etc), so you have to do the registry clean a few times, I think it suggests that anyway though :)

Glad you like it.

Although I doubt there is a similarly featured program for free out there, maybe there are programs that do part of what tuneup utilities includes...

At least it isn't ridiculously expensive like some software out there :)

I noticed the part about doing it several times, which is understandable.

I'm used to using System Mechanic 6 Pro... which has been very helpful. It takes care of some registry problems but nothing compared to Tune up utilities.