Storage

[Fokkerwokker]

Have been advised to drop all my music files + pics/videos etc onto a separate storage drive which may help to stop my laptop wading thru' glue when booting up.

I see there are some deals in the sales. Any recommendations? Maxtor, Seagate etc?

Small words please!

FW

[Keef]

Why would your laptop wade through all your pictures etc when booting up?

As long as you defrag it periodically, and turn off that silly indexing feature, you should have no problems.

Is the internal drive close to full, or is there plenty of space?

I don't think there's much to choose these days between the various brands of hard drives - just make sure it's USB2.0 if your laptop is. If it's a "big" one, have one with its own power supply, rather than trying to lunch off the laptop.

[Fokkerwokker]

As long as you defrag it periodically, and turn off that silly indexing feature.

Defrag regularly. Silly indexing feature? Wassat????


Loadsa space on the HDD which is why I am peeved.

Run AVG PRO on a regular basis too.

Sounds like I have been given duff gen about getting a separate drive!

FW

[Gertrude the Wombat]

The top three reasons for computers taking a long time to start up these days are:

(1) You've got yourself infected by some malware.

(2) You've got yourself infected by some malware.

(3) You've got yourself infected by some malware.

There's also the possibility that you've installed some new hardware with a crap driver, but that's much less likely to be the cause on a laptop.

[Fokkerwokker]

The top three reasons for computers taking a long time to start up these days are:
(1) You've got yourself infected by some malware. x 3
Oh dear:ugh:
Thought that regular attention via AVG Pro would keep my laptop clean.
Will search this forum for latest hints for cleansing myself
Ta Gertrude

[frostbite]

Maplin are offering a Seagate external USB2 160gb drive for £60, if that helps?

[PPRuNe Pop]

Hi FW, hope you are well.
I would certainly go for a Seagate. Indeed, I have ALL my pics and music on it and another for safety but be sure to partition it. Two partitions, say 40-50gb each, to start with will take care of Pics on one and music on the other - then backup to disc(s) as well. I say this for one reason only. I NEARLY lost all mine and its heartbreaking if there are favourites. I have nearly 13gb of music and some you can no longer get.
Be safe.
Btw, if you defrag once after your have installed them all it will probably be not necessary to it again.
Happy New Year
D

[Fokkerwokker]

Ta D!

Trust U well.

HNY from HKG

A

[spannersatcx]

I just purchased a 250GB external HDD from a well know high street store, £70. (the one in pcworld proved so popular they have jacked the price back up to £140 after a day the :mad: )

Anyway, just plugged the NEW drive in and lo and behold there are some files on there, from somebody elses pc!:eek: Now this was brought and sold as new, I'm sure they are breaking some law by doing this?

Just hope the files on there have not infected my pc:confused:

I saw the tell tale signs when I took it out of the box, bag was ripped etc.

[PPRuNe Pop]

Spanners, it IS breaking the law. Selling as new is a no no and Trading Standards dropped from a great height a few years onto PC WORLD for doing just that. I think their fine was around £50k.

I would certainly get TS involved and you will get a new HDD for the same money. So don't format it yet.

PPP

[Mac the Knife]

Assuming your HDD wasn't filled to bursting point, if you think your PC is going to boot faster because you've transferred a big chunk of stuff to an external HDD, then I fear you may be disappointed.

As Gertrude as pointed out, malware is a major reason for slow bootup times in Windows. No AV program is going to catch all malware, especially rootkits. Have you run Hijack This and submitted the results to the free analyser?

There are actually lots of possible reasons for slow starting, ranging from trying to reconnect a non-existent network link to failing hardware. It might be worth your while running MS's Bootvis - http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=664 - which times the various bits of the boot sequence and lets you see what is taking so long. It might be as simple as a corrupted driver.

Good luck!

Mac

[spannersatcx]

Sorry to be hijacking this thread, a reply from customer services,
I am sorry to learn that you believe some one else has previously used the product you have been sold.
I can advise you that our products are sold as new and would not have been out of the box. All products we sell in stores come directly from the manufacturer.sounds like they are calling me a liar:eek: I have now told them I am contacting TS, they have offered an exchange but I think I'll get my money back and go elsewhere.

[Keef]

Silly indexing feature? Wassat????


It's a "clever" utility from MS that spends an inordinate amount of CPU time making and continually updating an index of your hard drives, so that stuff can be found more speedily when wanted. The net effect is that it searches for everything, whether or not you want it, all the time.

Press "Windows" and "E" at the same time, and up pops "My Computer".
Click on each hard drive in turn, right-click, select "Properties". At the bottom there's a box "Allow Indexing Service..." Turn that off if it's on. Tell it you want the change to apply to all files and folders.

[Fokkerwokker]

Oooooooooooooh Keef you are clever!!!

Yours + the other suggestions have transformed my laptop's performance entirely. For the better I might add!

Many ta's and Season's Greetings

FW

[Golden Rivet]

I've just installed the Bootvis program mentioned above on my other (main) PC and now it won't start.

I'll get the nightshift boys to come around and have a look for you........:p

[Mac the Knife]

Ooooh er! I've never had any problem with Bootvis, but Googling around, it seems that other people have.

This seems to be caused by running the bootvis program with tracing enabled

Try hammering on F8 as the PC starts up (don't allow it to fail and then give you the choices) then choose Safe Mode

Look at http://mike-devlin.com/windows/ - there are some suggested solutions there.

[Skanky Yoda]

Honstly transfering all your pictures wont help because when u delete a file unless using an program it does not delete the file just the actually display of the file. To make your PC Speed up i say yes clean it up as said above but upgrade the RAM and possible any outdated hardware.

[Saab Dastard]

Anyone else have any problems with this program?

Thanks for testing it for us - we have been warned! ;)

Glad you recovered!

SD

[terryJones]

Given the presumed origin of your OS, make sure AUTO UPDATES is 'OFF', and look here http://www.shavlik.com/downloads.aspx for any windows updates. Shavlik NetChk™ Protect is the program you want. It does all the windows updates without the worry of the silly Genuine User crap.
PS. Don't let Win media player update for goodness sake.....chances are your sound will disapear but only on some apps, which makes it really interesting to figure out.
Mrs TJ lost her sound, but only on Paltalk. She reinstalled Paltalk. Nothing.
I reinstalled the sound drivers, removed the card physically and made windows find it again, everything but change the sound card.
Mrs. then suggested Restore back a couple of days. Looking at the restore page it showed that WMP had just updated....
Once the PC was sent back in time to the day before WMP update, MAGIC>>>