Use your hard disk space as a RAM

Low RAM capacity slows down your computer speed significantly. You cannot work smoothly in a computer when it is getting slow and slow. Even though the computer speed depends on several hardware parts and their capacity/speed, you can speed up a computer by installing additional RAM card. Sometimes you may not increase RAM due to not available ram slots in the mother board. Changing motherboard can be cost effective task to fix this problem. Don't worry...... there is a solutions for this.

Windows XP comes with a special feature to increase your RAM by using your Hard Disk. It is called Virtual Memory. Also known as Paging File. You can allocate some space from your hard disk to use as a virtual memory. By default Windows XP comes with a virtual memory size of 1.5 times of RAM. (If your RAM capacity is 256MB, Virtual memory will be 384MB). This is space uses when the RAM going low in capacity.

You can change paging file or the virtual memory size and the partition of the hard disk where paging file exists at anytime as you wish. But there is few guidelines to optimize virtual memory.

• Avoid allocating virtual memory on the same partition where the system installed - Your system partition is heavily accessing drive by the operating system and because of that it will slow down the data read and write speed. And also cause to limit free space of the system partition which usually slows down the PC speed.
  
• Do not put a paging file on a fault-tolerant drive such as a mirrored volume or a RAID-5 volume. Paging files do not require fault-tolerance, and some fault-tolerant computers experience slow data writes because they write data to multiple locations.
• Do not put multiple paging files on the different partitions of the same hard disk. Use only one paging file on one hard disk. If your computer consists two or more hard disks, you can create paging files in each hard disk.

How to change paging file/virtual memory

1. Click Start, click Run, and then type sysdm.cpl in the Open box.
2. Click the Advanced tab, and then click Settings under Performance.
3. Click the Advanced tab, and then click Change under Virtual memory.
4. Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the paging file that you want to change.
5. Under Paging file size for selected drive, click Custom size, type a new paging file size in megabytes (MB) in the Initial size (MB) or Maximum size (MB) box, and then click Set.

Changing windows paging file size needs restart of your computer to make changes.

How to enable 'show hidden files and folders' option

Another kind of pc issue you are facing is unable to view hidden files of your computer. Even if you select the option 'Show hidden files and folders' at folder options, you cannot see those. If you go back again and check the folder options you will see still 'Do not show hidden files and folders' selected. Your requested changes have not been made.



Some malware can modify Windows settings to disable or prevent users to change setting of Show Hidden Files and Folders under folder options. Even your virus guard remove those suspicious files and clean, the damage caused by the virus cannot be undone. There are few methods to repair those errors in your computer. Following methods will help you regain access or modify and save the settings, which were damaged by some attacks.

Method 1
The most effective way is restoring your system. Using system Restore you can undo all the changes that were made to windows registry to the system. No harm to your files at all. If you don't want you can cancel restoration later too.

Before restoring your system you must be remember the date of your computer affected. So you can restore your system into a prior date. If you do not remember it's better to guess a date and try or use other methods.

To restore your system:

• Start --> All Programs --> Accessories --> System Tools --> System Restore
• Click next on the opening restore dialog box.
• Select 'Restore my computer to an earlier time' option and click Next.
• The you will get date which restoration can be done. Dates in BOLD are the system checkpoints which you will be able to restore.
• Select a date before you computer infected and proceed.
• The system will restarts and you have to wait few minutes to complete the restoration process.

Note : If you use kaspersky virusguard you must disable the option 'Enable self defense' at the settings of virus guard. Otherwise restoration process will not work and you will get "Restoration Incomplete" message.


Method 2
Modifying windows registry

• Go to Start --> Run
• Type regedit in the text box and press enter. (Registry Editor will be open)
• On Registry Editor navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE --> Software --> Microsoft --> Windows --> CurrentVersion --> Explorer --> Advanced --> Folder -->Hidden --> Show All
• On the right pane delete the value with
• Name : CheckedValue
• Type: REG_SZ
• Data : 2
• Create a new DWORD. Right-click on the right pane --> New -->DWORD Value
• Add following values
• Name : CheckedValue
• Type: REG_DWORD
• Data : 1

That's it. Now you may view your hidden files.

Method 3

• Open Notepad
• Copy following code and paste in Notepad. (Only the blue color text)
  

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Folder\Hidden]
“Text”=”@shell32.dll,-30499″
“Type”=”group”
“Bitmap”=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,6f,00,74,\
00,25,00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,53,00,\
48,00,45,00,4c,00,4c,00,33,00,32,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,2c,00,34,00,00,\
00
“HelpID”=”shell.hlp#51131″

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Folder\Hidden\NOHIDDEN]
“RegPath”=”Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Explorer\\Advanced”
“Text”=”@shell32.dll,-30501″
“Type”=”radio”
“CheckedValue”=dword:00000002
“ValueName”=”Hidden”
“DefaultValue”=dword:00000002
“HKeyRoot”=dword:80000001
“HelpID”=”shell.hlp#51104″

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Folder\Hidden\SHOWALL]
“RegPath”=”Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Explorer\\Advanced”
“Text”=”@shell32.dll,-30500″
“Type”=”radio”
“CheckedValue”=dword:00000001
“ValueName”=”Hidden”
“DefaultValue”=dword:00000002
“HKeyRoot”=dword:80000001
“HelpID”=”shell.hlp#51105″

• Save Notepad file as "folderoption.reg" into the desktop
• Close Notepad and double click "folderoption.reg" on the desktop
• Click "Yes" for the message.
• A confirmation message will display and click on "OK"
• Now check your folder options to view hidden files.

How to enable folder options command

You may experience that your computer's folder options command disappeared. So you cannot view your hidden files and cannot make changers in folder options. It is not a system damage and sometimes what people do is - format the computer and install windows again. You need not to go far away like that. This is happening due to some malware attacks.

Malware often comes itself as a hidden file and then disables the Folder Options menu in Windows Explorer so you can't change the settings to view hidden files and folders. If you are unable to access the Tools --> Folder Options in Windows Explorer, here's how to modify the registry to regain access to the Folder Options menu.

• Click start --> run
• Type "regedit" in the text box --> OK (The registry editor will opens.)
  
• Navigate to the following on the left pane.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER --> Software --> Microsoft --> Windows --> CurrentVersion --> Policies --> Explorer

• In the right pane look for the value "No Folder Options"
• Right click on it and select Delete
• Click "Yes" for the confirmation message "Are you sure you want to delete this value?"
• Again go to the left pane and navigate to the following.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE --> Software --> Microsoft --> Windows --> CurrentVersion --> Policies --> Explorer

• Right click on it and select Delete
• Click "Yes" for the confirmation message "Are you sure you want to delete this value?"
• Close the registry.

Note : If you still cannot access Folder Options, you should reboot into Safe mode and repeat above steps.

How to speed up your computer (Cont'd .......)

Repairing Disk Errors

Apart from Disk Defragmenter and Disk Cleanup there is another useful utility that you can use to fix disk errors. You can check the integrity of the files stored on your hard disk by running the Error Checking utility. This will check the disk for errors and fix them to prevent further damage to the hard disk.

When you use the computer, bad sectors can be built due to some activities. Specially when not shutting down the computer properly. These bad sectors will slow down the computer speed. As a result of that you may experience time consuming for file saving activities. This utility scans the disk and checks for bad sectors. Once bad sectors found it will fix them and repairs.

To check bad sectors in your computer;

• Open My Computer
• Right click on desired drive you want to scan
• Click Properties
• In the Properties dialog box go to Tool tab
• Click Check Now button
• In the Check Disk dialog box, select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box, and then click Start.

You will get a message if it founds bad sector and click fix to fix those bad sectors.

Use Windows ReadyBoost to speedup the computer

Windows ReadyBoost is a new concept in adding memory to your system. It is like increasing RAM capacity by installing new Ram card. But here you can use a normal USB flash memory as a RAM card. This feature comes only with Windows Vista.

Installing another RAM card can be cost effective or there may be no slots available in your motherboard. This can be a cool solution for those who face problems installing new RAM card. Using this method you will increase your computer's Random Access Memory and it always increase the speed of your computer.

Why computers slow in speed

Computers can sometimes slow down over time. Some computers operating slowly since the first day. This is usually happens in third party computers. (Not in branded computers) Third party computers assembled collecting hardware, and there may be incompatible hardware parts with each other. When assembling computers people do not concern about the specification of each part. But it is very important to get maximum advantage from a computer. If you assemble a computer with incompatible parts those devices do not operates with their best performance. To work computer in it's maximum speed, all the hardware parts should work in their maximum efficiency. So if your computer operates slowly than expected since the beginning, check your hardware configuration again.


There are a number of ways and issues that slow down a computer speed after working properly for some time. Those issues can be fixed by getting knowledge about following areas.

Check for viruses

The most effective reason for slow down is virus attack. Viruses are special programs written to run with windows invisibly and to interrupt the normal computer process. So the virus not only interrupts the process, but also take some space from the memory to run itself. There are different kinds of viruses in the operation today. Spyware, Trojans, Adware, Malware, etc are always slowdown the computer speed, even some of them are not harm your computer.

To get rid from those you need a good virus guard to be installed on your computer. Several virus guards been introduced today by various institutions. Some of them are free and some are charge by annually. But the important thing is virus guards may too slowdown your computer speed. So you may think it's better to have malwares or trojans in your computer than a virus guard as both of them slow down the speed. But There are several virus guards which does not effects the computer. They run in the background them self without slowing speed and protects your pc from virus attacks.

Kaspersky virus guard (all versions) is currently working well. It will not effect the computer speed. But there are several configurations you must do. If you do so you can be protected from viruses.

It is not enough you install a virus guard and waiting to be protected. You must update it regularly. If you have internet connection to your computer normally virus guards updated automatically. If not, you must update it manually. There are several methods to update virus guards.

Remove Temporary Files

Windows XP installed machines usually creates temporary files while operating the computer. There are several methods included in windows to remove those unnecessary files from the computer. But most PC users do not care about clearing up those unwanted files from the computer.

To clean temporary files from your computer :
Open My Computer ==> R click on drive C: ==> Properties ==> Disk clean up ==> Check unwanted files ==> OK

Check for unnecessary programs which were automatically installed and running in background

Most PC users do not realize that their computers are probably running a number of unnecessary programs in the background that tie up system resources and slow down the system. Sometimes these programs display an icon in the system tray. These programs starts automatically with windows and running in the background without making changes in the desktop. Those programs will use system memory to run and reduces the memory power to be used for usual applications. They can be prevent from starting with windows by deleting the desired file in startup folder in start menu. (Start ---> All programs ---> Start up). These kind of programs usually installed automatically from internet.

Do not copy your data (Songs, videos & other essential files) into primary partition. (Normally Drive C:)

If your windows operating system installed in drive C:, do not fill it up with your data. Low drive C: space will probably slow down the speed of your computer. Do not copy your data into desktop or My Documents too, as the desktop / My Documents also belongs to drive C:. A general rule of thumb is to maintain at least a gigabyte or two of free space on the primary hard drive. If you already have your data in drive C:, move them to any other partition of your hard disk.

Defragment your hard drive

When working on computer for a some time the hard disk become very fragmented. That is, the data on the drive is scattered all over, rather than being organized into discrete areas. This causes the PC to slow down because it has to search so much for any data. The Windows defragmenter (usually found under the Start Menu/Programs/Accessories/System Tools) comes with Windows and is an adequate diagnostic tool. Remember to run the defragmenter over night, since it usually takes a few hours to finish the process.