Computer Repair Las Vegas is taking you through a journey, we will discuss in next series of articles why exactly you computer becomes slow and what to do about it.

Just about every home computer deals with the problem of a slow computer at some time or another.

You know how it goes… Your trying to send an e-mail or check out a new web site you heard about, and you can’t because your slow computer has 10-20 programs running in the background that you have no idea what they are or how they got installed on your computer.

Almost every computer today has numerous programs and items running in the background taking precious processing power away from what you want to be doing.

This article will shed light on all the background processes that happen in your computer so that you can better understand exactly what factors contribute to a slow computer.

We will discuss how to eliminate these unused programs and background processes as well as show you how to tweak various system settings to revive your slow computer to the fast sleek machine it once was.

Basically, there are 3 main areas that are the cause of a slow computer. We will discuss each area briefly, in later articles we will get into the details of repairing each of these areas.

The 3 main areas to look at when diagnosing the root of a slow computer are:

1. Resource hungry programs

2. Spy-ware, Viruses and other malicious programs

3. Physical Hardware Limitations

Resource hungry programs

Many times the root of a slow computer can be found by looking at what programs are running on your computer. Many new computers come with what are called trial-ware programs. Trial-ware are programs that are installed on your computer from the factory. Many times these pre-packaged programs are useless, they do nothing more than to hog the precious resources on your computer. I have seen cases of clients where the trial-ware pre-installed on computers was consuming up to 30% of resources of the computer! These computers were running slow from the factory, it is in these types of cases where the computer will actually run faster than what the client remembers it to be due to the fact that we free up this used memory so the overall performance of the computer is increased!

The second biggest resource hungry programs are Virus Scanners.

In today’s world you must have some sort of virus protection if you want to be protected on the Internet. Unfortunately many of these virus programs create more of a headache than the viruses they are meant to protect us from.

Most virus scanners do more to create a slow computer than most other items due to the following factors.

• Active Scanning – Virus scanners scan all activities of your computer in the background (File access, e-mail messages, Internet traffic, system services, etc etc.)

  All this scanning has the overall effect of creating a slow computer.

• Many Virus programs themselves are large programs that load In memory and take up valuable resources that your computer could be using more efficiently.

We will discuss in later articles what to look for in choosing the right virus scanner as well as configuring it to be effective without the side effect of eating up all the resources of your computer.

So the first step in curing a slow computer is identifying what programs you do not use and removing them from your startup. You also need to identify what active virus scanners are in memory and optimize them so that they do not eat up all your computers resources.

Spy-ware, Viruses and other malicious programs

Most everyone has had a run in at one time or another with a virus or pop-up while surfing the Internet. It starts innocently enough, you get a pop-up on your screen asking you to sign up for a free vacation and the next thing you know you have a slow computer, tons of garbage e-mail, and more pop-ups than you know what to do with.

Spy-ware and Viruses have been the root of more slow computers than anything else. These programs consume valuable resources, cause random errors, and basically make you hate your computer.

Physical Hardware Limitations

The hardware in your computer is of course a concern when looking at the root of a slow computer. Although many times you can upgrade your hardware to fix a slow computer, if you haven’t addressed the previous issues, the programs that reside in you memory will eventually consume the new resources and you will be left with a slow computer again. I look at it this way, if your computer was a fast machine to begin with, there is no reason that it can’t be again.

This article was just an introduction to the basics of what is behind a slow computer. In later articles from Computer Repair Las Vegas we will show you how to remove and repair the bottlenecks in your computer. You may live with a slow computer now, but by the time we are done, you won’t have to!

Computer Repair Las Vegas also encourages you to check out our System Tune-up service.

]]> http://lasvegascomputerrepairnv.com/computer-repair-las-vegas-why-is-my-computer-so-slow-part-1/feed http://lasvegascomputerrepairnv.com/computer-repair-las-vegas-surf-like-a-madman-increase-your-firefox-surfing-speed http://lasvegascomputerrepairnv.com/computer-repair-las-vegas-surf-like-a-madman-increase-your-firefox-surfing-speed#comments Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:33:08 +0000 admin http://lasvegascomputerrepairnv.com/?p=23

Computer Repair Las Vegas would like to bring you a great article on how you can increase how quick your web pages load while surfing the internet. If you have any questions on the tips provided in this blog post, please use our contact page to send us any questions you may have!

FireFox looks to be the browser of choice for most bloggers. It runs circles around Internet Explorer and to me is just much easier to use.
If you haven’t switched to FireFox I strongly suggest you take it for a spin.

FireFox is great as you can use multiple tabs and surf like mad all within the comfort of one window.
It has a sweet Session Restore feature that is great when your computer bugs out on you, you can just restart FireFox and it will bring up all the last
pages you were viewing, no need to retrace your steps to figure out what you were looking at last. Very convenient!

And now, to add to all that, there are some sweet tweaks you can perform that will increase your FireFox surfing speeds up to %20!
FireFox is installed with default settings for a dial-up connection.. Why is this? Who knows, but with the majority of internet users now using high-speed broadband connections, you need to optimize FireFox to take advantage of this extra bandwidth.

So use these following steps to juice up your FireFox browser, and surf like a madman!

1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return.
Type “network.http” in the filter field, and change the following settings (double-click on them to change them):

2. Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”

3. Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”

4. Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to 30. This will allow it to make 30 requests at one time. Originally I tried 100 here and it didn’t seem to help. When I went with
30 I noticed an improvement. ** Update 8 is actually recommended by Firefox **

5. Right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it
acts on information it receives.

Leave a comment and let me know how much of a speed improvement you get, I am curious to see if it is the same for everyone of if it depends on other factors. With these tweaks, I had a marked 20% increase in surf speed.

If you have any trouble setting this up, no worries, just leave a comment and I will step you through the process. By the way, thats what Computer Repair Las Vegas is all about. Getting you Help when you need it… Get Some!

At Computer Repair Las Vegas we get this question asked a lot. In this article we will discuss how to detect if someone is spying
on your computer.

Many people are concerned that someone could be spying on their computer and they should be. Users today keep all kinds of critical information on their computers such as bank statements, passwords, e-mail, accounting data, and much more.

Many times users report suspicious behavior such as being automatically kicked out of programs, mouse moving by itself, and other random computer behavior. Although this behavior is cause for alarm, it does not necessarily mean someone is spying on your computer.

So how can you be sure no one is spying on your computer? Well you can follow a few simple steps to inspect your computer for any strange programs that may be set up to spy on your computer.

Windows XP and Windows Vista both have a built-in feature called “Remote Desktop”. This feature as the name implies, allows someone to remotely connect to your desktop from the internet and use your computer. This is a great tool for people who want to use their home computer while they are at the office or traveling. It can also be a great tool for administrators to help with issues on users computers without having to be physically at the computer they are helping with.

The good news is that if someone were to logon to your computer using the Windows built in “Remote Desktop” feature you would know it. Windows would instantly kick you out to your logon screen and notify you who was connected to your computer.

This is useful information due to the fact for someone to connect to your computer WITHOUT you knowing it, they would have to use some third-party program referred to as remote control software. So what we need to do is detect if any remote control software is loaded on your computer.

Follow these steps to ensure no programs are currently spying on your computer:

First check your programs. Go to “Start Menu” and “All Programs” and look to see if programs such as VNC, RealVNC, TightVNC, UltraVNC, LogMeIn, GoToMyPC, etc is installed. If any of these programs are installed then someone may be able to connect to you computer without you knowing.

Next, Check your taskbar. If any of the above programs are currently installed they need to be constantly running for them to work. If they are currently running there will be an icon in your taskbar. Look over all the programs in the taskbar, if there are programs that you are unsure about, google them to find out what exactly they do.

If at this point you have not found anything, you will need to dig a little deeper. Remote control software can hide itself in many places, but it still has to create an open connection to the internet. This connection is very hard to hide and can be detected using special utility tools.

The best utility I have found to look at all the open connections on your computer is TCPView by Sysinternals. When you run this program it will give you all kinds of useful information. It will list all the open connections on your computer along with what program is associated with each open connection.

Your next step will be to run TCPView and look at all the programs associated with the open connections on your computer. I understand that many of these programs may be foreign to you. That is why I suggest you use an online tool such as ProcessLibrary. Just enter in any program you are unsure about into ProcessLibrary and it will let you know what the program is for and if it is safe to have on your computer.

If you have not found anything suspicious after following these steps you can be rest assured no one is spying on your computer. If you have any questions on the different programs you find while using this article, feel free to start a Live Chat or e-mail us via our Contact Page the programs you are unsure about, and one of our qualified techs will be happy to assist you.

Computer Repair Las Vegas also has a unique Virus and Spyware removal service. We will remove all your spyware and viruses as well as secure your computer against programs spying on your computer. More Information >>>

Before we get into the nitty gritty of removing these buggers it will be good for you to know just what each of these pieces of Malware do to your computer, as well as the symptoms of their horseplay and what to avoid so they do not get on your computer in the future.

So lets begin!

Spyware by design — exploits infected computers for commercial gain. It is estimated that 9 out of 10 computers connected to the Internet are infected with Spyware. Why has it grown so tremendously these past few years? Well, as with most things in life, it is motivated by one thing: Money!

The basic purpose of Spyware is to monitor your activities on the Internet as well as collect various types of personal information to report to advertising agencies so they can be more effective at targeting products to your interests.

Spyware is typically installed on a users computer in deceptive ways.

Many times Spyware will come bundled with a piece of shareware or free software. When you install the free software Spyware will install itself in the background. Although the desirable software itself may do no harm, the bundled Spyware does. In some cases, Spyware authors have paid shareware authors to bundle Spyware with their software. In other cases, Spyware authors have repackaged desirable free software with installers that add Spyware.

Let me repeat: Spyware will piggyback on legitimate programs and install themselves in the background without the users knowledge.

Spyware will also use the Trojan horse method. A deceptive pop-up message is displayed disguising itself as a legitimate error message.

Many times these error messages mention something along the lines of:

These messages persuade you to click and install this piece of software. This software is usually a piece of Spyware that will download many of its friends creating an even bigger problem for you!

The installation of Spyware frequently involves Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer is tightly integrated with the Windows operating system and has many vulnerabilities that Spyware authors can exploit. These vulnerabilities allow Spyware to install Browser Helper Objects into Internet Explorer which add tool bars or redirect your browser traffic. Many of these vulnerabilities can be fixed by keeping your computer updated with the latest Windows updates or switching to an entirely different browser such as Firefox.

Spyware commonly interferes with your computer by:

1. Installing additional programs and tool bars in your Internet Explorer without your consent..
2. Causing your computer to become unresponsive or perform sluggishly, making you want to toss your computer out the window.

I have tried to keep this information to a minimum and give you just the basics of Spyware. If you would like more information on Spyware, the Wikipedia on Spyware is a great source.

Now that you know what Spyware is and how it affects your system, where it comes from and what to look for, let’s move on to removing these parasites from your computer.

Computer Repair Las Vegas - Kingdom Computers is dedicated to bringing you valuable information to make you a more effecient computer user. Be sure to check back often for updates to our help desk section.

Spyware, Adware, Viruses and pop-ups plague just about every computer that isn’t adequately protected. Most of the time you are unaware of them, but when they become a problem, you know it. It is the most common problem that plagues computers, from sluggish response, to wonderful pop-ups offering you every conceivable gimmick or cool toy you can think of on this planet, to redirecting you to some strange place on the web you never intended to be. All this type of behavior is undoubtedly traced back to some sort of Spyware, Adware, or Virus running on your computer.

I compare these nuisances to the common cold. Every computer will have a problem with them at one time or another, so it is a good idea to know what they are and what you can do to stay free of them.

Well, in the next few days I will be posting a series on how to remove Spyware and Adware from your computer and take you on a little journey on the inner workings of your Windows system.

This knowledge will help you in the future to know when you have a virus or Spyware infection and to understand the source of the problem so that you can take the correct steps in fixing the issue yourself.

So be sure to check back in the coming days to enjoy this information. I look forward to hearing from you to what you think of this guide and any topics or areas you would like me to focus on in upcoming posts.

If you want to just get rid of your Spyware and Adware right now without the real substance of the matter just skip ahead to the nitty gritty. I will be posting a quick and dirty guide that will get your system cleaned of these nuisances. You will be up and running in record time!

Computer Repair Las Vegas - Kingdom Computers is dedicated to bringing you valuable information to make you a more effecient computer user. Be sure to check back often for updates to our help desk section.