Do you keep your car tuned and change the oil regularly? So, why is it that most people don't seem to take the same rudementary care with their laptops?

If you laptop doesn't seem to be as fast as it was six months ago, then you need to clean up the hard disk and remove some of the viruses and spamware programs that have accumualte on your hard drive.

It is reasonable easy to do so.

First Check for Errors. Windows comes with a utility that will check your disk drive for errors. Open My Computer and right click on any drive and select Properties. The click the Tools tab and check the hard drive. If you have multiple partitions you will need to check each partition.

Clean your hard disk. There is a lot of wasted space that accumulates on your laptop from temporary Internet files, downloaded program files, unused applications, temporary files, etc. You can find out how much space you can free up and delete these files by going to Start> Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup.

Defragment your hard drive. When you check the hard disk following the above instructions when checking for Errors you may have noticed Deframentation status tool? This tool rewrites all the data on the ard drive into contiguous, sequential sectors, which allows the read/write head to quickly find data rather than have to move back and forth all over the drive. It make head seeks much faster and the result if a faster computer.

Run your AntiVirus program and your SpamWare program. You should run these both at least weekly. You should probably have 2 of each of these programs, as each of these programs do not seem to know about all the viruses and SPAM software that is out there. You should run these in the deep search mode and at least monthy run them several times each.

A nice, free tool that will analyze all your laptops components, is www.pcpitstop.com

Modify the paging (virtual memory) settings. Try right-click My Computer –> Properties –> Advanced. Click on the first settings button and change the paging to custom. You should set it to 2.5/3 times the size of your RAM. You may get your RAM speed by right-clicking on My Computer again–it will be near the bottom of the box. Increasing the paging, also known as the virtual memory, may help your system a little.

You can also improve performance if you are running Windows XP OS by turning off Visual Effects. Windows XP has a huge list of visual special effects, such as animated menus, fade effects, cursor shadows, menu shadows, etc. Turn these off and the computer runs faster.

1. Select Start | Settings | Control Panel | System
2. Click the "Advanced" tab.
3. Under Performance, click "Settings"
4. Check "Adjust for best performance" box and click "Apply" to apply the settings.

In many cases it probably does not much matter how long it takes the Windows OS to load. I have a Win 98 S/E laptop sitting at home on my kitchen counter that takes 3 minutes and 11 seconds to load. I don't really care because I start the laptop and usually do something else until it has booted.

In my case it takes so long since it needs to load the two virus prtection programs (Norton & AVG). It also loads the network related devices/drivers for our DSL connection. In other peoples cases it would load dialup networking and the modem drivers. The more protocols and applications you load, the longer it takes. If you want to see all the stuff that loads go to start/find/files/type msconfig and double click on it and click on the various tabs at the top and you can see all the stuff that loads at boot.

I have no choice about the drivers and software I am loading, as do most people. You could uncheck unneeded items in msconfig helps but you have a NIC or modem in your machine, that's the cause, and as long as you wish to stay connected to the internet, you'll have to learn to live with it. However, unless you know exactly which applications and drivers need to boot when you computer starts I would not mess with msconfig.

There are things you could do to speed up the boot time, if you must: upgrade your processor (not very cost effective, if doable), increase your RAM (128MB is the most you typically need, but more might help if you load a lot of applications simultaneously), when installing programs, deselect options to start the new software automatically when windows starts, and permanently disable autostart features in applications that are not necessary and empty your Recycle Bin daily, and consider resizing it if you have a large hard disk. You can find Ways to Keep your Windows Computer Running OptimallyFor users of Windows 95 and Windows 98:

http://www.davesite.com/computers/windows/#updates

If you want to use an application that will help you do this you might try a startup manager:

– http://www.miclone.com.au/startupmanager.htm
– http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

A slow boot might be caused by your Task Scheduler, a program added to Windows 95 (in the Plus! Pack) but standard in Windows 98. It's able to launch programs when Windows starts up. These programs are hidden from the MSConfig list. If you can't seem to get rid of a program that starts up with Windows, the Task Scheduler might be starting the program. You can remove it from Task Scheduler's list. You can find the Task Scheduler by going to: Start/Program/Accessories/System Tools/Scheduled Tasks.

If you're using Windows XP, try BootVis, a free Microsoft utility that speeds up your machine's boot time, sometimes substantially. If you use another version of Windows, check out Kirk Steers's BIOS tutorial

http://yahoo.pcworld.com/yahoo/article/0,aid,107870,00.asp

Does it matter which operating system (OS) is on your refurbished laptop?

Some background first:
The original personal computer (PC) operating system (OS), CPM, was created in 1974 by Dr. Gary Kindall while working for Intel. In 1981 Microsoft PC-DOS and MS-DOS came with the original IBM PC. The popular Windows 3.1 OS was next and ran on the Intel 486 based PC's debuting April 1992.

The Intel Pentium processor ran Microsoft Windows 95 starting in August 1995. Win95 can still be found on early Pentium computers and works fine for some applications. It is sufficient for e-mail, word processing, spreadsheets and web browsing.

Windows 98, released in June of 1998, included integrated web browsing which gave the desktop a browser-like interface. Microsoft has stated it will provide support for Win98 until June 30, 2006. Windows 98 S/E (2nd edition) is a very stable. The research firm IDC, estimates that over 58 million copies of Windows 98 were installed worldwide at the end of 2003. Win98 is an excellent OS and most people are very happy using it, and it's a fine choice for Pentium, Pentium II and Pentium III laptops.

Windows 2000 was created in 2000 and was designed for the corporate marketplace. It requires at least a Pentium 133 MHz CPU and 1GB of disk space.

In September 2000, Microsoft released Windows ME (Millenium Edition), which is aimed at the home user. It was not very popular and did not sell very well.

Microsoft started selling Windows XP on October 25th, 2001. Its new Product Activation feature makes it all but impossible to install a single copy on more than one PC. It requires at least a 300 MHz Pentium processor, 128 MB RAM and 1.5GB Hard Drive space. However, it runs painfully slow with that hardware and at least a PIII 800MHz or faster CPU with 256MB of RAM should be seriously considered as a baseline hardware requirement. There is no reason to buy WinXP and install it on older laptop hardware.

Today (2004) Microsoft has five OS for mobile computers (Mobile Pentium 4-M, Mobile Pentium 4, Mobile Celeron, Pentium M, Celeron M).

Given the above history, does the OS matter? Win95 is fine for simple applications like e-mail and word processing, but if you can afford it go with Win98, do so. Win98 is a much more stable OS and will be supported by Microsoft until the middle of 2006.

Should you change the OS to Windows XP? I would not! If you can get past the cost of paying close to $200 then consider how much effort will be required to make the switch. If you are not technical and don't have a lot of patience and don't want to take on a challenging endeavor you should pass. Consider the OS to be like the engine in your car. Have you ever considered changing it? If Microsoft had not spend millions of dollars promoting XP, most people would not care much about it.