Some of my favorite Windows Add on Programs:

Launchy - A nice unobtrusive launch bar that disappears when not in use and let's you quickly and easily launch programs and web pages. If you have windows indexing on, this one's not as needed for Windows Vista and 7 when you can use the start menu blank. There are a ton of add ons for it for the more technically inclined to allow you to post to twitter from it, run code scripting, etc.

K-Lite Codec - Great package for watching numerous file types in Windows media player or use...

VLC Media Player - Great little video program and tends to have most codecs available.

Agent Ransack - I like this one as I'm not a big fan of some of the funky things they've been doing with Windows Search and like to turn indexing off to get max performance out of my machines with a minimal services load.

Console2 - Great Windows CMD command line replacement. Is tabbed so you can run multiple sessions in one window and you can rename the tabs so as to know what each one is for.

Autoruns - From Microsoft Kind of like MSCONFIG on steroids. Lets you really see what processes and program threads are running in the background to a great degree.

How to Run the Dell 32bit diagnostics

All information on this site is furnished in a general manner and can have errors, oversights and so cannot be expected to cover every specific scenario. Please research any information used with Dell documentation or contact their tech support if any clarification is needed

With troubleshooting problems, it can sometimes be difficult to tell when a problem is caused by Windows software issues or when other factors like hardware failure might be causing a problem. One way you can test hardware issues outside of Windows is to run the Dell 32bit diagnostics which can be thought of as a separate operating system running from a different area of the hard drive.

To start Dell diagnostics, on notebooks you could hold down the FN key while you press in on the power button. On either notebooks or desktops you can restart the compuer and tap the F12 key a couple of times when you see the Dell logo screen .

The next thing you will see is a boot menu, at this screen the diagnostics option will be the last item on the menu, usually labeled either "Diagnostics" or "Utility Partition". Use the arrow keys to choose whichever of these two you have at the bottom of the menu and then tap the enter key to get things started.




or



A series of short Preboot Assessment tests will run from a blue background. At the end of these tests, you will get the option to proceed to the full tests area by tapping any key (usually the Enter key). If you're asked to choose between system tests and memory tests, choose System tests. From there, the next step I usually recommend is clicking on the Custom test as you can test anything you can think of, including memory from there. There are a lot of different test options so feel free to try any of them, they are non-destructive (but the extended test is very time consuming so keep that one as the last/final test option).

Preboot Assessment:






If you choose Custom tests, here's the screen you would see to allow you to choose which specific tests you want to run. Just click the hardware to test and click the run test button on the bottom.



Quick description of the main hardware testing categories:

Express Test: A quick test of most of the hardware. Usually takes a half hour to an hour to run.
Extended Test: A long in depth test of most of the parts on the computer. Usually takes a few hours to run. I rarely recommend this test, the length of time it takes to run is usually longer than it's worth.

Custom Test: Allows you to test 1 part at a time with varying amounts of depth.

Another type of test not shown here but that is very common to see is Symptom Tree which can run batteries of tests based on the type of problem you're trying to fix (system getting hot, etc.)

Here is an example of Custom Tests which gives you a menu and all you have to do is to click on the item on the list you want to run and then you'd click on the run tests button at the bottom of the screen.

Computer Performance Part 3

All information on this site is furnished in a general manner and can have errors, oversights and so cannt be expected to cover every specific scenario. Please research any information used with Dell documentation or contact their tech support if any clarification is needed

Researching programs shown in MSCONFIG

So you've opened up MSCONFIG and it's startup tab to troubleshoot how many programs are running at startup. It's not always so easy to determine what some of those beasties are that are running at startup. Maybe you've tried to put the names of the programs in to the Google search engine to see what you get. Maybe you're getting way too much information there or the information that you see is conflicting. What I recommend next is to visit a site that has an index showing what a large number of these items are. One of my favorites is http://www.castlecops.com/StartupList.html. It has a search engine just for this type of research.

Click on Pictures to see larger Versions


My Original msconfig startup list


I notice that one of the programs on my list is named "ADU" so I go to the castlecops site, put ADU in the search blank and then I get a list of possible programs it could relate to and how safe they are to disable.



List from Castle Cops of possible programs ADU could be:


The site ranks the programs it returns with some letters to rate how important it is to keep or remove them:

KEY:
"Y" - Normally leave to run at start-up
"N" - Not required - typically infrequently used tasks that can be started manually if necessary
"U" - User's choice - depends whether a user deems it necessary
"X" - Definitely not required - typically viruses, spyware, adware and "resource hogs"
"?" - Unknown

So based on these responses, I think it's likely this is related to my Cisco Aironet wireless card as msconfig does show it loading from an Aironet folder. It gives it a "U" for user's choice, and I think I'll leave it so that my wireless card program will load automatically when I restart my computer.

CastleCops has a lot of other good features. Here's a video with an overview.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNKawLPky5A

Computer Performance Part 2

All information on this site is furnished in a general manner and can have errors, oversights and so cannt be expected to cover every specific scenario. Please research any information used with Dell documentation or contact their tech support if any clarification is needed

Using MSCONFIG part 2

On the last post I had given the basic steps to get into msconfig and had gotten to the point where we'd opened the startup tab to see which programs get loaded when Windows starts up.

You can uncheck the items on the list and then if you click the "Apply" button and then the OK or the Close buttons, the next time you start the computer, the unchecked programs will be kept from running. This will not uninstall the program so the programs can usually be opened manually if you want them by finding their program icon. If you determine you do need the program to be run win Windows starts, you can open the program, recheck the box next to it, click Apply and OK/Close and then the next time you restart the computer it will be loaded again.

The next step is to determine which programs to uncheck and which ones to leave. The programs you can safely disable to free up resources are instant messagers and media players (yahoo messager, AIM, MSN messager, etc.), media players (movie and music playing software like iTunes, realplayer, qttask aka quicktime), and adobe reader and associated programs. I recommend leaving any programs that seem to be associated with your computer's security (antivirus, firewall programs for example) except in special circumstances like if you're troubleshooting the security program itself, you have multiple conflicting security programs, etc. If you're going to disable your security program/s, I'd recommend disabling your network adapter/wireless card or unplugging your ethernet cable prior to restarting the computer.

Determing what the different listings are from the startup tab can some times be difficult and take some research. I'll mention a few things here to get started but will be covering this topic in more depth in the next post. The first thing you can look at is the location listing next to the list of programs. It's listed under the column named "command". It tells you where the program loads from, and some times that's enough to tell what the program is. Some of the directory listings are long so you may need to hover over the dividing lines between the sections and then drag the section open further to see the full path.

Computer Performance Part 1

All information on this site is furnished in a general manner and can have errors, oversights and so cannt be expected to cover every specific scenario. Please research any information used with Dell documentation or contact their tech support if any clarification is needed

Step 1 Use MSCONFIG to Clear Out the Cruft

You bought this computer a while back and when you got it out of the box it was zippy, fast and speedy. What happened? You barely use it but now it slows to a crawl and gives you all sorts of error messages.

There are quite a few different causes of this but I will start by covering those that are easiest to look at and deal with. The first thing I want to talk about is what some people call "The Cruft". This is shorthand for an accumulation of programs that run in the background in the computer. Many programs don't need to be running all the time or may need to be uninstalled completely.

When you start getting an overabundance of them trying to run all the time, it can manifest in a couple of ways. Boot times can get slower and slower, programs can conflict with each other and slow the computer down to a crawl, or cause bad behavior and error messages and cause you to have problems getting the computer to shut down.

How does this happen? A bit of history is in order here. Windows have never been particularly good about advertising that a program has been added to the startup locations on your computer. When you download and run certain necessary programs on your computer, you may also be installing others you weren't aware you were installing. For an example, I recently installed Nero on a computer and hidden on one of the installation screens was a message asking me if I wanted to install the ask.com toolbar on my computer. It was checked as if all people installing Nero were assumed to want to install it. If I hadn't specifically unchecked the box that was set to be checked, and told it not to install, it would have gone ahead and put it on my computer. Unfortunately this deceptive practice of making people opt out rather than having them opt in to install extra programs has become very common.

How does one research all of the programs that the computer runs when it starts? You could run one of a number of different programs, but the one that I will cover briefly in this post is msconfig. I'll cover that first because it's been a default program in the last few versions of Windows so most people have the program even though they might not realize it.

To open msconfig, which is a shortcut name for the system configuration utility, in Windows XP you would click on your start button, click on RUN and then type in "msconfig" at the blank and click the ok button. Once you open the program, you'd then click on the startup tab to see a list of the programs running when Windows boots as the checked items on the list.

Here's a video I found on youtube which does a great job explaining the basics of getting in to use msconfig: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0_47ewwVrg





Stay tuned for the next installment as I offer more detail on how to use MSCONFIG to speed up your computer's performance.

Determining how important a driver update is

All information on this site is furnished in a general manner and can have errors, oversights and so cannt be expected to cover every specific scenario. Please research any information used with Dell documentation or contact their tech support if any clarification is needed

To Update or Not to Update, that is the question!

Sometimes you will wonder "should I do some preventive maintenence and see if there are newer drivers for my computer?". Some updated drivers can make your system run better but it's difficult if not impossible to give an absolute answer on which ones to update. It can be very hard to determine exactly which ones will make your computer run like a well oiled machine and which ones will grind your system to a halt. It can be argued that "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"... Although to change that to computer terms, I would say "If it ain't broke, create a disk image" or "If it ain't broke, create a full back up" or at the very least, create a system restore point. Do this before you go and tweak around with the software workings of your computer. In general, Dell marks their drivers in terms of relative need so that if a driver fixes a very big problem, it can be marked so that you can know about it.

As in my previous post, to get to your drivers, you'd start at support.dell.com, go to "I'm looking for drivers or downloads" enter your service tag, confirm the Windows version and then start looking through the driver categories by clicking on the "+" symbols next to them. To check the relative importance of an update, you'll see that there's an "importance" field to the right of the name. In general, if you see recommended, it's a good idea and if you see urgent, you should probably run the update. I'll repeat again... sometimes the best ideas can have unintended consequences... so whenever possible "back it up, back it up, back it up" before making major changes to your computer.

Locating Drivers on the Dell site for a Windows Reinstall

All information on this site is furnished in a general manner and can have errors, oversights and so cannt be expected to cover every specific scenario. Please research any information used with Dell documentation or contact their tech support if any clarification is needed.

How to locate and download the Drivers on Dell's Site

This is best done before the reinstallation if possible. Download the drivers and burn them to a disk or save to a USB flash drive. The quickest way to find your drivers would be to go to http://support.dell.com/ and click on the drivers link " I'm looking for Drivers and Downloads" and then enter your service tag.

Be sure to double check which version of Windows is displayed. The site gets this wrong sometimes.

Once you are on the correct page, the one showing driver categories, you will need to click the "+" symbols next to the categories to expand them and then you will see the links to click on to start your files downloading.

Screenshots:

A guy on youtube put together a nice video showing how to do this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Gs_pWbT44

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Gs_pWbT44

Installing Dell Drivers after a reinstall of Windows... Part 1...

All information on this site is furnished in a general manor and can have errors, oversights and so cannt be expected to cover every specific scenario. Please research any information used with Dell documentation or contact their tech support if any clarification is needed.

Quick Version: System software first, chipset installer 2nd, security program before installing network related drivers.

If you should have to manually reinstall Windows on a fairly recent Dell computer... There are some thing you should know about reinstalling your Drivers. There are quite a few that are unique to Dell systems and there is an order to follow to get some of them to reinstall correctly. On a Desktop computer, you'd need to reinstall the Desktop System Software first, and then secondly a Chipset driver of some sort (usually an Intel, AMD or nVidia). On Notebook/Laptop computers it would change only slightly, You'd need the Notebook System Software first and then the Mobile Chipset driver second. If these 2 types of drivers aren't installed first, some other drivers and programs will not install correctly.

After these are installed, the driver installation order isn't as critical but there is a general order to follow after this which I recommed, Video driver, Antivirus/Security Software, Network drivers for Ethernet and Wireless, Mobile Broadband as applicable, Audio, Input Devices, Dial Up Modem, etc.

Dell has a link to their recommendations and my order is just slightly different from theirs:

Downloading and Installing Drivers in the Correct Order
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?&docid=1A0C0937D62A8739E0401E0A55174744

If you are having difficulties getting Vista to run consistently over the internet, and your computer is sitting behind a router or other network device doing firewalling, you may want to look at the autotuning feature and turn it off. The general idea of this feature is pretty cool, it checks the network connection on a very regular basis to see how large a packet it can send, optimizing network performance. The rub is that many routers and other network gear that supports firewalling features don't appreciate being pinged all the time and may end up dumping your connection after a while. Microsoft's own document about this feature and how to turn it off can be found at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934430

the syntax for turning the feature off at a command prompt is:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled