17th May 2002

It's been a mystery that even a super sleuthing pooch couldn't solve: the inevitable performance decrease which comes from using a Microsoft operating system over a period of time. This hit has been most evident in Windows 95 and 98, though Tomas Edvardsson may have stumbled upon something that would work for those of us with newer revisions of the 32-bit kernel. "This tip is so simple, it's most likely a waste of time - but it's often the obvious that one can't see. Is Windows 2000 or XP starting to run sluggish? My one year-old installation did. I didn't want to reinstall everything, so I created a new user (with Admin rights, of course). Crisp as a newly printed dollar bill. WOW! Like a brand (spanking) new install. Then, I went back to my 'old' account and copied / moved the files and settings (don't forget to export the accounts as well - saves a lot of re-typing). Well, this might not do anything for other folks, but on my machine, it beats all other 'tweaks' hands down. I think the OS slowdown was caused by all the dirty uninstalls, changed hardware, etc. I have yet to see a Registry cleaner that does '100 percent' of the job. This would do it, though." I love those odds.


Bonus Tip

Here's a bonus tip from John Sigwalt: "I thought I was the only one in the whole world who had multiple reloads of XP. The most important thing I discovered was to go to Start | Control Panel | System. Click on the Advanced tab, then in the 'Startup and Recovery area,' click the Settings button. UNCHECK the box that says 'Automatically restart.' After you uncheck that, when XP bluescreens, you can read the error message. Step two is to boot into the recovery console (which is an option when you boot from the XP CD). I've done this so often that I have the recovery console as a boot option. Open Windows \ system32 \ config, make a directory named 'Restore,' and copy every file from the Config directory that did not have an extension on the file name into the Restore directory. XP won't let you touch these files when you boot into it, thus the need for the command line recovery tool. After you have done that, you can quit reloading XP!"

He continues: "The next time you bluescreen, write down the name of the corrupt file and reboot into the recovery console and enter three simple commands. (1) 'CD' to your Restore directory (which you previously created. (2) COPY all the files in the Restore's Software directory into the Config directory. (3) EXIT. When you reboot, boot into Safe Mode. It starts with a screen that asks if you want to enter Safe Mode or use System Restore, so you click the button (I think it is the NO button) that starts system recovery. Pick the date previous to where you think your problem started and let it do its thing. When your PC reboots, you are back where you started from. I've had a half a dozen bluescreens since I discovered this and was able to recover from all of them in less than a half hour each time. Just thought you might like to know." Well, another safeguard can't hurt!