Of course, everybody hates it when the start menu pops up an hour after you click it in the morning, grab some breakfast, watch tv, grab lunch, go to the mall, catch a flick in the cinema, grab supper, get food poisoning and die all on a Sunday (well, mabey not the last two parts). Time to put Microsoft's faults in a cardboard box, mail 'em to 123 Nowhere ST and forget about 'em. (OK mabey I got a little obsessed there).
Also if you're too lazy to turn off your PC at night, keep it that way and save power. (See step 5)
1. Defrag Defrag Defrag!
It's important to keep your hard drive organized so your computer can find files quickley, so I made a batch file. A very simple one. (Before continuing, please note that this one only woks for WinXP Pro). This batch file will, as you can probably aready tell, defragment the C drive everytime it is run (If your system drive is not C, please change the "C" to the drive letter of your system drive [the drive with WINDOWS on it]). You can set this batch file to run every time you shut down your PC. It may take an hour the first time, but after mabey the second time, it will take 20-30 seconds max.
DEFRAG C:
EXIT
Copy and past the code above into notepad and save it as "defrag C.bat" in the directory "C:\WINDOWS\system32\GroupPolicy\Machine\Scripts\Shutdown". Now open GPedit (Click run, type "gpedit.msc" and hit enter). Click the plus on "Windows Settings" under "Computer Configuration" and click on "Scripts (Startup/Shutdown)". In the right pane, double-click on "Shutdown". In the dialogue box click "Add". Click "Browse" and open up the "Defrag C.bat" file. Click "OK", and "OK" again". Close GPedit and never have to defrag your hdd manually again, unless you don't turn off your computer much at all.
2. Organization
Organizing your entire hard drive is a pain for some people. Others simply don't know what to do. Well here's a list of things to keep you busy for an hour:
-Use Add/Remove Programs in control panel to uninstall unused software.
-Get a Spy-ware/ad-ware remover (ie: AD-Aware from
www.lavasoft.com), run a scan every week and remove those infections.
-Organize all your stuff in folders and keep folders neat.
-Get CrapCleaner from
www.ccleaner.com to delete unneeded temporary files and useles registry entries (Use with care).
-Tons of Icons on your desktop slow your PC down. Get rid of 'em.
3. Making menus show up faster
Some people are so pickey and changee the menu pop-up speed to a lower value. I say just CLICK ON THEM!
20x simpler.
4. If you have a computer slower than 1.2 GHz, or very slow, it's better to dissable the Windows Luna theme. If you don't know how to do that then you need to learn a little more about Windows XP before you move on to mantenance.
5. Actually, if your too lazy to turn off your computer at night, there's a way to keep it that way, and save power. Paste the following batch file script in to notepad.
SHUTDOWN -s -t 20 -c "Shutting down your PC"
EXIT
Save it as "shutdown script.bat". Go to scheduled tasks in control panel and add a task with this file and set your own time you want your computer to shutdown. Just incase you want to bypass the Shutdown when the file runs, there is another batch file you can run to abort the sutdown. Paste the following batch file script in to notepad.
SHUTDOWN -a
EXIT
Save it as "Abort Shutdown.bat" on your desktop or in a quick access area like the All Programs menu. Open it whenever a box pops up saing your computer is shutting down but you're stull busy on it.
I'm tired now so I'm gonna stop thinking (Does that sound as stupid as I think it does?). I'll probably think up some more things later on.
