5 Super Portable Diagnostic Programs

Portable applications are a tech's best friend. Luckily, there are many portable applications resources now, such as PortableAps.com. More and more applications are written for portability and there are numerous advantages for this. Below are five of my favorite Portable tools.

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1. Ccleaner Portable - My favorite Registry cleaner and repair tool in one.  This helps remove broken windows registry entries and gets rid of browser cache and cookies.
2. Revo Uninstaller Portable - This great tool removes junk that an unwanted program's uninstall routine leaves behind.
3. EasyCleaner Portable - This complements CCleaner.  It's great at helping you remove files from a full Hard Drive.  The Space Usage tool shows how much space each folder takes up.
4. SuperAntiSpyware Online Safe Scan - The best malware scanner I've used to date.  Only issue I have had with SuperAntiSpyware was it didn't work in Safe mode.
5. Recuva - This little app helps undelete files you may have deleted.  This app is from the makers of CCleaner.

What tools do you use to help maintain your pc?  Share your treasured utilities in the comments.

Books I recommend

• You can buy the Learning FreeNAS: Configure and manage a network attached storage solution book if you are looking for a good reference book.
• Network Know-How: An Essential Guide for the Accidental Admin
• Absolute FreeBSD: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD, 2nd Edition
  

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Print Server Properties

Did you know your Windows XP Printers and Faxes tool contains more options in Server Properties?

I had not realized this until recently, even though I've been using Windows XP for years! To get to the Server Properties options, click on File - Server Properties (see screenshot below).


Now you have the option of removing Drivers and Ports from your "print server", along with additional Advanced options. So now you can remove those pesky drivers that won't go away after uninstalling the applications from Add/Remove programs. In the advanced options, you can get rid of the notifications you usually get when a print job you sent to a network printer has completed, as well as change the location of the Spool folder to improve printing speed.

Hope this tip helps you make better use of your pc and the print services it contains.

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Speed Up Your PC

Photo courtesy of WTL Photos

A friend of mine recently contacted me about his Windows XP machine being very slow. We had the following conversation over an IM session (the names have been changed).

[12:23] BOB: I am having a bunch of problems with my pc - I click on things and nothing happens - I have to click multiple times and even then there is a delay. is there anything I can do?
[12:33] me: hey
[12:33] me: Did you try uninstalling apps?
[12:33] me: defrag may help as well
[12:39] BOB: I don't know what all that means
.....

I used TeamViewer to remote into the machine and take a look. At first, I thought maybe it had something to do with a virus problem that was recently addressed. Upon looking at the issue, I noticed the machine has not been restarted in several days and the machine was very low on disk space. My first recommendation was to restart the machine, which helped. On top of that, the drive was very fragmented, so I asked him to first uninstall anything he didn't need and move files to another drive to free up disk space.

In troubleshooting computer issues, before you begin anything, always remember to ask yourself "What do you want your computer to do faster?". Defining and writing down the problem and coming up with possible solutions should be the first step. This being a Frugal blog, I always like to mention free or very low cost solutions. Below are some basic things that you can do, for free, to speed up your computer.

• Make sure you have restarted (reboot) your computer before anything. See my post on how to fix 90% of pc problems for why you should do this first.
• Make sure you have 10% or more disk space free. You can check this by right clicking on your C Drive and choosing properties. So if you have a 100GB disk, you should have at least 10GB free. Defrag will not run well, or run at all if you are running low on disk space.
• Free Up Disk space using tools such as WinDirStat to help you figure out where the biggest chunks are.
  
• Run Chkdsk - to fix basic disk drive issues
  
• Run Defrag - to get rid of fragmentation, or at least to reduce it.
  
• Check to See if Anti-virus is scanning your system, often times this will slow down your computer. Its probably a good idea to reschedule the time to when you are away from your pc, but it is still on, such as lunch time.
• Uninstall Applications - having too many applications installed and especially having them start up when you boot or login to your computer can slow down even the fastest machines.
• Reinstall your OS - this should be your last resort, since it will require hours if not days of work doing backup and reinstall of your OS and applications.

These are the general things that you could do to speed up your computer. What steps do you take to speed up your computer? Let us know your ideas in the comments. If you like this post, check my Twitter account for more tips and tricks or subscribe to my blog for regular updates (it's FREE). As always, if you need additional help contact me via email.

Getting To Know Your Computer

I often find the need to figure out if my computer system or a friend's system can run a new software program. Most software has minimum requirements and you can check your computer specifications in various ways. If you are running windows and need to know quickly there are two ways to do this for free, without additional software. The first option is to use the Windows Help and Support menus, which provides a great deal of information on its own. I highly recommend anyone who wants to learn more about their computer to use this resource. The other tool is the System Information application MSinfo32.exe.

To get to the Help and Support system (pictured above) following the below steps:


Click Start -> Help and Support -> Computer Information (left pane of the screen)

From this, you will get the very basic information you are looking for such as:

• Model of your computer
• MFG Service Tag numbers
• Processor Model and speed
• Physical memory Installed (RAM)
• Operating System (XP in this case)
• OS version number

To get additional information you can run through similar steps in Help and Support using
Start -> Help and Support -> Performance and Maintenance -> Maintaining your computer -> Get Information about your computer -> View general system information about this computer.

However, I prefer to use MSinfo32.exe, which can be used to view information on remote computers as well. To start it do the following:
Click Start -> Run -> Type in msinfo32.exe and you will see the following window.

This application will give you nearly all the information you want from your computer, including the summary from the above tool, hardware resources, software installed, internet settings, office application settings and possibly other information depending on your setup. Under the Tools menu, you will find 5 other useful tools: Net Diagnostics, System Restore, File Signature Verification Utility, DirectX Diagnostic Tool and Doctor Watson (My Favorites in Bold)

While writing this post, I came across another website called Network Clue, which had a good list of tools to use for the command line in Windows 2000 and XP. I hope you have found this post helpful, and you have learned a little more about your computer. What tools do you use to gather information about your computer?