Upgrade Your Desktop RAM

One of the most inexpensive and effective ways to boost your computer's performance is to add more or upgrade your RAM. For a brush up of what RAM does for your computer and how much you need, read my earlier post here.

• Establish if you need an upgrade. To do this reboot your computer without opening any applications. Open the Task Manager (Ctrl+alt+delete for Windows XP and Windows 7. Start > Task Manager in Vista) and click the performance tab. If your available memory is hovering around 50% or less, then this means you're using half or more of your memory just to boot up Windows. Once you start opening applications, you're most likely maxing it out or getting pretty close to it so you could use an upgrade.
• Use the application SIW to figure out what kind of memory you have, how many slots your motherboard has, and how much memory your motherboard can support. See my post about SIW here if you're not sure what it is or where to get it. In the example below, you'll see I have 2 gigs of DDR2 RAM, 4 slots available, and my motherboard supports 4 gigs total. I'm going to purchase 4, 1 gig modules of DDR2 ram to replace my existing 512 modules.

• Go find the best deal you can! For shopping tips, check out my post here.
• Gather your new memory, the tools I described in my last post and your unplugged computer and lay them out on a hard table top. Carefully open it up, you may need to unscrew small screws from the back to do so. (Make sure to carefully save them!)
• Locate your existing RAM, and remove each one by gently pushing down on the clips on either side of each module, and carefully pulling it out of it's slot. Make sure to only hold the RAM by it's edges, and avoid touching the circuits on the side or pins on the bottom. When I remove RAM, I like to take it out and lay it in such a way, so that I know which direction it was installed. This makes it easy when lining up the notch in the pins on the bottom of the new RAM modules. You know exactly which way it's supposed to go. Oh these clips are dusty, time to break out the canned air!

• Again, holding it only by it's edges, carefully line up your new RAM module and gently push down until the clips pop into place. This does require some firm pressure, but not too much. If it's a strain, check to make sure you've lined it up correctly. Again, that notch in the bottom needs to be lined up the right way or your RAM just won't go in.

• Take a final look to make sure all of your new RAM modules have been installed correctly. They should all be flush, nothing should be sticking out. 
• Close your computer up, plug it in and boot it. Run SIW again to make sure all of your new RAM is recognized. If it isn't or if you received an error on boot, unplug it, open it up and re-seat the RAM.
• Now sit back, relax and enjoy the performance boost!

What's a defrag?

If your computer seems to be running a bit slow, one of the easiest things you can do is defragment or "defrag" your hard drive. If this is something you've never done before, you might notice quite a nice performance boost when you're done. It's time consuming, but very simple, and it's something you can just set to run and walk away. Before we get into how to go about this, let's go through what fragmentation is in the first place.

When we think of our hard drives, we tend to think of them like vast, open, linear space. But your computer doesn't see it that way. Puny human brains! Windows sees your hard drive in a series of clusters, all the same size. I like to think of this series of clusters as a big bag of identical Legos. Windows will assign however many of these "Legos" to each file, depending on its size. The picture of you on a fishing trip may get one "Lego" while the video of you falling out of the boat may get 3. Now, your computer does not need these "Legos" to be kept together, it can still read them if they are separated to make room for more information. Over time, this happens a lot. You install programs and uninstall others. Add data and then delete it. Your "Legos" get moved around and separated from one another. After a while, it's about as tidy as the t-shirt table at Old Navy around closing time on Black Friday.

Now remember we said that Windows didn't need to keep all of the "Legos" from your file together to read them, but it does eventually make them slower to access. Imagine you are now trying to put the "Legos" together to read your midterm paper, and instead of being all lined up in a row, they are spread out all over your house. Even if you know exactly where they all are, it's still going to take longer for you to run around and put them together than if they were all neatly in one place. This is how a fragmented hard drive can slow your computer down over time. Like trying to recall all 50 states upon returning home from a healthy dose of nitrous oxide at the dentists office.

It's good practice to defragment your hard drive every few months or so, and Windows even has a built in utility to do so. You can access it in the Computer Management area of your Administrative Tools in the Control Panel. I'm not taking you through step by step, because I am not too jazzed with the performance of the built in utility. It reminds me of cleaning my room when I was a kid by  throwing everything in the closet. It looked tidy but wasn't really thoroughly clean. Instead, I'm going to have you use a free application called UltraDefrag. Download it here, and follow the installation wizard. Open it up and click the "Analyze" button to get a break down of how fragmented your drive is. Now, click the "Defragment" button and let it do its job. Easy peasy freesy...just how I like it!

Sneaky installs

Beware the sneaky install! What's a sneaky install? Well it's what I call it when you're trying to install one thing, and another application comes along for the ride. It's not even that the stow away software is necessarily bad, it's just it's not something you signed up for. It takes up space and memory, can slow down your boot time, and can invoke rage when it pops up in the middle of something important, like slaying virtual dragons.

A perfect example of this, is McAfee Scan Security Plus. This little nuisance likes to install itself when you install Adobe Flash Player, which everyone needs to get their funny cats fix on YouTube. It will then constantly pop up asking to scan your system, then try to sell you solutions. If you've been following this blog at all, you've probably already procured yourself a nice free little antivirus solution and have no need for their snake oil. Removing it is not hard, you simply have to access the add and remove programs feature in your control panel, find it in the list and click uninstall.

Why do they do this? Well, it's not an evil plot to drive you to the verge of madness, even though it seems like it. They're all in it for the money. And we can't even really be mad at them, because often times we're benefiting from the free software they created. All you can do is try to avoid installing what you're not interested in.

There's no real secret to avoiding these little tag alongs. You just have to pay attention and read the fine print. To avoid the example above, all you had to do was uncheck the box that said "Install McAfee Security Scan Plus" on the Adobe Flash Player download screen. Other software sneaks in during the actual installation process, which is why it is key to read each step of the installation wizard carefully before clicking the continue button.

Nothing about this information is all that technical, but it's a reminder to be mindful when working on your computer. We all get tired and click happy sometimes and every installation seems to look the same. But if you're not careful, you may just end up with more than you bargained for.

My computer is infested!

So you clicked on Claudia Schiffer naked, huh? Or maybe you tried to find the latest episode of True Blood on some nasty video sharing website and now you're being inundated with pop ups that offer everything from penis enlargement to expensive fake spyware removal? What do you do now? Well, first of all, don't panic! This happens to everyone...even me. It's nothing to be ashamed of, there are baddies all over the internet just looking for a way in.

A few years ago, while trying to remove the Vundo trojan from a client's machine, I discovered Malwarebytes. It's a delightful little application that does the absolute best job at removing viruses, trojans and spyware from your machine. And the best news is that it's free for home use! Download it here and run the simple installer. I like to start by doing the quick scan, removing anything it finds at the end then running a full scan. After that's done, reboot and scan again.

Now you may have a particularly ugly trojan that blocks Malwarebytes from installing or functioning properly. If this is the case, you can try installing it and or running it in Safe Mode. If you do not know how to get into Safe Mode, I've typed up some directions here.

Even if your computer is not obviously infected with anything, I highly suggest installing this application and checking every so often anyway. You may find something you didn't know was there. Or if you do manage to catch a virtual sneeze, so to speak, you'll be really happy you already have it installed and ready to go. Happy surfing!

Free Anitvirus

There are three things I look for when deciding what antivirus software to use.

1. Is it easy? Download, installation and continued updates should be easy and automated.
   
2. Quiet monitoring is a must. I have no patience for software that hogs precious resources or constantly pops up requesting my attention and money.
3. Cost! I'm a firm believer that there is no need to pay much if anything for safe web browsing.
   

There is a lot of software out there that fits the bill, but my current favorite is Avast! which can be downloaded here. You can upgrade to a paid version, but most home users will be fine with the free version. During the installation, it will try to install Google Chrome for you so if that's not something you're interested in exploring, make sure to check the bubble that ops for the "express installation" without Google Chrome. Enjoy!