Expert tips which actually aren't

[Dazaster]

We all know how Windows slows down after a while, probably due to Bill Gates being asmatic(lie). When this happens many people start scouring the net, reading pc mags and asking questions on forums about what to do. For the most part the advice is sound but pretty commonplace - declutter, clean up this and that etc... But every now and then you read something and think hmm that sounds good, I'll try it. This weeks winner is from a pc mag which shall not be named, sounds like PC A.....r, in which that old chestnut, speeding up boot times, is advised upon. The suggestion is thus: run msconfig, go to boot tab, select advanced options, there you will see two unchecked options for selecting the number of cpu's and how much memory to use during boot-up. Select max for both and reboot. Do the same again and select the make it permanent option. Sounds good - if I'm only using one core and minimum ram to boot, you'd think using more cores and max ram could only be better, right. Maybe, maybe not. So far(2 days with these options enabled) there is no significant difference in boot-up time. At all. At this point 'experts' will moan "yeh, but it might not work for all machines coz ov, um, all the different hardware and stuff" Man, am I sick of 'that' answer. So, if not usable on 'average' machines, what machines are these tips for? Pentagon supercomputers? I blame IBM, builder of the original 'IBM AT PC' which licenced the design to any manufacturer who wanted it, but whom, it appears, don't know the word 'standard'.

Anyway, the point is, having owned many PC's since the IBM 286, very few 'expert tips' have actually been just that and really worked on whatever rig I was running. There is good advice out there, I know that, things that work and once used are used again and again. But so much more seems to be, in a nutshell : a load of crap. At the end of the day there's only two options : 'reformat&reinstall'; or 'upgrade'. Sigh. Maybe I should just get myself an abacus. Hmm, I heard about a really cool graphics boost for an abacus the other day....

[bben46]

"yeh, but it might not work for all machines coz ov, um, all the different hardware and stuff" Man, am I sick of 'that' answer. So, if not usable on 'average' machines, what machines are these tips for?

 

Like the man said, your mileage may vary. And there s no such thing as one size fits all. Every manufacturer does something different so what do you mean by average machine? One from Dell or one from HP ? or maybe an Acer or Lenovo?, they really are different - I do know because I have worked on many of them. Then again, different models from the same maker can be quite different also. Now, if you change a component, add more memory, a new Graphics card or an enhanced keyboard - again it's no longer the same system and may react differently to the 'fix'. Now we get into the bucket of worms that is what software is installed, what OS, what utility progs, what drivers. Even if your hardware is factory original and is exactly like the other hundred thousand with that model number the software makes it a diferent computer. So as for the supposed fix that makes something faster - Try it. if it works - great, if it doesn't work but makes things worse undo it. If it doesn't seem to do anything at all, - well, you have eliminated one troubleshooting tool from use on this one computer and it didn't hurt anything.

[Dazaster]

"yeh, but it might not work for all machines coz ov, um, all the different hardware and stuff" Man, am I sick of 'that' answer. So, if not usable on 'average' machines, what machines are these tips for?

 

Like the man said, your mileage may vary. And there s no such thing as one size fits all. Every manufacturer does something different so what do you mean by average machine? One from Dell or one from HP ? or maybe an Acer or Lenovo?, they really are different - I do know because I have worked on many of them.

 

So the 'tip' will work on the 'experts' machine and , maybe, 10% of all other machines out there then. And no harm done? No but a lot of time wasted trying these ideas out only to find they don't work for your particular machine as usual. Also, the OS is a one size fits all scenario because it has to be able to run on any amount of different hardware and get along with shedloads of software and the OS is what most of these tips are aimed at. In the same magazine there's an article on professional(i.e. charged for) cleanup utility software like Ashampoo Winoptimizer, CCleaner and System Mechanic. There is a before and after graphic which shows mostly no or occasionaly very tiny improvement or in many cases worse results. No doubt all of these programs contain settings based on many different 'tips' but again, very few work. As you state you've worked on quite a few PC's I'll presume thats in a professional capacity and I'm reasonably sure that when its not a case of installing new drivers or uninstalling bloatware often the best solution is still to backup the hardrive and R&R(reformat/reinstall). And that, at the end of the day, seems to be the only true 'one size fits all' solution.

[Fonger]

At the end of the day there's only two options : 'reformat&reinstall'; or 'upgrade'.

so

 

which of these two expert opinions will you follow

[Jeux]

Troubleshooting is all about running through a list of "possible options/solutions." Always was. Because there rarely is a sure solution to hardware problems. Like bben46 said, there are endless combinations and configurations of PC components, OS, drivers, etc.

 

I get what you're saying, you're sick of there never being a REAL answer. But honestly, even life itself rarely gives us answers that are absolute....

 

Oh, and don't ever get into programming with that outlook on fixing problems. Debugging would be HELL for you.

[Jeux]

Nice post btw.

[Dazaster]

@Fonger - lol good point

 

@Jeux (1st post)- tried it, it was. ----->(2nd post) is that sarcasm? I can never tell.

[Jeux]

no sarcasm there :biggrin:

[Draakon]

*cough* Boot time = The time it takes between pressing the power button and starting to load your OS stuff into memory. Boot times will only differ by motherboards, to be more precise, your BIOS. You can only increase OS loading times, by having a SSD and a vast amount of RAM with fast timings (read: clock speeds for RAM).

[Vagrant0]

*cough* Boot time = The time it takes between pressing the power button and starting to load your OS stuff into memory. Boot times will only differ by motherboards, to be more precise, your BIOS. You can only increase OS loading times, by having a SSD and a vast amount of RAM with fast timings (read: clock speeds for RAM).

People always obsessing about boot times... I've never noticed an issue, even back in the days of Windows 95... You turn the computer on, you go to the bathroom or grab yourself something to drink, come back and the computer is all loaded. Even if you end up having to reboot in the middle of something, is a minute of downtime to reflect on your desk clutter really going to kill you? And really, that's all you're usually trying to shave down unless you have a whole mess of programs at startup.

 

Havn't reformatted since I built my current rig (although I really should think about it someday) and havn't noticed any significant slow down in startup that isn't just related to those programs that I want to load at startup. And the speed of those programs loading is kinda something which can't be changed much since they're of the sort that you don't want on a SSD (like anti-viruses which need to update frequently) and which also require processor load. There are so many factors related to boot speed and most of them aren't simple solutions.

 

What it really boils down to is keeping a system clean of extra programs, trimming your registry every now and then, defragging, making sure you don't have any spyware installed, and making sure you shut down properly.

 

Or, you can keep your computer running near constantly, rebooting about once a week and you'll never notice.