I went on a camping trip with my son and his Cub Scout pack this weekend. While we were camping, after the kids all went to bed, the parents were all talking and we got on the subject of computers and internet (one of my fav topics), and I was surprised at the number of people that said their computers had been slowing down, and they didn’t know how to fix it themselves! Some of them offered to pay me to come over and fix their computer for them but, it’s something you can do by yourself, and FREE. So, instead of taking money from people in these hard times, I thought I would right a short tutorial on how to fix up your computer and get back the speed it had when you first bought it, using tools you can download online completely free!!

OK, so here we go! I suggest you print this page and then follow the steps that way, or you can add this page to your favorites tab so you can get back to it because you’ll be restarting your computer a lot during this process!

First thing is an anti-virus program. A lot of people are using Norton Anti-Virus, which is (in my opinion), one of the worst things you can do. When a virus is made by one of those evil hackers, he usually designs it so that Norton does not recognize it until it’s too late because everyone knows that most people do use Norton! Also, Norton eats up way too much RAM!

A free solution to this is Avast Anti Virus. Download their free anti virus program and install it. After you’ve installed Avast, restart your computer. When it boots back up it will automatically do the first full scan. This may take awhile depending on how many files you have on your drives, so go grab a drink and watch a TV show or something. When it has finished, you should move everything it finds into the vault, or delete them. Then, restart your computer again.

Note: Be sure to un-install any anti-virus program you already have installed, before you install Avast.

The next thing to do is to check your registry for errors and corruptions. For this you need to download Eusing Registry Cleaner. This is a free registry cleaner that will not ask you to purchase an upgrade when you try to remove the errors that it finds! A lot of those scamers are doing that. You download a free tool, and then when it finds errors, you have to pay for the program in order to remove or fix the errors! ~:(

Install and run Eusing Registry Cleaner. Get rid of anything it finds. Then, restart your computer.

Now we target adware and spyware and trojans, Oh My! The best free anti spyware tool is (again, my opinion only), Adaware from Lavasoft. Download their free software and install it. After installing, run the program and get rid of anything it finds, then restart your computer again.

Now, you want to see what all is running in the background of your computer. Click on “Start”, then click “Run” and type in [i]msconfig[/i], and click OK. A window will pop up, click on the “Startup” tab at the top of the window. On that screen you will see all the programs that load up and run when you start your computer. Go through the list and uncheck anything that you do not want to automatically run when you start your computer. Be sure to keep the anti virus program checked. If you used Avast, the one listed above, the anti virus will be shown as “ashDisp”, you can leave that one checked but, uncheck everything else. After you have unchecked all the programs that you don’t want to run, click “Apply”, and then “OK”. You’ll be prompted to restart your computer, go ahead and restart. After you have restarted you’ll see a little box that says something about ” You have just changed the blah blah blah”, go ahead and click and your good.

Another good tool to use and have around is MalwareBytes. Download and use that to get rid of any malware you might have on your computer. Download and run that tool and then restart your PC. A lot of restarting I know, sorry!

You should also use a browser hijack recovery tool. You can get a free one here. Download and install that free tool and then restart your PC.

Now, what I found most interesting when talking to the other Cub Scout parents, was that none of them had ever done a disc cleanup, or a disc defragment on their PC before! You should do a defrag at least every month!

To do a disc cleanup, click Start >> Programs >> Accessories >> System Tools >> Disc Cleanup. Select your main drive and click OK. Usually your main drive is “C”, unless you’ve changed it.

After you have run the disc cleanup, it will ask you if you are sure you want to delete the files in the selected folders. Go ahead and put a check mark in the “Temporary Internet Files”, “Recycle Bin”, and Temporary Files”, and then click OK.

Then, you want to do a disc defrag. To do that go to Start >> Programs >> Accessories >> System Tools >> Disc Defrag. Click the defrag button and then go get another drink because it might take a little while to complete.

After you have defraged your computer and restarted it, you should see a HUGE increase in speed and performance. If you still have problems, you might want to look into reinstalling Windows, or using a recovery disc. Another option is to do a system restore but, again, you should only resort to those measures if the tools above don’t work for you, which I hope they do!

Good luck!