THE DETH OF A FEIN OLDE COMPUTER
Alas, my oldest and most prized computer - one which I had received well used, that was put to pasture by a corporation I worked for (and which I had continued to use for eight more years) - died last week. A machine I had upgraded from an AMD K-6 200 processor to use an AMD K-6 350 processor. It still used the old mouse - you know, the one before the PS2, sorry, I don’t remember what it’s called any more, but the one that has the large plug where you need an adapter for a PS2 mouse to work.
The power supply fan had stopped turning over three months ago, but since I have had the case open for the past four years anyway, and was blowing a wonderfully powerful little Honeywell fan directly inside the case 24 hours a day it didn’t matter. I’d already replaced the (always underpowered) power supply on it once or twice.
After a few spontaneous boots (something that happens as soon as it gathers too much dust inside) I took the PC outside to blow it out. It was pretty dusty and so I did a thorough job. Upon plugging it back I went through a little trouble - the CPU fan and case fans turned, but there were no beeps. I reseated everything including the RAM, no good. Then I checked the power leads and re-sat them. FIZZLE. I heard a little fizzle. That was all. Now dead. I could probably revive it again - but I learned all there was to learn from it. Thank you little old computer - you have taught me how to optimize a computer to the point that (almost) no matter how little resources the average person’s PC has - I can make it race again.
Tools I use to accomplish this easily are: EndItAll.exe, ProcessExplorer.exe, Process.exe (batch files can be custom created to kill any process - including kernel files and services), a nice little process tree ending utility called Procexp.exe, Windows Services (stopping themes on XP is a must), stopping indexing on the HDs, running ”fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1” from the command line, cleaning up the RUN section of the registry for both HKLM and HKCU, and in cases where there’s a GB of RAM or more (Mine had only 392 MB) also going in to the HKLM “Control” section of the registry and tweaking both Session Manager/Memory Management and Priority Control. Sygate Personal Firewall is good, WinClam antivirus is good, FireFox set up with “No Script” is good. FoxitReader (PDF reader to replace Adobe Reader) is good, Open Office BSD and Thunderbird together replace MS Office nicely.
Programs that spell the death of speed gains include: Norton Internet Security. Great programs for REALLY screwing up network access are Zone Alarm. Way too complicated for novice users. I’ve seen more problems with misconfigured firewalls than just about anything else… and Norton Internet Security needs a special tool to remove it that will NOT let you remove it until you also remove every other Norton/Symantec product from your computer first. AOL spells HELL for those of you who grew up with the lollipop of AOL in your mouths and are thus permanently and irrevocably addicted to it. AOL use is like some sort of religious experience for some, and there is NO conversion or un-brainwashing them to stop using it EVER. The reason always given is “Because my friends use AOL, so I have to use it”. Each and every new AOL upgrade is larger than the entire Windows 95 operating system, making me wonder - what is it exactly that AOL needs just to get someone on the internet?
Anyway, dead. Now I’ve got another “retired” computer (given to me by a retired woman whose son gave her a new one) up and installed, running exactly the same OS and the same programs I had on the old one a LOT faster than before (because it’s not the equivalent of a PIII).
