KEEP YOUR PC RUNNING SMOOTHLY
9 Clean up PC memory
The quickest way to free up memory when you start running short is to reboot, but that interrupts your work and requires you to save your work and quit every program you’re running. A better alternative is to use memory-cleaning software to work out which data your memory chips no longer need to retain, and clear it out.
Mem Reduct does this by using features that are difficult for users to access. Visit www. snipca.com/42059 then click ‘memreduct-3.4-setup.exe’ to download it. It should launch automatically once it has installed to show how much physical and virtual memory you have – and how much is free.
Of our 7.85GB physical memory, we were using 57 percent ( 1 in our screenshot above right) when we first ran Mem Reduct, along with 38 per cent of our 11.9GB of virtual memory 2 . After clicking ‘Clean memory’ 3 , the virtual memory figure remained the same, but the figure for physical memory dropped to 25 percent. We recouped just over 2.5GB of usable memory that our active programs could put to good use.
10 Analyse your hard drive
As the place where you store all your photos and files, it’s important you keep your hard drive healthy. SeaTools, from Seagate, works with any brand of hard drive or SSD, and can help you to monitor its condition. Click ‘SeaTools 5 (Windows)’ in the Downloads section at www.snipca.com/42061 then work through the instructions.
Once it’s up and running, you’ll see a list of all the drives installed in your PC. Start by selecting the one you want to analyse, clicking Quick Tests (see screenshot below left) just below the Health tab, and picking Short Self Test. This tests all aspects of how the drive is working, but doesn’t perform any random tests on the read/write area itself. It took around three minutes to complete this test on our internal Intel NVMe SSD.
For a more thorough test, click Extended Tests and choose one of the options. The ‘Long Drive Self Test’ goes beyond the Short Self Test by performing limited checks of random sectors of the drive’s data storage surfaces to check that they aren’t corrupted. The ‘Long Generic Test’ checks every sector, rather than just random areas, while the ‘2-minute Generic Test’ limits the number of spots it checks to reduce the working time.
Should the tests reveal any problems, immediately make a complete backup of your drive (or at least your User folder if you only want to secure your data and not your programs) before exploring the Fix All menu. This has two options: Fix All Short and Fix All Long, which both perform a thorough check of every sector and, when they find a problem, carry out a fix or move the data in that location to an alternative spot on the drive. The ‘Fix All Long’ option is well-named, with Seagate’s documentation advising that it can’t be interrupted and may take as long as one hour per terabyte to complete.
11 Disable your startup items
Limiting the number of programs that run when your PC starts means your memory and processor capacity can be devoted more fully to the software you’re actively using. It can also reduce the time it takes to get Windows ready for action.
WhatInStartup (www.snipca. com/42062) reveals which programs your PC runs automatically, and lets you switch them off. Select one that you don’t need and press F7 to disable it. As you can see from our screenshot below, we’ve disabled seven programs on our PC – highlighted in grey, with ‘Yes’ listed in the Disabled column.
You can easily re-enable a program by selecting it then pressing F8. If you want to take more drastic action, press Ctrl-Del to remove a program from the startup list entirely. The software itself won’t be deleted, but it will stop running when Windows starts.
12 Choose the right Wi-Fi network
Even the most basic of modern routers is capable of hosting two networks simultaneously. One usually runs at 2.4GHz, while the other runs at 5GHz, with the former being slower but spreading further, and the latter providing better performance, but degrading more quickly as it passes through walls and floors. Often, choosing between them depends on where you’re going to use the connection, more than it does on the specs of the router itself.
When faced with the task of choosing the best network, you might immediately go for the fastest option, but that’s not always the right choice. A network’s stated speed will be a measure of the maximum rate supported by the router, and you’ll only ever see that kind of performance if the signal reaches your PC under optimal conditions. It will rarely do that.
Acrylic Wi-Fi (www.snipca.com/42064 – click ‘Download for Windows’ in the ‘Free download’ box to the left) helps you choose the best network to use in any location. It does this by visualising not only its speed, but also the quality of the signal at that location in your home. When you’ve installed it, click Acrylic Wi-Fi Home from the list of options on the program’s home page.
Click the Max Speed column header ( 1 in our screenshot below) twice to order the networks with the fastest at the top. If it’s one of your own, click it, and check the status bars and graph below to see how strong the signal is at your current location. Although we own both the Brecqhou-5G2 2 and Ovingo 3 networks (and most of the others), we prefer not to use Brecqhou-5G2, despite it supporting a higher maximum speed, because the graph suggests average performance, while Signal Quality, in the status bars, is almost exactly half way between best and worst. Ovingo, however, while supporting a lower maximum speed, has full bars for both Signal Quality and Transmission Speed 4 , and a line that consistently cuts a higher path on the graph - see the green line 5 . The higher signal quality suggests that we’ll get a more reliable connection even though the theoretical maximum speed supported by that network is lower.
13 Check if someone is stealing your Wi-Fi
If your Wi-Fi starts feeling sluggish, or you’re on a capped broadband contract and frequently approaching or exceeding your bandwidth limit, an unauthorised device might have piggybacked on to your network.
The simplest solution to this problem is to change your network password, via the router’s configuration pages, but doing so disconnects all the devices you’ve authorised yourself – not just computers and tablets but also any ‘smart’ devices you have around the home. Reconnecting them can be a time-consuming business that you want to avoid if you can.
NirSoft’s Wireless Network Watcher (www.snipca.com/42076) lists all the devices connected to your router, so you can check them and – if you recognise them all – avoid the hassle of changing your password. As well as device names, and details of who made the network adapter in each one, it shows their IP addresses, which sometimes link through to a configuration of information screen if typed into a browser. Thus, where our network is hosting an unnamed device at 10.0.0.17 (see screenshot above), for example, typing that into a browser leads us to the login screen for a wireless network booster that we know is ours. It’s therefore not a threat and we know we can ignore it.