FIX THE FILES THAT ARE KILLING YOUR PC
1 CORRUPT DRIVERS
Why bad drivers cause crashes
Bad drivers are just as much of a menace on your computer as they are on the road – but at least on the road they’re easy to see. Old and corrupt drivers are tiny files buried deep inside your PC, and they can wreak destruction for years before you figure out what’s going wrong.
Drivers tell your hardware what to do. Every piece of hardware inside your PC or plugged into it – from motherboard to mouse – needs a driver to “drive” it. You can see all your installed hardware in Windows Device Manager (see screenshot left). To open it, type device manager into Start and press Enter.
Despite their modest size and uncomplicated role, drivers are notably accident-prone. They go mysteriously missing, fail to update, get left behind when hardware is uninstalled and – as with other file types – get corrupted.
The resulting problems can easily be mistaken for signs of a malware infection. Bad drivers mainly cause unexplained crashes and malfunctioning hardware, which ultimately means a malfunctioning PC.
Fix drivers using built-in tools
When your PC and its components start behaving badly, the Device Manager is your first port of call. At first glance, all you see is a list of hardware categories (‘Storage volumes’, ‘Mice and other pointing devices’ and so on). Work through the list, clicking each dropdown arrow to see all installed devices in that category. Click ‘Show hidden devices’ in the View menu for important system hardware.
Look for the device (or devices) you’re having trouble with, then right-click it and click Update Driver Software. Some drivers can also be disabled or uninstalled via the right-click menu.
If a device is marked with a yellow exclamation mark in Device Manager, its driver is corrupted or not installed properly. Delete the device in the list, restart your PC and let Windows re-detect the device. You may then have to reinstall the driver from the manufacturer’s website. Use the Properties option in Device Manager to jot down details, such as the driver’s full name and version (see screenshot above).
Create a system restore point before making any changes to device drivers, whether they’re hidden or not. It’s a good habit to get into before making any system-level changes to your PC.
Weed out Blue Screen drivers
Nirsoft’s free, fast, portable tool Bluescreenview ( www.snipca.com/ 17390) is designed to diagnose the infamous ‘Blue Screen of Death’ – the screen you see when your operating system (OS) has suffered a fatal error (Windows 8’s blue screen includes a “sad
face” emoticon, as if to rub salt into the wounds). The diagnosis usually involves a dodgy driver, so this safe tool is brilliant for weeding out misbehaving driver files.
When you run Bluescreenview it lists all the DMP (memory dump) files saved by Windows during blue-screen crashes, along with the exact error message that appeared. You can then run the message through Google to find out which driver was the culprit and how best to fix it.
If one particular driver keeps coming under suspicion ( graphics card drivers are common culprits), it probably means that driver is faulty, corrupted or even missing. Its associated hardware may even be damaged. Update the driver using Device Manager, and if that doesn’t work, you should consider a hardware upgrade.
2 SYSTEM-TRAY HOGS Why system-tray icons are a problem
At the extreme right of your Taskbar you’ll see a collection of system-tray icons. Some of these icons may be hidden in a pop-up box that appears when you click a little arrow; you can move any system-tray icon to the box by dragging it into the space above the Taskbar (see screenshot below).
Every icon represents a running program, and each program may be responsible for a number of running processes, so the system tray is an important clue to the secret processes grinding away inside your PC.
Some of the icons are important and reassuring. Your antivirus should have an icon in there, for example. Right-click it for options (Settings, Pause and so on), and left-click it to open its program window.
Other system-tray icons, however, are just parasites. They represent running processes that are leeching your PC’S resources without your knowledge. They can appear and disappear from the system tray willy-nilly, like flies at a barbecue, and some are as hard to identify as insects because they provide little or no information about their associated program.
Find and kill system-tray hogs
You kill processes using the Task Manager, right? Indeed you can, and on page 70 we offer six Fast Fixes for making Microsoft’s tool easier to use. But even at its smoothest, Task Manager is a blunt instrument. It assumes a certain level of knowledge about running processes that most of us just don’t have. It’s great if you know what process you want to stop, but the thing about unidentified hogs is that you don’t know what they are.
Our favourite Task Manager alternative is the free, open-source program Process Hacker ( http://processhacker.sourceforge. net). Its installable version is Pup-free with no hidden charges, and there’s also a portable version ( www.snipca.com/ 17399) that you can store on a USB stick and run on any computer (XP and later).
Unlike Task Manager, Process Hacker lists all processes next to the program that triggered them, along with their system-tray icons. Items are organised in a ‘tree’ format, so you can click a program to open a list of its processes, then click it again to close it up. This is especially useful if you use Chrome and programs by Adobe, whose processes are scattered throughout Task Manager with no rhyme or reason.
Right-click any item for options (see screenshot above), including Terminate, Terminate Tree (end the process and all its sub-processes) and Create Dump File (dumps the process’s current memory load).
To get even more out of Process Hacker, click ‘Choose columns’ and decide which extra columns to add. Columns like Start Time and Virtual Size can help give an even better insight into what’s throttling your PC.
Also look at Process Lasso ( www. snipca.com/17400), which lets you create rules to prevent certain processes running under certain conditions. Anvir Task Manager ( www.snipca. com/17391) is also worth a look, but it tried to smuggle something called Reg Organizer on to our PC and fill our Desktop with shortcuts. All shortcuts are processes, and every extra process chips away a little bit of your PC’S life force.
Definitely avoid the free tool System Tray Cleaner ( www.snipca.com/17392). Its installer insists on sticking Wajam on your hard drive, and that’s too high a price to pay. We’re supposed to be saving your PC’S life here, not finishing it off.
3 UPDATE SCHEDULERS
Why you don’t need update schedulers
Many of your PC’S background-running processes have honourable intentions, such as keeping your software and plug-ins up-to-date. Software updates are vital for your security (we devoted a whole Cover Feature to their importance in Issue 432), but that doesn’t mean you need update monitors running constantly in the background.
Take ‘Jusched.exe’ (Java Update Scheduler), for example. It runs constantly while your PC is switched on – but it only checks for updates once a month. Is that really a sensible use of resources?
Know which update tools to keep
Some update monitors are vital. Others just hang around chomping resources like slugs in your garden. To weed out these destructive little pests, open Process Hacker, type update in the search box and press Enter. Then on the Processes and Services tabs, you’ll see all your installed update monitors and schedulers.
Right-click an update item in Process Hacker and click Copy Name or Copy Display Name. Then go to the free online tool Startup Programs Database ( www.snipca.com/17401) and paste the process name into the search box. The Database will then deliver a detailed verdict on whether the process is worth keeping or stamping out.
The answer isn’t always a straight yes or no. For example ‘Adobearm.exe’ (Adobe Reader and Acrobat Manager) is “a valid program”, but takes up “unnecessary resources”, so you’re advised to disable it and check for updates manually instead. Similarly ‘Divxupdate.exe’ needn’t run constantly, because it automatically updates anyway when you open any Divx program. The Java Scheduler ‘Jusched.exe’ deserves the boot completely – as does Java, which we’ll come to on page 56.
Disable and delete unnecessary updaters using Process Hacker, then use the superb free online tool Ninite ( https://ninite.com) to update just the programs and plug-ins that need updating.