WTF explain what that means please! lol. lol. nope, no wares/porn on this pc. first of all theres a hardware firewall upstairs in my brothers room, that blocks all 'unsavoury' content from coming into the house!
What he means is that looking for porn or warez in IE is very dangerous. While Opera and Firefox don't let web pages screw with users PC's, IE does.
aaaah. lol well i use opera anyway, hardly ever use IE except for when a page doesnt view properly in opera which is very rarely!
I think you may over-estimate what the firewall does. It WON'T block all unsavoury content coming into your house. It will block all un-requested access to your LAN, from hackers and worms etc. It won't protect you from downloading viruses in emails, running dodgy files downloaded from P2P or any other source, running malicious scripts on websites you visit or prevent any LAN-based attacks from your brother's PC which may have been infected by any of the above if he uses IE for example. But anyway, I see you're after a raptor drive to solve the 'snapiness' issues and I don't think it'll solve the problem. May help it but it won't solve it and there's plenty of PCs that are plenty quick enough without having to resort to Raptors. Did you try disabling all starting apps on boot time using msconfig to see if its any 'snappier'?
Overclock the CPU! You should be able to get at least 2.2Ghz out of a 3000+ Winchester, probably much more than that.
it actually runs rather nice at 2.3ghz at stock volts! but i dont see why i need the power! my old athlon 2500 was more snappy than this! and thats a previous gen one!
just about to defrag. all drivers are the versions that were around in june, dont know about any updates just about to defrag now. i ran hd tach and random access time is 20ms. thats for a maxtor DM+9. im thinking thats a little high?
Toss the contents of your temp internet files and prefetch folder yet? Also go looking for too much crap in your windows or sytem folders.... too much crap in any of those folders will hinder performance. Uninstall stuff you won't use from Windows, like: Character map, Clipboard viewer, mouse pointers, desktop wallpaper, Stupid Windows games, Fax Services, Indexing Service, IIS, Management and Monitoring tools, Message Queuing, MSN Explorer, etc.. Basically, anything installed as part of Windows that you don't use. The next best tip you got was to terminate and set to "Manual", any services not needed to run Windows. Also run checkdisk and defrag once every 3rd week. Hope that helps, luvbug
Go SMP. Seriously, my dual Athlon 250 knocks spots of my P4 3Ghz at work. But I guess you are looking for something less drastic... Besides what has been suggested above: - Install a RAM disk. Put all your temporary internet files in there. - Let Windows XP manage your swap file. Windows 95 was crap at it, and you were better off setting a pre-defined size, but since W98SE things have improved dramatically. - Don't share your super-duper fast IDE HDD with a slow CD-Rom in Master-Slave configuration on the same channel (not a problem if you have SATA, obviously). Actually, Nod32 used to be second only to Kapersky AV, which is the IT geek's trusted industrial strength virus remover. However lately it is beating even that in comparative tests and is currently no. 1 in detecting viruses "in the wild" and in comparative experimental test conditions. It also has a tiny footprint and runs very lean. Symantec/Norton comes pretty low in comparative tests, actually. Not only is it a resource hog, it is quite poor in catching bugs.
Sorry Nex, but I have to disagree with you there. Personally I think NOD32 is the best AV out there, as I said, but I remain confident in Symantecs defs. I had an arguement/discussion with me old man a while back, trying to convince him to get Nod32 instead of Nortons AV, he only wanted the best defs, didn't mind the bloat. He was saying his office IT dudes(real big company) basicly insisted Symantecs defs were second to none. I looked on the net for probably about 10-12 hours over the next few days trying to prove him wrong(I wanted Nod32 on that machine big time) but try as I might I just couldn't find anything that rated anything over Symantec, except for Nod32's catching of "in the wild" viruses. That must be about 10 or 11 months back now, but I trust the Symantec havn't degraded significantly since then, and they're frequently one of the first houses to bring out solutions to new viruses. I maintain my hatred for anything with the name Norton, but I simply disagree that Symantecs defs are bad. Oh, also, whats with the internet files on ram disk thing? That doesn't seem like something that'd massively increase snappyness to me, but, I'm curious how it does?
Putting all your temp internet files on ramdisk means when you shutdown, they're automatically deleted, as is anything else you put on a ramdisk. Aside from installing even more stuff, it's not that difficult to manage your swapfile, temp internet files, and prefetch files manually... luvbug
well i use opera, and its been told to 'empty on exit' temp files are regularly cleaned out HDD is on its own IDE channel (until my replacment hitachi gets back from rma) im getting the feeling its the hdd. i mean, 20ms random seek time?! should be much lower i would've thought, considering the hitachi i had before (which i broke. it was sata. lol. connector broke) was around 10 i think. dont really have any junk installed! its a relatively clean install and i tend to look after it in terms of virus/adware scans, updates, drivers, cleaning up temp folders and regularly cleaning hdd's of junk. swap file is managed by windows i think......oop. it wasnt. lol. but it was set to 1.5gb. well its system managed now. im using nod32 now, cant say ive noticed any difference. i think im gna wait until my hitachi comes back and see if i can install everything diff and more 'lite'. i have a habit of always installing 'complete' and not something like 'typical' or 'custom'! lol. what 'order' do you all recommend i install drivers and the like on a clean install? there was a guide floating around the net a while back about installing everything in a specific order to reduce conflicts and stuffs. cant seem to locate it now..
Is there a chance there's a firmware or driver update for your hdd? What type of cable is required for the hdd and what type of cable do you have on it? Any chance of having a single IDE cable on it (as opposed to a cable with master/slave)? Obviously not using a 40 pin where an 80 pin is needed, etc.. Anything on your FSB not set right, like voltages.. are the RAM settings (timing, voltage) configured to work with the FSB's voltage? Definitely Install the OS first (installing RAID Drivers if needed), then mobo drivers (LAN, sound, video, RAID, etc.), then go to mobo mfr's website for updated drivers, then install drivers for additional hardware (controller cards, video cards, sound cards, additional PCI cards), then go to each mfr's website for updated drivers, then install peripherals, then go to each mfr's website for updated drivers, then install AV, firewall, then ghost the whole thing. Now install all your apps, and everything you backed up before reinstalling the OS. **You can go to the mfr's websites for updated drivers before you do a clean install, to save time with the installation processes** Hope this helps, luvbug
weeell i've come to the conclusion that my hard drive is pants! lol. it now enjoys clicking and randomly shutting off causing my pc to reboot! ah well. gna re-install soon when replacement comes, and then consider rma'ing again the maxtor!
Having looked at some of the latest comparative data, I must concede. Symantec indeed has the higest detection rate of known virusses, and the lowest false positives. However in comparison to NOD32 (which is in fourth place with 94.3%, its score depressed only by relatively poorer detection of Trojans and other malware), it is slower to scan. More significantly, when it comes to scanning new virusses as yet unknown to the scanners, NOD32 detects 58%, while Symantec detects only 16% of new unknown threats. It does make loading the page somewhat, if noticably snappier because it does not have to write to (retrieve from) HDD. This is especially handy if it is already engaged in another task. The flipside is that if you download a large video file to play straight in the mediaplayer (i.e. wthout saving to HDD first), it does, depending on the size allocated, complain of running out of space soon and you have to clear the RAMdisk. This, however, is done within a second and does not really affect your browsing.
Intresting stuff Nexxo, nice one for looking it up. Regardless of the fact that Norton are slightly better, Nod32 is still definately the AV to go for in my eyes. I'm still kinda confused as to how a ramdisk can improve overall system performance with internet files loaded. I would have thought loading all of ones apps onto it would be a better solution, but I guess you're probably speaking from experience or actual knowledge so fairy nuff.
specofdust, you forget the speed at which RAM is accessed, compared to the speed at which a hdd is accessed.....
