Speeding Up Your
Computer
The most critical piece of hardware in any
computer is probably the CPU. The most obvious way to improve
computer speed would be to replace the CPU by a faster one. While
this is by far the most efficient way to increase speed, it is also
the most expensive. Before you spend hundreds of dollars on new
hardware, you should start by making sure that your current hardware
is used efficiently. Because a modern computer is a very complex
machine and Windows is a very complex piece of software, it usually
takes some tweaking to get the last 10 or 20 percents of performance
out of your hardware. On most Windows PCs, there are at least twenty
programs running at any time. Since most of these programs are
invisible to the user, it is not very easy to know exactly what your
computer is doing most of the time. By changing the process
priorities you can often improve both performance and stability.
SpeedUpMyPC offers three different ways of ensuring that all your
CPU resources are available to the applications that really need
them. You can tell SpeedUpMyPC to automatically assign more
resources to processes that are really important, such as games, CD
writing software, or MPEG decoders. This can often make your
favorite applications run faster and more smoothly, preventing
skipped frames, gaps, and other problems.
Memory and Page File Usage
Running out of physical memory or RAM is another common reason for
performance problems today. This is not just annoying; it can
actually cause severe stability problems and even crashes. If your
computer starts using the paging file to emulate RAM space, you
might have to wait for seconds or even minutes before your computer
starts responding again. The best way to avoid this problem is to
monitor memory usage and free up some RAM as soon as memory usage
exceeds 70 or 80%. You might also want to keep an eye on your page
file usage to avoid crashes. SpeedUpMyPC monitors RAM and page file
usage in real time and can automatically recover more RAM when
memory usage exceeds a particular limit. This will help you speed up
your computer considerably and is very useful if you are planning to
watch a DVD movie or play a demanding game for hours.
Background Applications
If you have not re-installed your PC in at least a few months and
have installed some shareware, freeware, plugins, components, and
other files, you probably have a large number of unnecessary
programs running in the background. These programs are often
completely invisible, but they still consume valuable resources and
make start-ups take longer than necessary. Some of these programs
might also be spyware that monitors your surfing habits and sends
personal information to remote servers. SpeedUpMyPC makes it easy to
remove all unwanted background applications permanently and helps
you find spyware and other hidden programs in minutes. This will not
only speed up your PC, but can also help you increase security and
protect your privacy as well.
Internet Connection
Speed Test
Over the last few years, the amount of information
available on the Internet has grown tremendously. This has increased
the demand for high-speed Internet connections that allow you to
download large media files within a reasonable amount of time. An
old 28 kbps modem is simply not enough to watch a streaming video or
play an online game. While you can always get a faster Internet
connection by spending hundreds of dollars on new hardware and
expensive Internet services, you should always start by making sure
that you are getting all available bandwidth out of your current
connection. Most computer owners would be surprised to know that you
can sometimes double your connection speed by simply changing a few
settings. Iin most cases, you should at least be able to improve
bandwidth by 10-50%.
Why You Need an Internet Speed Test
The first step towards improving your connection is being able to
measure your connection speed at any time. There are many ways to
test your Internet speed. For example, you could use one of the
numerous online speed tests that are available for free. A better
solution, if you are planning to test your connection more
frequently would be to use software that allows you to monitor
connection speeds. SpeedUpMyPC makes it very easy to monitor
bandwidth usage in real time and can also measure your connection
speed at any time. The real-time bandwidth graphs are very useful
when you are trying to optimize your connection, because you can
easily spot problems like unused bandwidth and slow servers. Since
SpeedUpMyPC keeps the bandwidth data for up to 60 minutes, you can
also keep track of the long-term bandwidth usage and find unwanted
Internet traffic within minutes. SpeedUpMyPCs integrated Internet
speed test allows you to test the connection speed between your
computer and any web server on the Internet. By connecting to a site
hosted by a server close to your geographical location, you can
often get very accurate results that can easily be used to monitor
performance, while you change various Internet settings to improve
performance.
How You Can Apply Optimization
If you are not a networking expert, SpeedUpMyPC can also help you
apply the most common optimizations with a few clicks. SpeedUpMyPC
detects your connection type and will automatically calculate and
apply the optimal settings for your particular connection, whether
it's an old modem or a high-speed fiber connection. After applying
the automatic optimizations, you can use SpeedUpMyPC's speed test to
check your Internet speed, making it easy to tell which
optimizations are the most efficient.
AntiCrash Software -
Prevent Crashes the Easy Way
If you have any experience with computers, you
have probably experienced at least a few crashes. While modern
computers are very complex machines capable of performing millions
of operations in a single second, they are still not very reliable.
In fact, the faster our computers get, the more code they will
execute every second; and the more code they execute, the more
likely they are to run into a bug or some other problem. For this
reason, I seriously doubt that there will ever be a computer that
never crashes. While most of us have learned to live with a few
crashes from time to time, there are ways to avoid at least 90% of
all crashes. A majority of all system crashes are caused by a single
application running into a bug or running out of resources. While
you cannot easily prevent the first case from happening, you can
often recover from these situations with a few simple steps. When
software runs into a bug, it often starts repeating the same task
indefinitely, blocking your CPU and preventing other applications,
including Windows, from executing and responding to your commands.
Recovering from Crashes
The best way to recover from this situation is to terminate the
misbehaving application before the problem spreads to other
applications. Since you may only have a few seconds before the
problem gets more serious, you must be able to terminate suspicious
applications very quickly before the problem causes your system to
freeze up completely. SpeedUpMyPC helps you do this by allowing you
to set a quick key combination for activating SpeedUpMyPC's crash
recovery feature at any time. As soon as the anti-crash feature is
started, SpeedUpMyPC will automatically find and terminate any
applications that look suspicious, until the system starts
responding again. One other closely-related problem occurs when a
single application allocates all available resources until the
computer stops responding. This often happens when a bug causes a
program to repeat the task over and over and that task includes the
allocation of resources. This situation can often be resolved by
terminating the application before your system runs out of
resources. Again, it is important to start the crash recovery
function quickly before the simple problem causes other more serious
problems. SpeedUpMyPC also allows you to automatically assign more
resources to Windows whenever your CPU usage exceeds a certain
limit. This can be very helpful since it will make the Windows shell
work even if some other application is trying to use 100% of the CPU
resources.
Freeing Up More Resources
Finally, you can often prevent crashes from happening at all by
ensuring that you never run out of memory and other critical
resources. SpeedUpMyPC can help you achieve this by freeing up more
RAM as soon as a certain memory usage limit is exceeded. This fully
automatic RAM recovery feature ensures that there is always enough
free RAM to run your favorite applications without running out of
resources.
Download Accelerator
Explained
With Internet connections getting faster every
year, the amount of information that can be downloaded from the
Internet has also grown rapidly. If you have a 56k modem, you can
easily download software, drivers, and other files from the
Internet. With an ADSL or cable connection, it's also quite
practical to download large games, movies, or CDs. Even if you have
a high bandwidth connection from your PC to the Internet,
downloading a large file also requires a fast server that can send
data as fast as you can receive it. While your computer only has to
deal with one download at a time, in most cases, file servers
usually must handle hundreds of downloads simultaneously. For this
reason, your Internet connection is not the only thing that limits
your download speeds, but also the file servers from which you are
downloading the files.
What is a Download Accelerator?
Today, many software applications can help you improve download
speeds by finding the fastest servers automatically. By using a fast
server, you can make sure that you are really getting all available
bandwidth out of your Internet connection. While most download
accelerators will find the best server for common files, like
software and drivers, the accelerators might not work equally well
when you download a less popular file from a small site. Regardless
of which download accelerator you are using, and what you are
downloading, it is always a good idea to monitor the actual
bandwidth usage so that you can determine if the server is fast
enough and whether there are any other problems, such as delays or
gaps reducing downloading speeds.
How Can You Monitor Bandwidth?
SpeedUpMyPC monitors your Internet usage, or bandwidth, in real time
and shows a graph of your bandwidth usage for up to one hour. This
information can help you decide if a server is fast and reliable, or
if you should use some other server instead. If you have a download
accelerator software installed, you can use SpeedUpMyPC to verify
that the download accelerator has really found the fastest server
available. SpeedUpMyPC can also optimize your Internet and browser
settings to improve the performance of your Internet connection.
This, combined with a fast server, can often reduce download times
considerably and will make it much easier to download large files
without running into any problems.
Free Up Memory (RAM)
in Windows
One of the most important resources in a modern PC
is its physical memory (RAM). While the CPU is obviously important
when running complex algorithms in games, movie players, or
compression software, having enough RAM is probably even more
important to overall system performance. While most computers today
have enough physical RAM memory to store a small library, modern
software and media files also require a lot of resources.
Paging Files and Performance
If your computer runs out of RAM, it will use your hard drive to
store some of the information usually stored in RAM. Since a
mechanical hard drive is not very fast when compared to the tiny
electronic circuits that make up a RAM chip, this can slow down your
computer considerably or even cause a crash. The simplest solution
to this problem would probably be a memory upgrade; but, unless you
have a lot of money to spend, there are other, less expensive,
solutions. Since you want to avoid using the paging file, also known
as swap file or virtual memory, directly for complicated operations,
you need to make sure that there is always enough RAM to execute
programs without using the harddrive. On the other hand, a large
sound file containing 30 minutes of audio data might not have to be
stored in RAM all the time. By moving less important data to the
hard drive, making the physical memory available to the applications
that really need it, you can improve both performance and stability
considerably.
Memory Management with SpeedUpMyPC
While Windows automatically moves data from RAM to virtual memory
and back as necessary, Windows does not know when you are planning
to start a demanding application or which applications are more
important. Windows will also use leave a lot of unused information
in RAM until this information is explicitly removed by the
application that created it or until the RAM is needed by other
applications. By using SpeedUpMyPC to monitor your RAM usage in real
time, you can easily find out if there is enough RAM to run your
favorite applications. SpeedUpMyPC also lets you free up RAM at any
time with a single click. This can be very useful if you are
planning to run a game or play a DivX movie. By freeing up memory
before starting a demanding application, you won't have to
experience pauses or skipped frames while the application is
running. SpeedUpMyPC can also free up memory automatically whenever
your memory usage exceeds a certain limit. This can help you avoid
running out of resources when running multiple applications, and
will also prevent resources-related crashes. Apart from monitoring
RAM usage, SpeedUpMyPC can also monitor your page file usage or
virtual memory usage in real time. As soon as your page file usage
reaches a critical level, SpeedUpMyPC will inform you about the
situation, giving you enough time to terminate some applications
before the computer crashes or stops responding.
Reducing Startup
Times
Starting a normal Windows computer usually takes a
minute or more. While this might not be much to worry about if you
keep your computer running all the time, it can be rather annoying
if you have to wait several minutes just to check your e-mails. You
might also have to reboot your computer to install new software,
change system settings, or recover from crashes. Altogether you
probably have to reboot your system at least a few times every day,
and reducing the amount of time needed to start the computer would
surely improve your computing experience.
Using SpeedUpMyPCs Startup Manager
When Windows starts, it usually starts a large number of other
programs automatically. Since most of these programs are running in
the background, you might not be aware of them. However, these
programs can take many seconds each to start; and, on an average
computer, they can increase startup times considerably. These
invisible, and often unnecessary, tasks will also consume valuable
resources, making your system run more slowly in general.
SpeedUpMyPC comes with a built-in startup manager that helps you
remove unwanted background tasks quickly and easily. The startup
manager also measures the time it takes to start your computer and
stores this information in a startup log. This information can be
very helpful when you are trying to decide whether disabling a
specific application had the intended effect or whether the
application should be enabled again. If you have a newer Windows
version (2000 or XP), SpeedUpMyPCs startup manager can even measure
the amount of time required to start each background application,
making it very easy to reduce startup times without removing any
useful applications. SpeedUpMyPC also includes the unique WinTasks
Process Library to help you decide which applications can safely be
removed. If you do not feel confident enough to remove any
applications yourself, you can also let SpeedUpMyPCs startup manager
remove all applications that are completely useless, such as spyware
or unnecessary monitoring tasks. You can always restore any changes
made with the startup manager, at any time, by enabling any disabled
tasks with a few clicks.
Improving Gaming
Performance
Modern computer games are probably among the most
demanding PC applications available today. Running a modern 3D game,
such as Quake III, requires your computer to execute over one
billion instructions per second. Games also need large amounts of
RAM to store everything from textures and 3D models to streaming
music and sound effects. While most modern PCs, with a new graphics
card and a few hundred megabytes of RAM, will handle this fairly
well, it is not uncommon to find annoying delays and other glitches
on even the most expensive computers. These problems are often
caused by software conflicts and bad settings, rather than
insufficient hardware. By optimizing all your system settings and by
monitoring resource usage more carefully, these problems can be
avoided, resulting in a smoother and more stable gaming experience.
CPU Usage and Process Priorities
One of the most critical resources to any computer game is obviously
the CPU. Since a CPU can only do one thing at a time, Windows and
other multi-tasking operating systems switch between all running
programs or processes, giving each process access to the CPU. While
this is usually a good thing because it makes it possible to run
many applications simultaneously, it causes some problems when you
run games on a typical computer. Since there are usually a large
number of background processes running on any computer, even when
you are running a game, Windows will interrupt the game for brief
periods if one of the other processes needs to do something.
SpeedUpMyPC offers two different solutions to this problem. It
allows you to assign more CPU time to a critical application, such
as a game, and it allows you to remove all unnecessary background
applications permanently. This can reduce the number of unwanted
interruptions considerably and will also reduce start-up times on
most systems.
Memory Related Delays
Another common reason for annoying delays when playing games is the
fact that Windows uses the hard drive to emulate RAM when there is
not enough physical RAM. This is usually not a problem because most
applications work fairly well, even with delays that last several
seconds. When you are running a game or watching a DVD movie, a
delay of a few seconds while Windows is swapping data between RAM
and the hard drive is simply not acceptable. To avoid this
situation, you should always force Windows to do the swapping before
starting a critical application, rather than having Windows do it
automatically in the middle of a game. With SpeedUpMyPC you can
easily free up RAM and swap unused information to the hard drive in
seconds. By freeing up RAM and keeping track of your memory usage in
real time, SpeedUpMyPC can help you optimize your system before
starting games or other critical applications such as CD writing
software or DVD players.
Network Performance
When playing online or multi-player games, network performance is
very important. If you are connected to the Internet using a modem
or ADSL modem, your connection speed and stability can often be
improved considerably by optimizing a number of network settings
found in the registry. SpeedUpMyPC can automatically optimize these
settings for your particular connection type and will also monitor
your Internet connection in real time, helping you to spot bad
servers and other network problems. |