Isn’t it annoying to be surfing the web and all of a sudden, your computer drags to a crawl and you sit impatiently waiting for a page to load or a download to start? There are several common causes of the slowing down effect on your PC. I will discuss the following three things you can do to speed things up a little bit:
- First, download a recommended registry cleaner
- Clean and defrag the hard drive
- Optimize Memory
- Eliminate unnecessary programs from Loading into memory
Clan and Defrag the Hard Drive
A computer’s hard drive is the primary area on your computer used to store the operating system, applications and all the files you create. The hard drive is divided up into areas called sectors. Each sector can hold a certain amount of data. Each sector is further broken up into address spaces. Each address is unique so the operating system can find the data stored on the hard drive. Windows uses a master file table to store the address locations of every file on the hard drive.
Please notice that I said locations. Most files need more than one address location to store the whole thing. Windows will write each piece of the file in locations next to each other (called contiguous space) if possible. If that is not possible, the operating system finds an empty location and writes the data there. As a result, over time, as you edit different files the pieces of a file can be located all over the hard drive.
For example, this disjoint storage is like you putting your shoes in the garage, your pants in the kitchen, your socks in the bedroom, you shirt in the bathroom and you coat in the attic. Obviously if you did that, if would take a lot longer to get dressed in the morning. The same thing happens with files. When they are spread all over the place, it takes longer for windows to find the individual pieces and load them into memory.
This is why you need to both clean up and defrag your hard drive. The clean up process deletes temporary files, file fragments (pieces left over after being deleted), orphans (data whose owner can’t be determined) and data marked for deletion.
Defragging your hard drive is the process of moving all of the pieces of a file into contiguous space so it can be retrieved faster. The operating system will move data around until it gets all the correct pieces together. To defrag:
- Turn the screen save off by right clicking anywhere on the desktop
- Select Properties then click on the Screen Saver tab and select None.
- Next, select My Computer then right click on the hard drive Select Properties then click on Tools.
- Select Check Now as shown below to let windows check the hard drive for errors and fix them if necessary. This could take a while so you might want go do something else.
- When that is finished, select Defragment Now.
This can take a really long time depending on the size of the hard disk. You might as well go do something else because you CANNOT use the computer while it is defragging.
WARNING: DO NOT TURN THE MACHINE OFF UNTIL DEFRAGGING IS COMPLETE OR IT MAY DAMAGE THE HARD DRIVE
Optimize Memory
There is an old saying in the computer field. “You can never have too much memory.” When I say memory I am talking about random access memory or RAM. RAM is the temporary storage area the operating system uses to store data that is being used currently and to load itself in so all of the commands are immediately available for use.
Otherwise, you would have to wait for the data to be retrieved from the hard drive and then be loaded into memory before you could use it. It would be similar to when you are waiting for a web page to download although not as long a wait.
When the system runs out of physical RAM it uses the hard drive as Virtual Memory and does have to retrieve and load data every time you need it. Virtual memory is also called a swap file. Optimizing reduces the need to swap data into and out of the swap file. You want to put as much memory as you can afford or the machine can hold to significantly speed up your machine.
Eliminate Unnecessary Programs from Loading into Memory
When your computer boots up, it loads all kinds of applications into memory. Most of these programs are called terminate and stay resident programs or TSRs. Closing these programs will free up memory and speed up your computer. In fact, it is even better if you don’t load the ones you really don’t need.
To prevent TSRs from loading go to:
- Start -> Run and type msconfig into the dialog box
- The System Configuration Utility will open.
- Select the Startup Tab as shown below.
- Uncheck any that you don’t use very often.
- Click OK to exit.
- Then reboot the computer.
If you don’t know what a file or what a service does, don’t uncheck it.
The operating system has to know where a file is located and what to do with it before it can open the file. File extensions are a method of telling the operating system what kind of file it is and by using associations what application should be used to open the file. The operating system uses the file extension…the three letters after the period such as word.exe to determine the association.The .exe extension states that a file is an executable application. A .doc extension identifies the file as a word processing document that can be opened with MS Word, Wordperfect, Wordpad and several other word processing applications.
File associations are stored in the windows registry in the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT hive. The picture below shows the .exe entry in my windows registry.
The registry key also contains the following information:
- preferred program that can open the file
- the full path to the location of the preferred program
- Actions that can be performed on the file
- A default action (what happens if you double click on it)
- Other programs that can open the file
- Other actions that can be performed
For example, the registry entry for the .mp3 file extension on my machine is shown below. On my machine both Quick Time and Real Player are associated with and therefore can play the file. Notice that Quick Time is the default.
Since an executable file is an application that runs on your computer. Every program you open in windows has an executable file associated with it. .exe executable files are opened by the windows application launcher. If the file association listed in the registry for .exe files is incorrect, applications using that file extension will not be able to run.
EXE File Association Error in Windows Vista
How does the registry entry get changed? It can happen when someone inadvertently assigns the .exe extension to an incorrect program. If they have not established a system restore point before making the change, the registry gets changed and executables using the .exe extension stop working. Usually the first symptom is that shortcuts suddenly have the .lnk extension which means they are no longer pointing to a valid operation.
Solutions
First off, if you are not comfortable changing your windows registry files, you should try a free registry cleaner scan first and check for any potential errors that might be able to be fixed automatically.
Since programs like anti virus, spyware detectors and firewalls monitor the registry in real time, you must turn them off before you edit the registry to avoid unexpected unpleasant consequences. At worst they can either trash your system or prevent you from making the necessary corrections by not letting you save your changes.
Creating a New File Extension
Since almost all of the tools available in windows use the .exe extension very little will work. If you can get windows explorer, My Documents or My Computer to open, perform the following steps:
- Open the File Types dialog box from Windows Explorer, My Documents or My Computer by selecting Tools -> Folder Options -> File Types as shown below.
- Click on the New button and the Create New Extension window will open up
- Next, click on the Advanced button. Your window should look like the one below.
- Type in EXE for the extension and select Application from the drop down list if it doesn’t appear automatically.
- Click OK and reboot the machine.
If this procedure does not work or none of the applications would run, you will have to edit the registry.
Editing the Registry
Warning—Back up all of the files you created before you attempt to edit the registry. Also create a restore point so that you will be able to restore the system if you accidentally trash the operating system to the point that it will not boot up.
The EXE association problem can occur in all versions of windows and is normally fixed by editing the registry. We will only discuss how to fix the problem in windows vista. You must delete a registry key to correct this problem. Perform the following steps:
- Open up the registry editor by going to Start -> Run
- Type regedit in the dialog box.
- Select Edit -> Find as shown below.
- The dialog box shown below will open. If the file association problem exists the registry key listed below will exist. Type exe in the search field as shown below or you can manually navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.exe Manual navigation is usually faster.
- By existing, this registry key’s configuration is overwriting the default file association for .exe files. Therefore, to fix the problem you must delete the registry key by right clicking and selecting Delete from the drop down context menu.
- Reboot the machine. When it reboots, the system will use the default values. Therefore, the EXE extension should work properly again.
