by Edward Mendelson
Adobe released public betas of the next versions of Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Soundbooth on May 27th—all of them parts of the forthcoming Creative Suite 4 (CS4) suite—and I took a quick look at the Dreamweaver beta. Dreamweaver is Adobe's Web-design application; Fireworks is its vector graphic editor, and Soundbooth is its audio editor. Adobe isn't saying, but it's easy to guess that public betas of Photoshop and other Creative Suite apps are on the way. If all the CS4 apps are as impressive as the Dreamweaver beta, then Adobe is working its way to one of its best releases in many years.
The betas will continue working for either 48 hours or until the shipping version of CS4 arrives, depending on whether or not you have an existing CS3 serial number. If you don't have a CS serial number, the betas only work for 48 hours after you first launch them. If you do have a CS3 license, enter it when prompted on Adobe's site while working your way to the download, and the site will generate a serial number that keep the betas alive until CS4 ships. Adobe won't say exactly when the full CS4 suite will ship, but it's willing to say that the product life of a Creative Suite version is 18 to 24 months, and, since CS3 shipped in March 2007, CS4 should arrive sometime between September 2008 and March 2009.
Buzz up!on Yahoo!
Despite its still-overloaded interface, I was mightily impressed by Dreamweaver CS4, which has had a thorough makeover that brings it fully into the twenty-first century. The most obvious new feature is a Related Files toolbar that appears below the top-line menu, which lets you navigate among all the files referenced by your web page, including multiple CSS, JavaScript, and XML files. The cluttered and incomprehensible Insert toolbar has been replaced by a panel in the right-hand sidebar, and the icons have labels so I no longer have to hover over each icon until a tooltip tells me what it means.
A terrific, long-needed feature is the Live View Mode, which displays dynamic data views right inside Dreamweaver, without making you open a browser. Because Dreamweaver is designed to have the same functionality on Windows and the Mac, this live view can't use the Windows-only Internet. It's based, instead, on the open-source WebKit browser engine, which is the basis for the Safari browser. This means you'll still have to test your work in Internet Explorer and Firefox—which you can do directly from Dreamweaver's menu—but you won't have to launch a separate browser window to see what your dynamic view will look like live. I like the way I can "freeze" the JavaScript in Live View so that I see the state of the dynamic code at any moment, for easy debugging.
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 beta
Dreamweaver: From HTML to CSS
A less spectacular, but even more essential improvement is that Dreamweaver no longer acts like an old-style HTML editor with modern features tacked on. In Dreamweaver CS3, the Properties panel at the foot of the editing window displayed only HTML format options, and you had to go to the cluttered stacked tabs on the sidebar to work with CSS styles. In CS4, the Properties panel has two buttons that switch between displaying controls for applying HTML tags and controls for applying CSS tags. For me, this makes Dreamweaver finally usable as a day-to-day website editor, because CSS is at the heart of every web page I edit. I also like the new Code Navigator feature that pops up a little window with the hierarchy of the CSS style at the cursor location. If I want to edit the underlying CSS code directly, a click in the window jumps to the right place in the relevant style sheet.
Other features I like include the ability to use an HTML table as the data source for a dynamic data view, instead of only XML as in Dreamweaver CS3. The interface for inserting dynamic data from an XML file or HTML table is also improved over the one in CS3, and seems to me to be about as easy to use as the one in Microsoft Expression Web 2. I wasn't able to test another nifty-sounding new feature that tightly integrates graphics with Photoshop, so that when you insert a Photoshop PSD file in a web page as a JPEG, the JPEG has an icon that's a live link to the original PSD file, letting you update the JPEG when you make changes in the PSD, or automatically modifying the PSD to match the changes you made to the JPEG.
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 beta
Dreamweaver: Where the Beta Needs Work
Not everything is perfect in Dreamweaver country. I would be much less annoyed by error messages that tell me I have to save the page before I can do something (like set up a data view), if error message included a button that I could simply click in order to save the page. The interface is still a maze of options with unfamiliar names, and, whenever I closed down an element like the Properties menu, I had to do a lot of menu-hunting before I figured out how to open it up again. Granted, this is an enormous app, and some degree of menu complexity is simply unavoidable. Chances are that the target audience will learn the ins and outs pretty quickly. And, I have to say, the massive range of keyboard shortcuts is already making my work in the program more efficient. Still, I think more can be done to simplify the initial barrier to entry.
Microsoft recently released a Expression Web 2, an update to the only serious rival to Dreamweaver (Microsoft Expression Web). We'll post a more detailed look at Expression Web 2 soon, but the big news about Expression Web 2 is it now has built-in support for PHP pages, support that Dreamweaver has had for years. Expression Web is still a cleaner, slightly more usable app than Dreamweaver, with a beautifully-designed interface for creating dynamic data views, but with one serious problem. If you create data views that run entirely in a browser—without using server-based support from ASP.NET or PHP or some similar technology—then the dynamic data views created by Expression Web won't work in the Safari browser, unlike similar data views created by Dreamweaver, which work anywhere. If you're an ASP.NET or PHP designer, this problem won't deter you from trying Expression Web, but this definitely rules out Expression Web for sites where those server-based technologies aren't available.
On the basis of this beta release, I can be sure that Dreamweaver CS4 the richest, most feature-packed Web site designer ever written. Whether it's also the best is something that I'll have a stronger opinion about when I've spent more time exploring the shortcuts and conveniences hidden in its massive interface. Look for an updated review when Adobe brings out the final version of the code when the CS4 suite ships. In the meanwhile, if you're a Web designer, check out the beta.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
ABBYY FineReader Professional 9.0
by Edward Mendelson
Abbyy FineReader Professional 9.0 ($399.99, direct) is a relative newcomer in the world of optical character recognition (OCR). In some significant ways, it has an edge over its long-established competitor OmniPage Professional, though in other ways, OmniPage remains the leader. The one you'll prefer depends on the way you work.
SLIDESHOW (6)
Slideshow | All Shots
I use OCR mostly to take scanned copies of old books and fuzzy Xerox copies of old newspaper articles and turn them into editable text, and I spend a lot of time making corrections and changes to the OCR output inside my OCR software. For that purpose, Abbyy FineReader is the almost unquestionable first choice. Corporate customers tends to use OCR software to cram stacks of paper documents into digital storage, without taking time to make sure that the software didn't misread a comma as a period. For those customers, who are more concerned with automation, FineReader gets the job done, but OmniPage does it more efficiently and flexibly. If you're trying to decide which high-end OCR product to choose, read on and see whether your needs are closer to mine or to those of a corporate IT manager.
Unlike OmniPage, with its confusing start-up options, FineReader makes a terrific first impression. I found the interface almost ideal in its combination of straightforward clarity for basic tasks and clear explanations of complex tasks. I began by choosing from a set of built-in QuickTasks that automatically perform operations, such as scanning from a document to Microsoft Word, Excel, or PDF, or converting a PDF file to an editable Word file. I first chose to convert a scanned PDF file to Word, and, within seconds, Word popped open with a moderately accurate representation of the fuzzily photographed text from a 1930s newspaper. OmniPage, by comparison, was able to perform a comparable feat only when I changed an obscure setting deep in its Options dialog so that it extracted text from an image in the PDF file instead of embedding the image itself into the Word file—something that FineReader was smart enough to do without being told.
FineReader proved generally more informative than OmniPage about its operations. For example, when the programs analyzed a scanned or imported image of a page to decide which parts were text and which pictures, both did an equally good job. But FineReader numbered the text boxes so that I could see at a glance whether it had got the sequence of text regions right, while OmniPage made me push a toolbar button before it would display the same numbers. FineReader seems to have been designed from the start for today's fast computers, whereas OmniPage is weighed down by design decisions that made more sense when computers were slower and programs didn't take time to display some information unless the user insisted on seeing it.
In this test of their automated features, I was struck by the fact that FineReader and OmniPage made roughly the same number of mistakes in reading the scanned newspaper text but were tripped up by different words. Neither one was notably superior to the other. OCR is an inexact science, and every program produces slightly different results. Yet when I tested the two programs' manual proofreading and error-correcting features, I found that making corrections was far easier with FineReader than with OmniPage.
Here's how I used the manual correction features: FineReader's left-hand task pane starts out with two big buttons labeled Scan and Open. I chose Scan, and the dialog I got—which showed me all the options most useful in scanning for OCR—was much easier to manage than the corresponding OmniPage menu. After scanning a page, FineReader marked all the regions of the page it thought it could read. I tabbed through the regions, removing the regions I didn't need, and clicked the large "Read Document" button to start OCR.
After FineReader performed its OCR, I started the spell-checker, and here's where FineReader proved its worth. For one thing, I liked the spell-checking dialog's small window showing the text I was checking. And I especially liked that FineReader also displayed three other panes. One of these three panes displayed a reduced view of the whole page, with a dotted rectangle showing me the region I was checking. Another pane showed an enlarged view of the area around the text I was proofreading, with the current text highlighted so I could see it clearly in the context of adjacent text. The third pane showed the editable text the program had already extracted from the document through OCR. If I saw a mistake the program hadn't flagged, or if I wanted to correct a lot of errors at once, I could simply switch to the panel with the editable text, and then switch back to the proofreading window. Or, if the proofreading window highlighted a doubtful word and I also noticed other errors, I could move the proofreading window as much as I liked and make multiple changes. OmniPage's far more awkward interface doesn't offer conveniences of this sort.
One other advantage of FineReader's proofreading pane was that it suggested a more useful list of possible alternative readings than OmniPage did, and it didn't clutter the list of alternatives with useless numbers like the ones in the OmniPage screen. Proofreading an OCR document is never fun because it requires a lot of close attention to tiny details, but FineReader made the experience far less frustrating than OmniPage does.
I was also grateful for FineReader's intelligently designed interface, which puts as many options as possible on a large-scale toolbar that resembles the Ribbon in Microsoft Office 2007. In OmniPage, many options were hidden in drop-down menus that made me play hide-and-seek before I found the one I wanted. In FineReader, large buttons displayed the options I needed most, and small buttons displayed the ones used less often.
One other convenience in FineReader's text-editing pane is its use of word-processing-like menus to apply quick formatting to text. I could easily select all or part of a document and apply fonts and point sizes, or choose a set of formatting attributes from a Style menu and apply the same style to other parts of the document. Like OmniPage, FineReader exports Word documents with more stylistic information that I want, but I was able to cut down the clutter of formatting details in FineReader's own editor before dealing with Word's more complicated style and format menus.
Abbyy's app includes automation features similar to, but not nearly as powerful as, those in OmniPage. I found I could use any of Abbyy's built-in automated operations to convert scanned or image files into documents or PDFs, and I could build my own sequences. But I didn't have the flexibility that OmniPage Professional gave me to acquire files from FTP sites or "watched folders"—although I could choose an option that automatically e-mails the output. Similar features are available in FineReader's $599.99 Corporate Edition, but I didn't test those. (FineReader's Corporate edition costs $100 more than OmniPage's Professional Edition, but FineReader's Professional Edition costs $100 less than OmniPage's.)
SLIDESHOW (6)
Slideshow | All Shots
I've been emphasizing all the ways that FineReader does things right, but it's important to remember that OmniPage does some things better than FineReader does. It's a matter not just of the deeper feature-set in OmniPage's automated operations, but also of OmniPage's superior skill at making sense of the layout in complicated pages from magazines and design-heavy press-releases—and at reproducing those layouts in its output. This feature doesn't factor into the kind of use I put an OCR program to (I want to extract just the text, not the layout, from scanned documents), but it obviously matters to many potential users, especially those in the world of graphic design.
In the end, both products perform text-extracting OCR more or less equally well, although it's impossible to predict, with any specific document, whether one will produce slightly better results than the other. FineReader is miles ahead on interface design and bug-free performance—two areas in which OmniPage has a lot of catching up to do. OmniPage is noticeably, but not spectacularly, better in reproducing complex layouts. What matters most to me in OCR is text extraction and trouble-free operation, and that means FineReader is the program I'll continue to use. But if you know your needs are different from mine, you owe it to yourself to try both.
Abbyy FineReader Professional 9.0 ($399.99, direct) is a relative newcomer in the world of optical character recognition (OCR). In some significant ways, it has an edge over its long-established competitor OmniPage Professional, though in other ways, OmniPage remains the leader. The one you'll prefer depends on the way you work.
SLIDESHOW (6)
Slideshow | All Shots
I use OCR mostly to take scanned copies of old books and fuzzy Xerox copies of old newspaper articles and turn them into editable text, and I spend a lot of time making corrections and changes to the OCR output inside my OCR software. For that purpose, Abbyy FineReader is the almost unquestionable first choice. Corporate customers tends to use OCR software to cram stacks of paper documents into digital storage, without taking time to make sure that the software didn't misread a comma as a period. For those customers, who are more concerned with automation, FineReader gets the job done, but OmniPage does it more efficiently and flexibly. If you're trying to decide which high-end OCR product to choose, read on and see whether your needs are closer to mine or to those of a corporate IT manager.
Unlike OmniPage, with its confusing start-up options, FineReader makes a terrific first impression. I found the interface almost ideal in its combination of straightforward clarity for basic tasks and clear explanations of complex tasks. I began by choosing from a set of built-in QuickTasks that automatically perform operations, such as scanning from a document to Microsoft Word, Excel, or PDF, or converting a PDF file to an editable Word file. I first chose to convert a scanned PDF file to Word, and, within seconds, Word popped open with a moderately accurate representation of the fuzzily photographed text from a 1930s newspaper. OmniPage, by comparison, was able to perform a comparable feat only when I changed an obscure setting deep in its Options dialog so that it extracted text from an image in the PDF file instead of embedding the image itself into the Word file—something that FineReader was smart enough to do without being told.
FineReader proved generally more informative than OmniPage about its operations. For example, when the programs analyzed a scanned or imported image of a page to decide which parts were text and which pictures, both did an equally good job. But FineReader numbered the text boxes so that I could see at a glance whether it had got the sequence of text regions right, while OmniPage made me push a toolbar button before it would display the same numbers. FineReader seems to have been designed from the start for today's fast computers, whereas OmniPage is weighed down by design decisions that made more sense when computers were slower and programs didn't take time to display some information unless the user insisted on seeing it.
In this test of their automated features, I was struck by the fact that FineReader and OmniPage made roughly the same number of mistakes in reading the scanned newspaper text but were tripped up by different words. Neither one was notably superior to the other. OCR is an inexact science, and every program produces slightly different results. Yet when I tested the two programs' manual proofreading and error-correcting features, I found that making corrections was far easier with FineReader than with OmniPage.
Here's how I used the manual correction features: FineReader's left-hand task pane starts out with two big buttons labeled Scan and Open. I chose Scan, and the dialog I got—which showed me all the options most useful in scanning for OCR—was much easier to manage than the corresponding OmniPage menu. After scanning a page, FineReader marked all the regions of the page it thought it could read. I tabbed through the regions, removing the regions I didn't need, and clicked the large "Read Document" button to start OCR.
After FineReader performed its OCR, I started the spell-checker, and here's where FineReader proved its worth. For one thing, I liked the spell-checking dialog's small window showing the text I was checking. And I especially liked that FineReader also displayed three other panes. One of these three panes displayed a reduced view of the whole page, with a dotted rectangle showing me the region I was checking. Another pane showed an enlarged view of the area around the text I was proofreading, with the current text highlighted so I could see it clearly in the context of adjacent text. The third pane showed the editable text the program had already extracted from the document through OCR. If I saw a mistake the program hadn't flagged, or if I wanted to correct a lot of errors at once, I could simply switch to the panel with the editable text, and then switch back to the proofreading window. Or, if the proofreading window highlighted a doubtful word and I also noticed other errors, I could move the proofreading window as much as I liked and make multiple changes. OmniPage's far more awkward interface doesn't offer conveniences of this sort.
One other advantage of FineReader's proofreading pane was that it suggested a more useful list of possible alternative readings than OmniPage did, and it didn't clutter the list of alternatives with useless numbers like the ones in the OmniPage screen. Proofreading an OCR document is never fun because it requires a lot of close attention to tiny details, but FineReader made the experience far less frustrating than OmniPage does.
I was also grateful for FineReader's intelligently designed interface, which puts as many options as possible on a large-scale toolbar that resembles the Ribbon in Microsoft Office 2007. In OmniPage, many options were hidden in drop-down menus that made me play hide-and-seek before I found the one I wanted. In FineReader, large buttons displayed the options I needed most, and small buttons displayed the ones used less often.
One other convenience in FineReader's text-editing pane is its use of word-processing-like menus to apply quick formatting to text. I could easily select all or part of a document and apply fonts and point sizes, or choose a set of formatting attributes from a Style menu and apply the same style to other parts of the document. Like OmniPage, FineReader exports Word documents with more stylistic information that I want, but I was able to cut down the clutter of formatting details in FineReader's own editor before dealing with Word's more complicated style and format menus.
Abbyy's app includes automation features similar to, but not nearly as powerful as, those in OmniPage. I found I could use any of Abbyy's built-in automated operations to convert scanned or image files into documents or PDFs, and I could build my own sequences. But I didn't have the flexibility that OmniPage Professional gave me to acquire files from FTP sites or "watched folders"—although I could choose an option that automatically e-mails the output. Similar features are available in FineReader's $599.99 Corporate Edition, but I didn't test those. (FineReader's Corporate edition costs $100 more than OmniPage's Professional Edition, but FineReader's Professional Edition costs $100 less than OmniPage's.)
SLIDESHOW (6)
Slideshow | All Shots
I've been emphasizing all the ways that FineReader does things right, but it's important to remember that OmniPage does some things better than FineReader does. It's a matter not just of the deeper feature-set in OmniPage's automated operations, but also of OmniPage's superior skill at making sense of the layout in complicated pages from magazines and design-heavy press-releases—and at reproducing those layouts in its output. This feature doesn't factor into the kind of use I put an OCR program to (I want to extract just the text, not the layout, from scanned documents), but it obviously matters to many potential users, especially those in the world of graphic design.
In the end, both products perform text-extracting OCR more or less equally well, although it's impossible to predict, with any specific document, whether one will produce slightly better results than the other. FineReader is miles ahead on interface design and bug-free performance—two areas in which OmniPage has a lot of catching up to do. OmniPage is noticeably, but not spectacularly, better in reproducing complex layouts. What matters most to me in OCR is text extraction and trouble-free operation, and that means FineReader is the program I'll continue to use. But if you know your needs are different from mine, you owe it to yourself to try both.
How to Build Your Own PC - Save A Buck And Learn A Lot
Original Author: Charlie Palmer
Edited and adapted with permission by Charles M. Kozierok
Welcome to the online version of How to Build Your Own PC, adapted from the print book by Charlie Palmer. My name is Charles and I am the publisher and webmaster of The PC Guide; I hope you will find this material a useful addition to the site.
Here are some tips for understanding how the material is organized and how best to navigate through it:
* Hierarchy Navigation: Near the top of each page of the site you will see in a blue-outlined box a cascading set of links that reflect your current position in the organizational structure of this Guide. You can click any of these links to go up one or more levels in the hierarchy.
* Accessing the Table Of Contents: To the left of the hierarchy navigation box is the table of contents button. Click it to bring up the full contents of.the Guide.
* Next/Previous Section/Topic Navigation: At the top and bottom of each page is a solid blue box that contains buttons and links for moving sequentially through the Guide. On the far left and far right of this box are text links and large arrows that take you directly to the start of the previous or next full topic or section. These always take you to the first page of any topic that has multiple pages, to allow you to skip all the pages of any topic you don’t want to read.
* Direct Page Navigation: In the middle of the blue box you will see a navigation display for moving easily through the pages of a topic. Each page number is listed, with the current page shown in white text on a dark background, and the other pages hyperlinked for easy direct access.
* Next/Previous Page Navigation: You will also see in the blue box smaller arrows that take you to the previous or next page of the Guide. The small left arrow goes to the previous page of the current topic, or if you are on its first (or only) page, the last page of the previous topic. The right arrow goes to the next page of the current topic, or if you are on its last (or only) page, takes you to the first page of the next topic. You can use these arrow to move sequentially through the entire Guide.
* Text Links: At the bottom of each page are a set of text links that take you to the top of this Guide or its table of contents. There are also links to the PCGuide.com home page, and the page where you can contact me with questions or feedback. I welcome your feedback, comments and suggestions.
Just a reminder that all of the material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced without permission. Also, the material is provided on an as-is basis and I am not responsible for any loss that may result from your use of it.
Last but definitely not least: this site is provided as an online reference resource for casual use. Please do not use software to try to mass-download the pages of this site. The Guide contains hundreds of pages, and doing this severely degrades server performance, making it difficult for others to use the site. For this reason, you risk having your access to the site blocked by an automatic script if you try to do this.
If you like this Guide, please consider ordering the inexpensive print version directly from the author. You will find the hard copy useful during your PC build project.
Thanks again and enjoy the site!
Edited and adapted with permission by Charles M. Kozierok
Welcome to the online version of How to Build Your Own PC, adapted from the print book by Charlie Palmer. My name is Charles and I am the publisher and webmaster of The PC Guide; I hope you will find this material a useful addition to the site.
Here are some tips for understanding how the material is organized and how best to navigate through it:
* Hierarchy Navigation: Near the top of each page of the site you will see in a blue-outlined box a cascading set of links that reflect your current position in the organizational structure of this Guide. You can click any of these links to go up one or more levels in the hierarchy.
* Accessing the Table Of Contents: To the left of the hierarchy navigation box is the table of contents button. Click it to bring up the full contents of.the Guide.
* Next/Previous Section/Topic Navigation: At the top and bottom of each page is a solid blue box that contains buttons and links for moving sequentially through the Guide. On the far left and far right of this box are text links and large arrows that take you directly to the start of the previous or next full topic or section. These always take you to the first page of any topic that has multiple pages, to allow you to skip all the pages of any topic you don’t want to read.
* Direct Page Navigation: In the middle of the blue box you will see a navigation display for moving easily through the pages of a topic. Each page number is listed, with the current page shown in white text on a dark background, and the other pages hyperlinked for easy direct access.
* Next/Previous Page Navigation: You will also see in the blue box smaller arrows that take you to the previous or next page of the Guide. The small left arrow goes to the previous page of the current topic, or if you are on its first (or only) page, the last page of the previous topic. The right arrow goes to the next page of the current topic, or if you are on its last (or only) page, takes you to the first page of the next topic. You can use these arrow to move sequentially through the entire Guide.
* Text Links: At the bottom of each page are a set of text links that take you to the top of this Guide or its table of contents. There are also links to the PCGuide.com home page, and the page where you can contact me with questions or feedback. I welcome your feedback, comments and suggestions.
Just a reminder that all of the material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced without permission. Also, the material is provided on an as-is basis and I am not responsible for any loss that may result from your use of it.
Last but definitely not least: this site is provided as an online reference resource for casual use. Please do not use software to try to mass-download the pages of this site. The Guide contains hundreds of pages, and doing this severely degrades server performance, making it difficult for others to use the site. For this reason, you risk having your access to the site blocked by an automatic script if you try to do this.
If you like this Guide, please consider ordering the inexpensive print version directly from the author. You will find the hard copy useful during your PC build project.
Thanks again and enjoy the site!
Saturday, July 19, 2008
My Slow PC
Question: Why is my computer running so slow? Do computers slow down when they get older?
Answer: No, but here are some of the most common reasons a computer slows down.
Background programs running:
This is the biggest reason and can be fixed quickly and for free... it's possible that your computer may have so many background programs running simultaneously that there is not enough resources to run normally.
The end result of this is that your computer begins to run more and more slowly over time as you add other programs.
There are two remedies, get Anti-Spyware and use the feature which allows you to view running programs and to disable any of those running programs. Or, if you like to get into your system with your bare hands, use the remedy below.
How to disable unneeded background programs:
All icons in your computer's system tray are background programs using memory. There are more, but you will get a hint from that system tray. To see and exit all running background programs:
Windows 95 - ME
*
a. Press the Ctrl + Alt + Delete keys at the same time.
*
b. Click any program or task except Explorer or Systray,
*
c. and then click End Task.
Repeat steps b and c to quit all programs except Explorer and Systray which are necessary components of Microsoft Windows.
You should now have a clean system. See if the computer runs like it used to... if it does, you will want to prevent those programs from restarting the next time you start the computer.
If you don't want any background programs starting when you restart the system, and you know what you are doing, you can run msconfig from the run menu and completely disable what you find in the 'Startup' tab. If you aren't that experienced and you want a safe way to disable all those unneeded background programs, get the remedy recommended for the spyware on this page. It has a feature allowing you to disable startup programs safely.
Windows XP through 2003 Server
*
a. Press the Ctrl + Alt + Delete keys at the same time.
*
b. Choose 'Task Manager' tab to view and end any running programs.
*
c. disabling these programs will require that you change their startup properties in the 'Administrative Tools' area of your system. The Windows Help menu will walk you though that process if you search 'disable programs' in your help section.
Spyware:
Many kinds of software add themselves to your system start menu without even asking your permission. Sometimes you will click on a link or visit a hacker website that installs spyware on your computer without you knowing. Click here for the best fix. and its free to try.
Fragmented hard drive:
This results from programs being loaded and deleted. Run the Window's hard drive defragmenter (Defrag) once a month. It is under your System Tools menu. Your computer's help menu will tell you how to do it.
Other problems: (Possible, but unlikely to cause problems)
You could have old or conflicting Windows device drivers. An example would be you might actually have two entirely different video drivers on your system and Windows could actually be alternately using both of them.
To prevent this problem, First boot the computer in Safe Mode by pressing and holding the F8 key during startup, after the DOS memory check has completed.
While in Safe Mode select Start/Settings/Control Panel/System/Devices. Click on all the devices and see if the various drivers have any yellow or red exclamation marks (which indicates a driver conflict) and also determine if there are any duplicate drivers that can be eliminated.
You may have to delete and reload a driver to correct these problems. Duplicate drivers can and should be deleted.
As each new Windows program is installed and uninstalled, it leaves behind parts of itself that can slow down or crash your computer. These are mostly .dlls and other shared files.
It's also very possible when uninstalling a program that needed Windows system files can be deleted. When your computer asks if you want to uninstall shared files it's usually safest to say no -- even if your uninstall program claims the files are not being used.
Old Windows drivers can be found by booting into Safe Mode, then opening Control Panel/System/Devices and ridding your system of old drivers.
Otherwise, the only real answer to this problem is to pick up ERROR DOCTOR or just reload Windows into a new directory which eliminates all old junk and leftover files. Reloading Windows is something to do last, as you will also have to reload all your Windows settings, drivers, and programs.
You could be lacking system memory - The only time this may be a problem is if you have an older system and upgraded your operating system without adding some more memory. You should probably upgrade to 256 or 512MB or more of system memory, while it isn't free, it isn't very expensive like it was at one time. Check out Tiger Direct to find great deals on memory upgrades.
About The Author
Dusitn Ramsey
I enjoy helping people solve thier own PC issues.
http://www.mypcfixes.com
Answer: No, but here are some of the most common reasons a computer slows down.
Background programs running:
This is the biggest reason and can be fixed quickly and for free... it's possible that your computer may have so many background programs running simultaneously that there is not enough resources to run normally.
The end result of this is that your computer begins to run more and more slowly over time as you add other programs.
There are two remedies, get Anti-Spyware and use the feature which allows you to view running programs and to disable any of those running programs. Or, if you like to get into your system with your bare hands, use the remedy below.
How to disable unneeded background programs:
All icons in your computer's system tray are background programs using memory. There are more, but you will get a hint from that system tray. To see and exit all running background programs:
Windows 95 - ME
*
a. Press the Ctrl + Alt + Delete keys at the same time.
*
b. Click any program or task except Explorer or Systray,
*
c. and then click End Task.
Repeat steps b and c to quit all programs except Explorer and Systray which are necessary components of Microsoft Windows.
You should now have a clean system. See if the computer runs like it used to... if it does, you will want to prevent those programs from restarting the next time you start the computer.
If you don't want any background programs starting when you restart the system, and you know what you are doing, you can run msconfig from the run menu and completely disable what you find in the 'Startup' tab. If you aren't that experienced and you want a safe way to disable all those unneeded background programs, get the remedy recommended for the spyware on this page. It has a feature allowing you to disable startup programs safely.
Windows XP through 2003 Server
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a. Press the Ctrl + Alt + Delete keys at the same time.
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b. Choose 'Task Manager' tab to view and end any running programs.
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c. disabling these programs will require that you change their startup properties in the 'Administrative Tools' area of your system. The Windows Help menu will walk you though that process if you search 'disable programs' in your help section.
Spyware:
Many kinds of software add themselves to your system start menu without even asking your permission. Sometimes you will click on a link or visit a hacker website that installs spyware on your computer without you knowing. Click here for the best fix. and its free to try.
Fragmented hard drive:
This results from programs being loaded and deleted. Run the Window's hard drive defragmenter (Defrag) once a month. It is under your System Tools menu. Your computer's help menu will tell you how to do it.
Other problems: (Possible, but unlikely to cause problems)
You could have old or conflicting Windows device drivers. An example would be you might actually have two entirely different video drivers on your system and Windows could actually be alternately using both of them.
To prevent this problem, First boot the computer in Safe Mode by pressing and holding the F8 key during startup, after the DOS memory check has completed.
While in Safe Mode select Start/Settings/Control Panel/System/Devices. Click on all the devices and see if the various drivers have any yellow or red exclamation marks (which indicates a driver conflict) and also determine if there are any duplicate drivers that can be eliminated.
You may have to delete and reload a driver to correct these problems. Duplicate drivers can and should be deleted.
As each new Windows program is installed and uninstalled, it leaves behind parts of itself that can slow down or crash your computer. These are mostly .dlls and other shared files.
It's also very possible when uninstalling a program that needed Windows system files can be deleted. When your computer asks if you want to uninstall shared files it's usually safest to say no -- even if your uninstall program claims the files are not being used.
Old Windows drivers can be found by booting into Safe Mode, then opening Control Panel/System/Devices and ridding your system of old drivers.
Otherwise, the only real answer to this problem is to pick up ERROR DOCTOR or just reload Windows into a new directory which eliminates all old junk and leftover files. Reloading Windows is something to do last, as you will also have to reload all your Windows settings, drivers, and programs.
You could be lacking system memory - The only time this may be a problem is if you have an older system and upgraded your operating system without adding some more memory. You should probably upgrade to 256 or 512MB or more of system memory, while it isn't free, it isn't very expensive like it was at one time. Check out Tiger Direct to find great deals on memory upgrades.
About The Author
Dusitn Ramsey
I enjoy helping people solve thier own PC issues.
http://www.mypcfixes.com
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