uninstalling...

Hi All, Just trying to get rid of unwanted programs because I need to speed up the computer before I get a RAM upgrade, so thought I'd ask if I could take off MONEY which was alread installed on the computer? If I did this would it affect anything else, like Works or Word et al? Thanks for your help. Chrissie

Hi Classy Chrissie,

Just trying to get rid of unwanted programs because I need to speed up the computer before I get a RAM upgrade

Please understand that uninstalling programs from your computer will NOT affect performance - except under the following circumstances.

1. The program starts when Windows starts, which uses up RAM (and can be disabled without uninstalling the program)
2. Disk space is so low the drive has become heavily fragmented and the Page File is unable to work properly.

Don't confuse memories. Disk space (long term memory) really has nothing to do with RAM (short term memory). They work together, but are still totally different.

It would probably be good to tell us about your computer and what your ultimate objective is. If you are wanting to add more RAM because your computer is not working like it used to then we really should look at why performance is down. If you are looking at where you should invest some extra cash in your pockets, then adding more RAM (up to a point) usually yields the best bang for the buck!

Sadly, the bad guys have forced us to load up our systems with a complete arsenal of anti-malware and intrusion defense systems before we even begin to think about hitting the Internet. It is no wonder our systems don't run like they used to.

Eliminating unused programs from your hard drive is still a good move. In the case of Money, if you don't use it, then sure get rid of it by going through the Control Panel > Add and Remove Programs applet. If Money was installed as part of the Works Suite, you may have to run the Works uninstall program, which should walk you through uninstalling those Suite features you don't want.

But you may not need to free up disk space if you have not recently cleaned out all the clutter. CCleaner is a great disk cleaning program that is excellent at cleaning the system of 1000s of temporary files, including all history, old logs, Recycle Bin contents, and cache files. During installation, uncheck the option to install the Yahoo toolbar. Before first use, go to Options > Settings > Advanced and ensure Only delete files in Windows Temp folders older than 48 hours is unchecked. To delete all "tracking" cookies, (which I urge you do), you must delete all cookies, so ensure the Cookies setting remains checked. Ensure you know your site credentials (user name and password) for sites you frequent; you will have to login again at next visit. Beginners and experts alike will benefit from the excellent, CCleaner Beginner's Guide.

Note that CCleaner's "Issues" checker is a great Registry cleaner as well. It's greatest asset, IMO, is that it is not overly aggressive. Ensure you follow the prompts to backup the Registry before making changes to it. It is often necessary to scan for issues 2 or 3 times until it reports, "No issues were found".

ATF Cleaner is another popular temporary file cleaner. Or, use Windows Disk Cleanup utility, accessed by right clicking on the drive in Windows Explorer.

[TIP: Clean the clutter before malware scans and defragging - no need to scan 1000s of temporary files, and defragging with 1000s of temporary files is counterproductive!]

Hi Digerati Thanks so much for your help and comments. I just thought getting rid of a few things that I don’t use might clean up the pc a bit though I realise progs aren’t in the RAM memory. I’m a computer dummy really but try to learn things as I go…sigh. My objective is to stop windows “hanging”, stop the program not responding boxes coming up and not being able to get rid of the “end now” box, things jamming / freezing up, Word misbehaving and the “nearly out of Virtual memory” box keep coming up etc etc. I also want to upgrade the RAM to at least double what it is. I am running (well almost…see further on) Norton’s 2004 – don’t scream I know you techy’s hate Norton’s but for dummies like me it’s easiest to manage even if it takes up oodles of resources on the PC. My system is…. an Hewlett Packard Intel Pentium4 2.8Ghz PC with 256MB DDR RAM, 80Gb hard drive, with an Integrated SIS(?) Real 256E Graphics card (up to 64MB shared video memory). The computer is 4 years old with Win XP Home Edition OS. To add to my woes… (how long have you got…) I asked a guy who advertises locally to get my PC running faster than it was and also wanted him to possibly upgrade the RAM and generally check things out! He couldn’t find out why the PC was running slow, said he’d have to get some software to check it out (!), said upping the RAM might not cure the problem….and then put his external HD into my computer and ran this registry thing and did bits and pieces…gulp. It was after he finished that that Norton’s became disabled and I couldn’t enable it. Called him back and he said he didn’t know why that had happened, put the registry thingy in again and couldn’t do anything. I asked him to do a system restore then which he did to the 10th June…. Norton’s enabled then after he’d gone I noticed I couldn’t get into quarantine (it says reinstall Norton’s) and the live updates I’ve done since, just don’t register with the date so I’m assuming they aren’t being updated, the date stays the same from the day he did it, the 11th. So that’s about it, Norton’s 2004 (subs current to December) was working ok and fine until he did this registry thing… Norton’s detected the downloader virus on Sunday the 15th and I can’t delete it because I can’t get into the quarantine! I always delete cookies and temp files when I finish on the internet, I do a defrag and scan disk fairly frequently, I was updating and scanning with Norton’s before the 11th (grrr) and I also run Spybot SD, AdAware and SuperAntispyware every week after updating…. don’t know what else I can do really. Just wish I hadn’t go that guy in as I can put up with the slowness but not Norton’s sidding about!! Thanks for your help though, I’m always willing to learn and read through things even if I am scared to download and run things because I don’t understand how to work them. Chrissie PS can I delete all cookies by going to START, explore, C drive, owner, cookies highlighting them and delete, some are there from 2007 and before? There's loads in there that don't delete by me r clicking on I.E./properties, delete cookies.

I just thought getting rid of a few things that I don’t use might clean up the pc

Nothing wrong with that.

I’m a computer dummy really but try to learn things as I go…sigh.

I've been at this a long time, and if there's one thing I know, it's that there is always more to learn.

My objective is to stop windows “hanging”, stop the program not responding boxes coming up and not being able to get rid of the “end now” box, things jamming / freezing up, Word misbehaving and the “nearly out of Virtual memory” box keep coming up etc etc. I also want to upgrade the RAM to at least double what it is. I am running (well almost…see further on) Norton’s 2004 – don’t scream I know you techy’s hate Norton’s but for dummies like me it’s easiest to manage even if it takes up oodles of resources on the PC. My system is…. an Hewlett Packard Intel Pentium4 2.8Ghz PC with 256MB DDR RAM, 80Gb hard drive, with an Integrated SIS(?) Real 256E Graphics card (up to 64MB shared video memory). The computer is 4 years old with Win XP Home Edition OS.

Well, certainly, with only 256Mb of RAM, and 64Mb of that snagged for shared video, you are in desperate need of more RAM. That is barely enough for Windows itself to run in. My general recommendation is for 1Gb of RAM for XP, and 2Gb for XP with multicore CPUs and 2Gb for Vista. 2 X 512Mb modules can be had for a pretty reasonable price. Many motherboards only support 2 RAM modules so that would mean tossing the current 256Mb. If two modules are not in the budget, I will not get less than 1 X 512Mb to give you a total of 768Mb - 64Mb for video, leaving 704Mb for XP and your programs. That is not ideal, but will still yield a nice performance boost for not too much money.

Note that XP was designed to run fine in 256Mb of RAM, or even your 192Mb (with 64Mb lost to on-board graphics, in your case). But that was 8 years ago and the threat from badguys was seen as little more than an annoyance. But the badguys have forced us to load up our systems with a firewall and substantial anti-malware defense system before we can even think of connecting to a network and firing up an Internet browser. To make matters worse, the anti-malware software industry, starting with McAfee long ago, "popularized" ( rather, exploited!) adding bloat to their programs. That's bloat in RAM and disk space - with "Norton" and "bloat" becoming synonymous. The bad guys forced Microsoft to add a lot of code, patches, changes, and totally rewrite much of XP too. I suspect it needs more RAM just to run too.

More RAM allows XP to store frequently used code in very fast RAM, instead of the slloooowwww hard drive's Page File. If you have 1Gb or more RAM, Windows rarely (if ever) needs to touch the Page File. I emphasize "needs" because Windows will use memory, including the Page File, if it finds it, but with lots of RAM, the most often needed stuff is still on fast RAM.

Your next upgrade should then be a new graphics card. Just about any budget graphics card will improve over all performance over the on-board graphics. If your motherboard supports an AGP card, that would be better, but a low-end PCI (not PCI Express) will do fine, if no AGP. A card will have a better graphics engine than the on-board, but of equal, if not more importance, the card comes with its own RAM, freeing up the 64Mb of shared system RAM your on-board graphics snagged. Newegg has 9 PCI cards with 128 - 256Mb of RAM on the card, all for under $50US - Newegg has 9 cards here.

The only downside is adding RAM and a more powerful graphics card places a greater demand on the power supply. So you may have to upgrade the PSU - still worth it in the long run. There are calculators to help with that - something we can get to later.

So if you buy another 512Mb (or better yet 1Gb) of RAM, you WILL see a nice bump in performance for most tasks simply because Windows will have more head room. And adding a new card will give another nice bump. But if you still have some malware, corruption, or space issues, those bottlenecks may counter any gains achieved. I think we need to check your disk space.

PS can I delete all cookies by going to START, explore, C drive, owner, cookies highlighting them and delete, some are there from 2007 and before? There's loads in there that don't delete by me r clicking on I.E./properties, delete cookies.

“nearly out of Virtual memory” box keep coming up

I refer you back up to my post above and CCleaner, ATF-Cleaner, or Disk Cleanup. If you are hesitant at downloading more stuff when you are trying to free up space, use Disk Cleanup (but ATF is only 50Kb - and much easier - and free!). Under My Computer, right click on each hard drive or partition one at a time, and select Properties, then click on Disk Cleanup. Wait for it to complete and it will provide you with a list of areas it can free up some space - make sure Compress old files is unchecked. What version of IE? You should go through IE's tool menu to delete all your history, temp, and cookie files, if not using one of the above methods. Note that many programs besides your browser uses temporary files and so going to IE folders or Tools options will not rid the drives of all clutter - you need one of those disk cleanup tools for that.

How much free space do you have? What are your Page File settings? Virtual Memory uses the Page File. Low disk space often results in low virtual memory errors. So, again, you need to make sure you have plenty of free disk space. And you should always purge the drives of temporary files before defragging.

I also run Spybot SD, AdAware and SuperAntispyware every week after updating

I think that is a good combination of anti-spyware, and with Norton, and good self-discipline at keeping the system updated (and sounds like you do) should ensure your anti-malware defenses are good. I would like see a real-time anti-spyware scanner, however. I use the pro version of SUPERAntispyware and I like it. AVG Free now has both anti-virus and anti-spyware scanner in a free mini-suite - so you could get rid of Norton! Or Windows Defender is an option too.

A popular alternative is Malwarebytes's Anti-Malware (MBAM). I recommend you download and install MBAM now, update the databases and run through a scan, just to be sure you are malware free. If you like it, they have a pro (paid) version that includes a real-time module.

If MBAM comes up clean, and you have a nice chunk of free disk space, then you need to get some RAM on order - we can help with that too.

Hi again Digerati I'm really grateful for all your expertise and giving me the advice, thank you for that. I am deciding on whether to take the PC to a computer firm which seem quite good. I'm really not into doing much without being totally scared at the prospect and I don't need the stress lol. I am thinking of getting them to add the RAM and graphics card, remove Norton's and install the AVG8 suite that has the firewall, clean my PC and generally get it going much better than it is now. My system is XP SP2 Hewlett Packard Pavilion A604 Intel ® Pentium ® 4 CPU 2.80Ghz, 256Mb MB RAM 80 Gb hd (shared video memory Graphic up to 64 MB). Running Norton's 2004 plus their firewall. The guy I spoke to said that if the AVG is installed to get rid of Sypbot, Adaware and SuperAntispyware because they would clash with AVG and anyway AVG does all that anwyay. I hope he's right. To answer about the space etc I found this out in My Computer, is this what you want? Page File. C drive space available 60476 Mb page file initial size 288 max size 576. I found out why Norton's isn't working 100% after the tech guy "doctored it". On Norton's error info it gives the files for Norton's in startup and I don't have all of them…. it worked fine before the guy came out and then not since (can't get into quarantine and it doesn't take up the live updates… won't alter the date done!). Is there a way I can get those files back or has he dissed them forever? Thanks again for your help, I really appreciate it. Chrissie

page file initial size 288 max size 576.

Oh wow! That is low. XP loves lots of memory. If it can't find RAM, it will take page file. The old rule of thumb of 1.5 times RAM does not fit with only 256 or RAM. If I were timid, I would change the setting to allow Windows to manage it, them make sure you hit set and reboot. Then it can be tweaked later.

The advantage to taking it into a shop is you can yell at them if it breaks! But they do this all the time too. If you trust your shop, go for it.

I would get rid of Norton, but the others you can keep and use for supplemental scanning.

As for fixing Norton and getting into quarantine, I don't know. There are special utilities to completely remove Norton and that may have to be run.