Getting a computer to run like brand new again?

I found it both good and odd that chkdisc found 0 bad sectors on my hard drive which is very nice! had it 2 years this xmas.
sure the second stage took longer because of kis6.0 but it completed with no errors so theres no problem.
lodore

 

Run the hard drive manufactures diagnostic tool.

 

For quality I've found JV16 PowerTools to be really good. Same goes for TuneUp.

However the best product on the market is an all-in-one Anti-Virus, anti-spyware, registry fixer and capable of undoing nearly any drama in 'near-time' except hardware failures.

Acronis True Image.

 

I've always thought about using True Image. The only thing is, any image I create would be outdated software-wise in a few months or so.. drivers are updated, etc. So if I were to go back to a previous image, I'd have to install driver & software updates for everything. Maybe that's not a big deal though

How does True Image work exactly? I know it's a cloning app, and I'm familiar with how those work, but.. if my C: drive is 30GB.. will the image file also take up that amount? Is it compressed? How good is the compression?

 

No problems. Just carry out an incremental backup with ATI

You have different levels of compression; normal, high or maximum. I have always used the normal level and achieved on average, about 70% compression of my original drive data.

Worth trying the trial version, preferably with another hard drive.

 

Wait. Wait wait. You're saying with True Image, if I have an image on my secondary HD that consists of a clean WinXP install with some necessary software.. and let's say that image has an old version of nVidia drivers on it, and there's a newer one out.. I can download the new nVidia drivers and apply that to the image incrementally?? If so, that's pretty sweet.

 

CSJ,

My suggestion for incremental updates was mainly to cover changing software.

For new drivers, you should be able to make a new, incremental image without any problems. But the big if is whether the Acronis Recovery Disc recognises the new drivers during a Restore. If not, you would either have to wait for an Acronis update, ask them to make a special Recovery Disc for you or maybe use BartPE alongside ATI, as you can add new drivers, for example your NVidia Graphics card, to the BartPE disk.

 

I use True Image primarily for the "engine room" only. I partitioned my first HDD into 4. In partition one goes windows and programs. My files and docs etc are stored safely in the other partitions.

So I just saved a clean image of C with everything clean in it and reload it from time to time. Same goes for any changes. E.G. Upgrade AV. Take another snapshot.

Updating AV definitons etc kicks in automatically. It's a lot easier to click "O.K." to approve AV updates than it is to sit through the torture of re-installing XP and drivers and programs (if you can easily find them all again).

 

My speculation is that its down to a combination of badly behaving programs and programs (and even drivers) that do not cleanly un-installed or upgrade.

Our servers and workstations (which users cannot install any cruft on), do not slow down unless something goes wrong with the installed apps, that includes accumulating temp files, dozens of unused user profiles (we have roaming profile). We rarely defrag our servers and even fragmentation doesn't slow things down much (compared to other things mentioned above).