norton utils replacement?

[matthew]

Well... for those how really dispise having "things" running in the background reference to NPROTECT.EXE that comes with norton utils.. i really like windoctor.. and speed disk... shame you cannot just install certain utils instead of having to do all.. i found that NPROTECT was active quite alot even though i had disbaled notorn protection ? anyway does anyone know something similar to this ? windoctor? or better... it's just i am really obsessed with having an ultra clean system... it's not about space... i just hate knowing even though i have uninstalled an app there are usually alwyas bits left over...etc.. having **** created/left over in my system that doesn't need to be there windoctor seemed to clean out/up the registry. i ran it every time after uninstalling something and 99% it would find crap left behind and "repair"....

so what else is there.... that's good and does'nt run anything in the background.. does similar type thing to windoctor-system check etc..:)

[Geek4Life]

For cleaning the registry you can't go past RegCleaner or PowerTools from http://www.jv16.org

[-=DEI[]v[]OS=-]

Check out http://www.majorgeeks.com/ they have ALL sorts of stuff.

I think it's the old tweakfiles site.

You should find what you want there, sorry I can't be more specific, although for the registry I'd recommend Regcleaner:D

[whetu]

regcleaner does an awesome job of the registry cleanup side of things.. a lot better than windoctor at that task... I use a combination of the two to keep things spic and span...

[Agent666]

yeah norton has to be one of the worst programs for leaving stuff behind in the registry....... I remember trying some stuff once .... it was called cleansweep was actually for cleaning your system of unwanted stuff .... when I uninstalled it it left like hundreds of entries in the registry...... kind of ironic since it had a registry cleaner as part of the package..........

So the moral of the story as far as I am concerned is to beat norton products away from your box with a 10' pole..........

[matthew]

that majorgeeks site is good :) i'm gonna get regcleaner

[matthew]

anyone use any of those memory/drive utilities.. to improve performance..?

[Doogie]

I support some machines that run @ 100% cpu usage a fair part of the day (web servers, graphic's workstations, rendering workstations) and here are some basic performance tips.

1. Swap - put it on a different drive than your system. If it's not possible to have a different drive, create another partition for it, this will stop any defragmented swap.

2. Programs - despite popular opinion.. keep it on the same drive as your system. Once the program is loaded, generally that's the drive usage.

3. Defragmentation is your friend - I use both Norton Utilities and Executive Diskeeper. The order - Norton Speed Disk first, then do a boot time defragmentation with Diskkeeper (it takes a long time.. leave it overnight) defragmenting the directories and pagefile.

Let's just say you have a 2 disk system this is what I'd recommend partition wise. This is also geared towards the gamer and offers good performance. I'm basing this on a machine with 256mb of RAM and your Win2k/XP system, fairly standard these days. You can always change the drive letters.

Drive 1:

C: Put system and programs on here with small swap of 50-100
F: Rest of drive with a data or games partition.

Drive 2:

D: Create a partition of double your ram size. Most people upgrade, so I recommend a 1gig partition. Put a swap of 512mb on here (based on a 256mb system).
E: Use rest of the drive for data, downloads etc.

That's my recommendation and one we use for all our heavily utilised graphics workstations, that are running 3Ds Max and Photoshop, After Effects etc.

For linux workstations, it's a whole other ballgame. But I'll touch on that one somewhere else.

[matthew]

o.k...


how about this

10g os.apps
2g page file (perhaps 3)
the rest > data etc..

:confused:

but i only have one drive so....? will it really make a diff? i have 512mb ram (probably get another 512 later on).

[Doogie]

Originally posted by matthew
o.k...


how about this

10g os.apps
2g page file (perhaps 3)
the rest > data etc..


Too much swap is bad hmmmmk?? Only ever go to double your real ram amount on your machine ever, prerably 1.5 - 2.

So on that basis .. 10g OS, 1gig page file the rest data.