"Let me know Should I stay or should I go"
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blackbird71 last edited byCCleaner? Is it necessary?
Not really, probably, for MSE. But some of the other AV products (especially ones like Norton, McAffee, NOD32, and others) can leave behind quite a few fragments when simply uninstalled. In those cases, some users have had issues when installing a new AV afterwards. A lot depends on both the adequacy of the AV's uninstaller program - they're not all created equally well - and the complexity of the 'hooking' the AV installations do in your system. But if you plan on trialing a number of different AV products to arrive at a final choice, the odds are your registry will come to bear the scars of incomplete uninstalling after a time. Whether that creates a problem, of course, depends entirely on what you install and then uninstall and how well the programmers did their jobs. I'd keep something like CCleaner on my system ahead of time "just in case" an AV program's incomplete uninstall messes up installing a new one - BEFORE you have to go out on the Internet "bare" to find a CCleaner (or whatever) copy because you're unable to install a new AV after incompletely uninstalling an old one.
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blackbird71 last edited by
What about a RegScanner? Will it do?
I've never used it, but from its description, it appears to be just a scanner to locate reg keys using various search terms. But if you need to do anything to the located keys, you have to use RegEdit to do it... which sounds like a lot of manual work if there's a lot of affected keys left behind by a poor AV uninstaller. I can't tell how effective it would be at searching out things like CCleaner, which locates "unlinked" or orphaned keys and displays what software names they used to be associated with - all in one pass. But I realize not all tools are for everyone or every system. In any case, in whatever way one elects to remove registry keys via any tools, be sure to back up the registry first and be sure that any key(s) being removed are actually associated by name with the uninstalled software.
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A Former User last edited by
be sure to back up the registry first
What do you mean - every item to remove? -
blackbird71 last edited by
A registry backup is one made either with RegEdit (File > Export) or using a registry cleanup tool that offers a full registry backup feature. If you're going to do surgery on the registry, it's a good idea to have a clean copy saved somewhere to use for recovering, if needed. As a belt-and-suspenders measure, I also use the cleaner's internal tool that saves all reg deletions so they can be merged back in if needed. I'm a believer that you can never have too many backups, preferably made in slightly different ways. I think that dates back to my Win98 days when a drive crash and a chain of other problems left me doing a partially manual drive restoration from my 4th-deep, piecemeal backup... the other 3 kinds of backups all unable to function so as to help with restoration. Without that 4th-deep backup, I'd have totally lost all my data and certain system files which, at the time, would have been a first-order catastrophe for me.
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blackbird71 last edited by
That means a copy made of the registry as it currently stands, before doing any kind of alterations on it. It's intended as an easy way to get back home if your subsequent registry changes cause trouble for your system or software. It's kind of like setting a system restore point before doing a major update to a system. In the case of a registry backup, if you need to, you can restore it and immediately put your registry back exactly like it was before you made any changes.
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A Former User last edited by
The registry analysis takes seconds and cleaning just a little bit longer. Prompts advise you when to save backups to avoid losing important data.
From FileHippo
Also,
...cached data and internet histories make your identity less secure. CCleaner removes these files...
I don't want those to be touched. I hope there are settings...
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blackbird71 last edited by
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...cached data and internet histories make your identity less secure. CCleaner removes these files...
I don't want those to be touched. I hope there are settings...
I believe you'll find those are merely options... you don't have to automatically do any of it. The registry scan/clean is just one feature of several. Cleaning history and temp files is another different feature (which I almost never use), since I do that from within most application software itself. Removal of files is not really the reason you'd be using a cleaner to tidy up after an AV uninstall... you'd be trying to clear out any registry entries related to the then-extinct AV software. This a tool that can accomplish multiple different tasks... you only need to use it for what you need and just ignore the other features. CCleaner started out as a "crap cleaner" (hence the first "C" in CCleaner) to clear out the residue from uninstalling all the junk software too often found bundled with brand new systems, but has evolved into a good all-around, multi-purpose cleaning tool.
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A Former User last edited by
@blackbird71: Thanks!
Yoohoo!
Hadn't bothered my "ailing" MSE for a while, but just discovered it'd resurrected with the new definitions*:cheers:*
So I'll be using it for now still. Getting all that stuff we've discussed recently will help anyway soon,
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blackbird71 last edited by
Good! But do realize you're down to 4+ weeks and counting down. Since you've already downloaded CCleaner, when the day of reckoning does arrive for MSE, you might want to try just going ahead then to uninstall it and simply try to install the new AV. If all goes well, you may not need CCleaner to do any removal work; if something misbehaves, you've already got it on your system. Anyhow, I hope it all goes smoothly when the day arrives... :yes:
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A Former User last edited by
@davehawley
I assume you're talking about the Microsoft "Malicious Software Removal Tool".
If you're still on XP you can get a lot more than that still from Windows Update if you put the POSReady hack in your registry (Google for it).
This should last until 2019.What will it take on the system?
And wouldn't it be kinda late for me to insert here such a thing now? -
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A Former User last edited by
Even worse. I seem to have reached the ceiling of my processor.
Well, I'm not certain, but the current trouble that I've stopped being able to watch videos (movies) in my Opera 11 (CPU reaches 100% and everything freezes significantly) - its start coincides with the recent Adobe Flash update I got on my system.
Well, Chrome has always been a pain in the arse; however, I'm still able to watch videos (not heavy) in my Firefox. CPU climbs up to the hundred anyway, but the system manages to cope with the load, only minor freezes occur.Is it the Flash update indeed? :|
Well, how much of a processor should one have to cope with the current software anyway? Mine is under 1GB.
Is there any other browser taking it easy on CPU? -
blackbird71 last edited by
Do you mean 1 GHz for processor clock speed or 1 GB for RAM size?
Regardless, videos will eat up system resources like nothing else can. At any given time and for any given media, one browser may show efficiencies for CPU and RAM loading compared when with other browsers. But things are so dynamic in this area that other media or at other times, the resource-loading rank of some of the browsers may reverse. At the present, Firefox tends to be less resource-loading than Chrome-based browsers, and that will probably remain true until Firefox deploys multi-process browsers (which it will, eventually). The main problem is that for watching videos, it seems as if you're fast approaching the limitations of your hardware, regardless of browser. At some point, perhaps near at hand, you're either going to have to upgrade equipment or else modify your viewing behavior to accommodate the limits of your existing system. One thing seems certain: website graphics loading will only increase as time goes by.
One area to explore might be whether you are using a 'built-in' graphics processor. If so, that will inflate both your CPU and your RAM usage. However, your system structure and power-supply capacity might not accommodate a separate plug-in graphics card which could bring some relief to both system RAM and CPU usage. If it can fit and supply such a card, it might be worthwhile checking out a cheap one.
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A Former User last edited by
Do you mean 1 GHz for processor clock speed or 1 GB for RAM size?
Sorry, it was RAM, right
My CP is said to be 1.60 GHz. -
A Former User last edited by
One area to explore might be whether you are using a 'built-in' graphics processor.
Is it the same as "video-card"?
However, your system structure and power-supply capacity might not accommodate a separate plug-in graphics card which could bring some relief to both system RAM and CPU usage.
Means saving computing I drain the power sockets more, I guess.
If it can fit and supply such a card, it might be worthwhile checking out a cheap one.
Well, can this - videocard? - get sorta 'worn off'? I mean if it makes sense asking to have it checked up during my (still) pending hardware maintenance?
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blackbird71 last edited by
No. A built-in graphics processor is a chipset built onto the mother board, and that by design shares your RAM as well as using borrowing CPU processing functionality to do some of its work, possibly slowing down the other things going on in the CPU for the rest of the computer. A video (or graphics) card is a plug-in card that has its own RAM and dedicated graphics 'CPU' so that it doesn't have to share much of anything with the main CPU other than handshaking. Unfortunately, it has to have its own power supplied, so it has to does present a load to your system's power supply. The PS's ability to supply that extra load depends on the 'surplus power margin' of the supply as well as the power demands of the graphics card. Video cards will have their own software drivers, which have to be installed into the OS.
A video card's power demands varies greatly, depending upon design and brand and typically driven by card performance capabilities (frame rate, shaders, on-card RAM, etc) and the media being played. Because of the power used in 'challenging' video applications for gaming and which must be dissipated as heat, many of the bigger cards have built-in air fans or are even dualed-up (requiring 2 adjoining plug-in sockets to physically install). Such large contraptions would be gross overkill for what you need, since all you would trying to do was supercede an onboard, low-performance chipset to save some RAM and CPU for playing simple video. So you'd be looking for a distinctly low-end, low-power video card from the various makers or distributors.
As far as 'wear' on a built-in graphics processor, that doesn't usually exist. Chipsets either work or not, they don't have a gradually-declining performance mode. About the only thing that really exhibits 'wear' are system-drives, chassis fans, and power supplies (whose internal capacitors, etc can age out of spec and show a fall-off in performance).
The real questions here are whether in fact you do have a built-in graphics processor, whether a plug-in card will physically fit in the case, do you have an available socket for it, and whether your power supply has enough margin to supply a simple-performance card.
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A Former User last edited by
The real questions here are whether in fact you do have a built-in graphics processor, whether a plug-in card will physically fit in the case, do you have an available socket for it, and whether your power supply has enough margin to supply a simple-performance card.
How do I check it?
For the starters (right grammar?), it's anetbook, or 'nettop' - a smaller laptop, with a bit less major capacities as I reckon.
It's Samsung NP N-110. I can check it on the net or call the hotline, or both.
Anyway I reckon, a good maintenance with cleaning the fans etc. would help. To an extent. -
blackbird71 last edited by
The N-110 has a built-in graphics chipset (Intel GMA 945) which shares 128 MB of the computer's RAM. The netbook's small size just about guarantees you can't add a separate video card plug-in. The 110 has an 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor, which is single-core (so my earlier guess about what you were seeing in the Task Manager display was in error). Such a netbook is fine for what it does with occasional regular video, but it will start to struggle for hi-definition or complex graphics tasks. There's simply no way you can get desktop-grade overall graphics performance from a netbook, if only because you can't apply a dedicated graphics card in such a small package, plus the limitations introduced by a single-core processor. The 110 is a computer optimized for portability and battery life, not for CPU/RAM-demanding apps.
