[Motorola Droid RAZR] Ohmster:
O.T. - Guide: Optimization of Desktop PC

This is a Desktop PC Guide to clean it up. It is long and Android only users should skip it.

Yes, this is off topic but things are rather slow in here. Since I mentioned Autoruns several times, I will take the time to explain how to use it, as it can appear to be a daunting exercise.

That's good, [MENTION=3315635]neoramasay[/MENTION] because it mimics the experience myself and [MENTION=1472623]d.casper.b[/MENTION] also experienced. I am going to go a bit further and show you guys how to use Autoruns and Process Explorer, both of which are free programs that you can download from Windows Sysinternals, bookmark this site! This is a LOT of typing and I just did this for [MENTION=5057697]welder73[/MENTION], I exceeded my character limit but this is good stuff, I will condense it and post for you here. Save this post as a text message for reference. If you do not find this post helpful, there are other members that will. ;)

Autoruns is a really good, and a bit complex program. There is a lot you can do with it that even I don't know of. But how I use it might help you. I use it for two things. Make it full screen so you can see everything. Drag vertical separators apart so you can read about what program does what.

Always right click on autoruns.exe and "Run as Administrator" or else you may not have the authority to do anything to these registry hooks. Unless, you are just playing with it to have a look and do not plan to do anything yet.

1.) Open the Everything tab on the top right and allow it to populate. Now scan down and look for yellow colored lines and the word File Missing. Anything with file missing means that this registry link does not and can not work. You get these dead links from older programs that did not completely uninstall and virus stuff that was detected and removed or quarantined. In either case, the hook to launch the file points to a non-existent file on your system, the link is now dead wood, and you should remove it permanently and not disable it. Right click on the line, Delete.

2.) Now "the good part" that I use often. Click the Logon Tab at the top and have a look. EVERYTHING you see on that Logon list will launch and start when you reach your Windows desktop. You might be surprised at how much stuff runs, uses memory, and some CPU power, when you start your PC and haven't even done anything yet. Program "speed launchers" are safe to remove. Who needs Adobe Acrobat running at all times with no windows "to speed up launching the program"? If you need Acrobat it will launch and do it's job just fine without any sort of pre-launch. Same for Quicktime or anything else.

Another good thing in Autoruns, the Login tab, will show you the process name, Description, Publisher, and Image Path to show you where it is on your hard drive. Beware of any software where there are a lot of blank fields such as publisher and name. Viruses and malware do not give names! Look for things with names that do not make sense. Something like xag3729.exe located in hidden folders like C:\Users\welder\AppData\Local\Temp is for sure not a legitimate file and is guaranteed to be malicious. Now that you know where this malicious file is, delete it. Or if you cannot because it is now running, take a screenshot of Autoruns, showing the file location, delete the link in Autoruns, restart computer, and now you should be able to remove it. This is a great way to get an early look at things set to launch at logon, ANYTHING strange, or has no description or publisher is suspect.

NOTE: Some small PC programs that you may use all the time may not have that information because it is difficult or too expensive for small, independent developers to get everything in order for digital signatures to release their programs. I have ONE item in my logon list that has no description or publisher and that is "Everything", the most lightning fast search program I ever saw and I use it on my PC several times a week to find things I cannot remember where they are or must pull up quickly while on the phone. Search Everything is a free tool that quickly scans not only your hard drive, but anything connected to your PC with files like your C drive, I have several other hard drives, large ones are split into several drives, any mounted share drives, and even USB drives or flash drives if scanned while plugged in. VERY useful program but does not show a description or publisher in Autoruns.

Search Everything is a very, very good and lightning fast file or folder finder that yields instant results, unlike Windows Search which WILL examine every file, looking for your query, deep inside of files. Windows Search is great if you have a name words such as "Knox Pool Cleaners" and you cannot remember where you put that invoice. MS Search will find it, eventually. Everything Search will find it instantly if, say you put the word "invoice" in the file name, you will get instant results. I name each account I have, either real life locally or online accounts in a text file such as netflix.txt with important information in it such as login, password, email address, customer service phone, etc., this way when I need it, Everything will find it immediately. But because VoidTools is such a small company, perhaps only one developer, it does not have a description or publisher in Autoruns.

You should be afraid of more than just exe files, there are other files that can load and run and infect like js, bat, com, and once loaded, dll files. Any Microsoft Office file can be infected with Macro viruses. If you find stuff where it should not be, suspect it. So go down your Logon tab entries and start removing links to things you do not want starting up. You can disable any item so that it can be restored later by unchecking the box at the front of each item. This way if you disable something like GoogleDriveSync and find that the things on your PC Gdrive are not showing up on your phone, you can re-enable it by restoring the check in the box, in Autoruns, for GoogleDriveSync. If you use Gdrive, you probably won't want to disable this item as it backs up your stuff to the cloud for access anywhere, on any device, at your Google account online.

So look over that Logon tab and disable or remove items that are not necessary for your PC to run and do what it is supposed to. Chrome is NOT a necessary item in the Logon tab, delete it as Chrome will work just fine, regardless. After removing everything not essential in Autoruns Logon Tab, I still have 10 items left and many are in strange locations you would never thing to check. And when you get a virus or malware, it can be set to launch from "anyplace on your PC" so a favorite and easy to get to hiding place for browser downloaded viruses will be in hidden folders like AppData and the hidden folders below it.

Use Autoruns to help locate malware: If you find something that you never heard of such as "search protect", that will have NO description or publisher, or, the Image Path is not in Program Files where it belongs. LOOK IT UP ON GOOGLE RIGHT AWAY! You will find that Search Protect is a particular nasty virus that will make your browser give false search results and make your time on the web miserable. And it is very difficult to remove, by hand, get instructions on how to remove search protect or whatever you find on Google. A malware (The word "virus" is not accurate for most of the crap we must remove because they are not true viruses.) Some of them come with a "fake uninstall entry" in Programs and Features that allow you to *think* it has been removed. Nothing can be farther than the truth. Once you get the correct removal instructions, you will be amazed that it hides all over the computer, hidden folders is a favorite hiding spot. And there are registry hooks all over the registry to "wake up" these dormant packages to insert them into the pre-install section of your PC so they will install again and load, WAY before Windows starts up or your virus scanner can get started. They then disable your antivirus software and leave it looking like it still works, but the roots have been cut on your A/V scanner so you will never find it. I have seen startup hooks for malware like this almost anywhere. Click a picture, it has a hook to launch the virus setup again. Play music, open an Explorer window, just about any action you take can have an embedded hook to launch a malware program that has been "removed".

Although I have quite a few startup programs on my Login tab,

I know what each and everyone of them are and want to keep them

. I have weeded out a LOT more that should not be there. I always take that stupid Adobe acutray from startup repeatedly, but any update to Acrobat puts it back again. Same for Adobe Updater, a LOT of the stuff I have installed came from good friends so I did not have pay for them. I for sure do not want to "update them" and lose the registration that I used to allow the pro license to operate.

You should check out every other tap in Autoruns to see what kind of stuff then contain. Everything of course, has everything in one big window. The rest of the tabs separate them out into different areas to make finding what you want a LOT easier. A good tab to examine is the Internet Explorer tab. Here you will find all of the junk that has attached itself to Internet Explorer, much of which you may not even be aware of. By looking at my IE tab, everything present are things I want, need, and use like my password manager, save to pdf, some MS Office stuff I don't need like send to OneNote, which I can remove since each one slows down the browser and I never use OneNote.

What you should do now: Check the Everything tab for "File Missing" registry hooks, they will be colored yellow. Delete each one of them and look at the Image Path to see where they came from, then visit that location in Explorer and delete the entire folder that contained them since they are usually malware. Programs like "registry booster", "maps galaxy", "PC Cleaner Pro", and several others are not removed by A/V software because even though they are malware, there are people who do install it, believing that it works (Like you can really turn a 5 year old laptop into better than brand new with one click) and installed it themselves. So these you must remove yourself.

Never install toolbars of any kind. These "toolbars" have no useful purpose and almost all of them have an agenda and are NOT working for you! Remove ALL of them at once! If you really do everything on Yahoo and find that you often do use the Yahoo toolbar, then keep it, but you can do the same thing with shortcuts on your browser. Almost every toolbar is loaded with ads, trackers, and can/will give false results, hijack your homepage, send personal browsing data back "home", and even create random ad popups on your PC. Stay away from them and remove any and all you have installed. The "Ask" toolbar is malicious, and you will probably get it by installing something else. Get rid of it!

To Assist finding Browser Hijackers: Use another free program and download HiJackThis from SourceForge.net. Do a scan on your PC and carefully read the list of startup and browser helper objects it finds that is not found in a typical Windows installation. From that screen, you can see things attached to ALL browsers and get rid of them like toolbars and malware. Not as easy to read and use as Autoruns, but it will find everything regarding browsers.

To find out what the heck is slowing down your PC: The task manager is a great place to start as you can sort by CPU usage. But what happens when you find the culprit is svchost.exe? There are LOTS of them and the name, although a legitimate Microsoft file (Had you looked it up) does not tell very much. Another great tool like Autoruns from the same Microsoft free tool site Windows Sysinternals is called Process Explorer. By holding your mouse over each of the svchost.exe files running, a popup bubble shows all of the "real processes" that are in use by that instance of svchost.exe. This allows you to track down the errant process eating up all of your CPU power. I will give a link that explains it.

http://www.online-tech-tips.com/com...texe-errors-and-problems-with-high-cpu-usage/

Process Explorer

Find out what files, registry keys and other objects processes have open, which DLLs they have loaded, and more. This uniquely powerful utility will even show you who owns each process.

This one not only shows how to find what is eating your CPU up, but also shows how to identify it with Process Explorer. I always run this program at startup, the icon is an active CPU use graph and when clicked, it shows a "super task manager". You can find what program is locking a file or folder you wish to delete, for example. If you want to delete the folder "Computer Docs" and find it is locked by another program, Process Explorer has a Find option where you can enter a keyword like "docs" and it will show you what running program is locking it so that you can kill it, right there, on the spot. Get Process Explorer on Windows Sysinternals.

This guide is to help you run your computer efficiently and to weed out things that may slow it down or cause harm to the PC. I hope this helps someone. :o