Hello readers, I hope you had a great weekend! I had several jobs on the road today. They were basic tuneup, clean, and optimization jobs on home computers.

When most people think of a computer tuneup, clean, or optimization, they think of a disk clean-up followed by a disk defragment and they are done. WRONG. In case you don’t know, you should do the following to your computer regularly.

A proper computer tune-up, clean, and optimization will include (in this order), Shut off start-up programs, un-installation of unwanted programs, delete folders that didn’t uninstall, disk cleanup, disk defragment, registry cleanup, registry defragment.

You need to do this once a month if you use your computer everyday. Or; you can do this once every other month if you use your computer a few times a week.

In this order :

Shut off startup items. Go to your “start button” and choose “run” (for Vista, just type into the “start search” box, as this is your run bar).

In your “Run bar“, type the word “msconfig“. Now you should see a screen that looks like the one below.


Now, at the top of the screen you will see some tabs, click on the “startup” tab.
Note: DO NOT CLICK ON ANY OTHER TABS OR CHANGE ANYTHING IN ANY OF THE OTHER TABS, EXCEPT THE STARTUP TAB. YOU COULD STOP YOUR COMPUTER FROM FUNCTIONING EVER AGAIN OR CAUSE SERIOUS PERFORMANCE ISSUES.

Now you will see all the programs that startup when your computer starts. These programs stay running in the background while your computer is on and can cause seriously slow behaviors from your computer. Having too many programs running in the background is always a bad thing when it comes to system performance.

The only programs you should have checked here are your anti-virus programs if any. Other programs you can start manually when you want to use them.


I know, you are probably thinking; I have 20 or more programs listed here. I have seen up to 100 programs listed here. Don’t worry, uncheck all of them, except your anti-virus program. This means 1-3 programs will have a check mark when you are through going through your list.

Note; you can put your mouse cursor over the “right line” in “command” and hold(don’t click) the “left mouse button” and while holding the left mouse button, “scroll the line to the right” so you can see the full program name.

When you are done un-checking all the programs you don’t need, click the “apply” button on the bottom. Then hit the “ok” button.

Note: Make sure you click the “apply” button before you click the “ok” button or the changes may not take effect.

Now your computer will ask if you want to restart for changes to take effect. Click the “yes” button to restart your computer.

When your computer restarts, you will notice it boots to your desktop a lot faster, because it won’t need to start a bunch of programs on startup.

Uninstall unwanted programs in the “add/remove programs” in the control panel.

Note: FOR A MORE DETAILED VERSION OF THIS STEP, LOOK FOR MY POST ABOUT IT ON 10-7-2009.

Next, delete old folders of uninstalled programs. Go to your “windows explorer” and find your “program files” folder on your local disk hard drive(Usually your C: drive). If you have more than one hard drive, check those as well. Depending on where you installed the programs.


Now, delete the folders of the programs you uninstalled. Sometimes when you uninstall certain programs, the folder doesn’t get deleted and will just take up wasted space.
Note: FOR A MORE DETAILED VERSION OF THIS STEP, LOOK FOR MY POST ABOUT IT ON 10-7-2009.

Now, you should do a disk cleanup. First, go to your “start button“. Click on “all programs“, then “accessories“, then “system tools“, then “disk cleanup“.


Now you need to choose the hard drive you want to clean up.


Then you will see a status bar displaying disk cleanup and its progress.


Then a box will pop up with all your old files sitting on your hard drive. Make sure every box is checked. Now hit the “Ok” button.


Then you will need to choose yes to perform these actions.


Now your disk will start the cleanup. This may take 20 minutes to several hours, depending on how much space your disk needs to be cleaned.


When the status bar reaches the end it will disappear and you will be done with disk cleanup.

I recommend restarting your computer at this point, but it is optional.

Next, do a disk defragment. In a nutshell; A disk defragment will move all your files closer together so your computer will think faster. All your files on your computer are fragmented into groups. The further away each file or group is, the longer it will take your computer to do things. From opening folders to starting programs, disk defragment is very important to keep your computer on it’s toes and thinking as fast as possible.

First, go to your “start button“. Click on “all programs“, then “accessories“, then “system tools“, then “disk defragment“.


Now your disk defragment screen will pop up. Choose which hard drive you want to defragment. Now click the “defragment” button on the bottom of the screen.


When your computer starts to defragment it will show you two progress bars. The progress bar on the top shows estimated disk usage before defrag is complete. The progress bar on the bottom shows the disk usage after the defragment. You will see your computer progress in percentage on the bottom of the screen.


There is a legend that tells you what each color stands for.

Note; These progress bars will both constantly change as your computer defrags the files closer together. As you can see, the free spaces in between the files towards the right are a lot further away than the files on the left. When your computer is done defragging, all the files will be moved over to the left and as close as possible without free spaces in between. Your files will be moved in such an order so that your computer will think faster whenever you ask it to do something.

When your computer is finished defragmenting all your files, you will notice a pop up box that will let you view report or close the program. I usually save the view report in to notepad until my next defragment, but this is totally optional. You don’t have to do this. You can just click the “close” button and the program will close.


I recommend restarting your computer at this point, but it is optional.

Next, do a Registry Cleanup. Most people think they would be done cleaning their computer at this point. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Your computer has a registry that controls everything your computer does. Your registry needs to be cleaned and defragmented on a regular basis. If your registry is not cleaned regularly, your computer will be slow in even the simplest tasks like booting up. If your registry is corrupt, cleaning and defragmenting it will fix it.

This is the place viruses and trojans are likely to attack. Once your registry gets attacked, your computer can act funny or not work at all. Your registry is the heart of your computers operating system. Without a properly functioning registry, your computer would not function the way it should. That’s how most people can tell they have a virus or trojan. Their computer will not act like it normally does.

Now that you know a little about your registry, we can get to cleaning it out. You can pay for registry cleaner program, but I only recommend getting one that a professional recommends. As a professional, I can only recommend 2 registry cleaners. One is FREE and the other is a pay program. I actually use them both.


The first is a pay program and is made by a Microsoft trusted company. The company is called Uniblue and they sell the best registry cleaner out there. It’s called Registry Booster 2009 and can be found here.

It costs $29.99 and will be the best money you ever invest in to your computer. It works with Windows 7, XP, and Vista. I would even say that this investment would be equal to buying a top-notch anti-virus program.


The Uniblue registry booster is very self explanatory. You simply hit the “start scan” button on the “registry scan” tab of the program. The program will find any registry errors your computer has. When it has completed, the scan it will ask if you want to fix errors. Now, you click “yes“. When the program finishes fixing your registry errors it will ask you if you want to restart your computer for changes to take effect. Click “yes” to restart your computer.

When your computer restarts, you should do a registry defragment. Start the uniblue program and choose the registry defrag tab. The program will defrag your registry and ask you to restart your computer when it is done. Restart your computer and now you have a fresh computer that is error free and running as fast as possible. Congratulations, if you did everything listed in this post, you have successfully optimized your computer the same way a professional would do it.

If you can’t afford to buy a registry cleaner program, you can use a free registry cleaner and defragmenter program. As a professional, I can only recommend one free registry cleaner and defragmenter program. That program is called Tweak Now registry cleaner and can be downloaded here.

This program works with Windows 7, XP, and Vista.

Once you install and start the program, choose the “registry cleaner” tab on the left.

Now, click the “scan registry” button at the top of the screen. The program will now look for errors in your registry.

Once the program is done finding errors in your registry, click the “clean registry” button at the top. Now you are done cleaning the registry and are ready to defrag the registry.

Now, click the registry defragmenter tab on the left.

Now click the “defragment now” button on the top. Your registry will now start defragmenting.
WARNING: DON’T TOUCH YOUR MOUSE, TOUCH ANY BUTTONS ON YOUR KEYBOARD, OR SHUT OFF YOUR COMPUTER DURING THE REGISTRY DEFRAG AS YOU CAN CAUSE SERIOUS ISSUES. WAIT UNTIL IT IS DONE DEFRAGMENTING UNTIL YOU TOUCH ANYTHING.

Once the program has finished defragmenting your registry, you will be prompted to restart your computer. Click the “yes” button to restart your computer and you are done!

If you followed all the steps above, one-by-one, you have just optimized your computer the same way a computer professional would do it.

If you have any questions feel free to email me at
rc@rchubb.com