Discount Computers

What are Windows registry? Why are they so important for your
operating system? What can you do to keep them reliable?

According to Microsoft site, registry are “a central
hierarchical database used in Microsoft Windows … to store
information necessary to configure the system for one or more
users, applications and hardware devices.” You can add to that
data regarding file types like what application is used to open
them, what icons should be display for them and so on.

I will try to explain what’s happening on 2 of the most common
scenarios that take place on your computer:

1. You get a new program (software or game). You want to give it
a try, so you install it. At that point, new data is written in
your windows registry. That data include program folder,
associated files, various settings that are used by the program,
whether it will run on startup
(HKCU/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Run/ ) or only
at the first startup (HKCU/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current
Version/RunOnce/ ).

No problem so far. But what’s happening if you decide to
uninstall it? That’s that point where things get tricky. Even if
you receive a “successfully uninstall” message, pieces of data
remain in your registry. Of course, this is not happening on all
cases, but sadly it does in many of them.

In a worst case scenario, if for instance files “*.abc” are
registered to an application that you just removed and the whole
registration process wasn’t properly removed from registry, you
will get an error when you try to run that sort of files. Those
invalid registry entries won’t bother you visibly all the time,
but they will cause your computer to slow down or even crash in
some cases.

2. You install some new hardware, like another network card or
something. When you plug it in, Windows will detect it and
install the best drivers for it. Of course, a significant
quantity of data is written into registry. Again no problem so
far. When you shutdown you computer and remove the just
installed device, registry entries are not deleted. They just
remain there. If you try, after a period of time, to install a
similar device, conflicts may appear, because you computer might
confuse them. This is happening because of the old and possibly
corrupt registry entries.

A solution to avoid those kind of problems is to create regular
backups of your entire Windows registry. That way you can easily
restore them the moment you feel something is not working right.
But be careful, because an old backup might cause your newest
programs or hardware devices to malfunction. Another way to
solve the problems is to use a registry tool that would parse
your registry and fix all invalid, missing or corrupt entries
that it could find.

You can visit CoreDownload, a software archive with more than
23.000 programs where you will find a variety of registry tools
that can fix all your problems.

About the author:
Ted Peterson writes for CoreDownload – Download
essential games and utilities. Purchase online having up to 20%
discount of the initial price for popular titles like Registry Mechanic.

I am sure you’ve heard a lot of things about computer
optimization. Everywhere you look you see ads that invite you to
“boost your performance” or “improve your computer”. So, what’s
the idea? Is anything true about it? Does your computer really
need optimization?

Unfortunately, it does. There are many weak zones in Windows
operating system. Here are a few of them: – registry – hardware
management – internet connection

Registries are Windows’s internal database. All sort of
information are stored there, from hardware and drivers info to
applications’ settings. After each removal of any device, like a
printer or video card, pieces of information remain there. The
biggest problem is when you uninstall a program. Unfortunately,
many applications fail to erase all their data on removal. A
solution for this is to run “regedit” and manually search for
all references to the program and erase them.

By hardware management I mean memory and hard-disk management.
As you know, each program uses some of your computer’s memory.
Memory allocation is determined by how much the program needs
and, of course, if the resource is available. When the
application stops, the used blocks of memory should be freed.
But this is not happening all the time. So, when a new programs
requests memory to run, your computer will slow down because it
will compete with other applications for the remaining
resources.

The same situation appears when you remove files from your
computer. They are not really erased. They remain on your
hard-disk and affect other files that you want to read or write.
It’s the same principle as described above regarding memory
usage. To avoid problems you should use at least once a month a
hard-disk defragmenter, in order to clean remaining pieces of
information.

Because so many people use the Internet today, internet speed
has become very important. I am talking about download speed and
browsing speed. Actually it’s the same concept. When you browse
a webpage, you computer creates by default a channel with the
page’s server and starts downloading it. Download speed is of
course given first of all by your internet subscription, but
there is something that affects it too. The connection channel
can be single threaded or multi threaded. As I said that channel
is by default single threaded. What your computer should do is
to break the downloaded file (image, text, archive, etc) into
several smaller parts, and create a download channel for each of
them. After they are all downloaded it should, of course,
rebuild the source. That is what all download accelerators do.

Those are only a few ideas why your computer needs optimization.
Registry tweaking, memory flushing, hard-disk defragmenters and
an accelerated Internet connection would speedup your activity
because you won’t have to loose so much time waiting…

You can find several software releases that would do the job on
CoreDownload, a software archive with over 23.000 titles to
choose from.

About the author:
Ted Peterson writes for CoreDownload  – Download
essential games and utilities. Purchase online having up to 20%
discount of the initial price for popular titles like Speedupmypc.

Simply put it acts as a barrier between your computer and the
internet. To protect you from crackers, hackers and malware.

If your running DSL or a cable modem you should employ a
firewall, as having a direct connection to the Internet can make
you a target to attack.

Firewalls can be hardware or software based. With firewalls you
set up ACL’s or Access Control lists to allow or deny traffic.

There are three different ways a firewall can block traffic.

1. Packet Filtering- Packets are analyzed against filters in the
firewall rulesets. Firewalls will drop packets that are not
allowed in the firewall rulesets.

2. Proxy Service- Information from the Internet is grabbed by
the firewall and delivered to the requesting service thru the
proxy.

3. Statefull packet inspection- looks up criteria against a
database of trusted information. To see if the packet contains
anything that would allow

or deny it into the network.

Firewalls are customizable allowing you to create your own
rulesets you can block IP addresses, specific protocols such as
Telnet, FTP, ICMP, UDP, SMTP and many others.

Firewalls can be customized to block specific ports, or even
keywords.

There are many software firewalls availiable such as Tiny
Firewall http://www.tinysoftware.com/home/tiny2?la=EN That is
designed to keep hackers out of your network and block Spyware.

Zone Labs makes ZoneAlarm I like it bcause it has a simple
interface allowing home users to configure it easily.
http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/home.jsp

For hardware firewalls there is:

Cisco www.cisco.com There brand is called PIX firewall.

From home users I like D-Link DI-604 this is a inexpensive
firewall that works well. Best of all it fits into almost any
budget.

Linksys (now part of Cisco) offers a router/firewall that
supports VPN and DMZ. www.linksys.com

There are many hardware solutions including setting up a
firewall on a *nix box. I like this the best as it gives you the
firewall administrator the most control. I personally like
OpenBSD for any security applications I would run with Unix, as
it is secure. There have been very few exploits against this
platform.

I will be writing more articles about firewalls shortly.

Benjamin Hargis CEO

Phuture Networks

http://www.phuturenetworks.com blog
http://phuturegenius.blogspot.com

email: ceo@phuturenetworks.com

About the author:
I’m a computer secuity consultant for home and small businesses.
I started a company called Phuture Networks to help home users
and small business owners about computer and network security.
During the day I consult Realtors on website design, hosting and
search engine optimization for a big company