Computer tweaking, useful programs, increasing performance guides

[Andreas9541 3]

So currently I'm experiencing a few problems with my laptop lately and I was wondering if anyone has suggestions on improving a few areas such as:

A) Getting a new anti-virus: I have finally managed to uninstall AVG and I'm looking for a new program that doesn't act dictatorial by blocking every useful program or game. So far I have MalwarbytesPro and Bitdefender on my sight but I'm still not sure which one to choose.

B) My computer memory on disc C at some point was supposedly full and then somehow magically it jumped to 53 GB of free memory. Now it seems like its decreasing again for no apparent reason. I have made the mistake of installing most of my programs on that disc and I think that is the reason for it. What can I do about that?

C) Whenever I try to play SHC2 online it gets very laggy for me and other players. What can I do to maximise speed assuming that I have already turned off google chrome?

This thread is not limited to the above subjects only, but general performance improvement and other useful things that makes our lives more convinient. For example I would suggest windows 8 users to use classic shell in order to replace the annoying windows 8 start menu with the windows 7 start menu.

There is the obvious adblock for youtube of course...

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

[Lord_Chris 270]

So far I have MalwarbytesPro and Bitdefender on my sight but I'm still not sure which one to choose.

 

I'd choose MalwareBytes. It's more reliable, and it's one of the industry best at detecting and removing Malware. I use that on my PC, and I recommend it to everyone who asks me about help like this. I installed it on a PC yesterday and it detected 300+ threats that weren't detected by the previous program.

 

My computer memory on disc C at some point was supposedly full and then somehow magically it jumped to 53 GB of free memory. Now it seems like its decreasing again for no apparent reason. I have made the mistake of installing most of my programs on that disc and I think that is the reason for it. What can I do about that?

 

This doesn't quite male sense, to me. What do you mean by "computer memory"? By this, I assume RAM, but from your definition it seems like you're referring to hard drive space.

 

Whenever I try to play SHC2 online it gets very laggy for me and other players. What can I do to maximise speed assuming that I have already turned off google chrome?

 

For this, I'm not sure exactly what can be done. If the game isn't laggy when you play single player than it's your internet speed to blame (or at least someone's). If it is laggy when you play single player, then your computer either doesn't meet the requirements to run (see here) or the game itself is laggy and only the developers (e.g. Firefly) will be able to fix it.

 

For performance, I use CCleaner. I also regularly run Disk Cleanup as well as Defragmentation tools. You can also run these things on a regular basis using the task scheduler. There are many things that will have similar advantages.

 

I'm a big fan of classic shell - I use that for my Windows 8. I disabled the charms menu on the right of the screen too.

[Mathew Steel 151]

I'd choose MalwareBytes. It's more reliable

I second this. MalwareBytes has never let me down, even the free version, however, Avast tends to work well alongside it if you're looking for two forms of protection.

My computer memory on disc C at some point was supposedly full and then somehow magically it jumped to 53 GB of free memory. Now it seems like its decreasing again for no apparent reason. I have made the mistake of installing most of my programs on that disc and I think that is the reason for it. What can I do about that?

I'm also struggling to understand what you mean here, could you elaborate? I'm aware by memory you mean drive storage but the rest is unclear :)

Whenever I try to play SHC2 online it gets very laggy for me and other players.

Is it laggy as soon as you start? Stronghold 2 has always had a problem when it comes to multiplayer of becoming laggy after a long period of time. Sometimes in singleplayer too when lots of buildings are placed. Even with high end PC's this problem can occur. Otherwise, like Chris said, if there is no lag in singleplayer, then internet connection is the problem. If you do a speedtest, how much down and up are you getting (mbps)? Anything above 2mbps is fine but for optimal performance, you'll want at least 10mbps. Also, bare in mind this isn't the speed at which all files etc will download as many other factors come into play whilst doing so, speedtest is sort of like "the-best-situation-down-and-up-speed."

[Andreas9541 3]

@ Chris

 

It has to do with hard drive space. One day it says 55 GB free and the next it's 53 GB and so on. For now it just fluctuates somewhere around 55 GB.?

 

As for the lag, to be honest in the past whenever I was playing single player the game would sometimes crash or get laggy in the middle of a session but I'm sure that my MSI is much more capable, hence it probably has to do with the game. Multiplayer is just plain annoying because my connection sucks...

?

Edited January 13, 2016 by Andreas9541

[Konstantinov 1]

A couple of neat programs I recommend are speccy and ccleaner. They are both by pririform, if I remember right. Speccy has basic info on your PC, it's good to run immediately after you've closed your game (or during your game if you have RAM to spare, I'm fairly certain it takes up little of this resource) to see if you have any possible overheating issues. If you've already ruled those out, it's just a decent information keeper. Just today I opened it and found out some info about Windows 10 I had been curious about. I'm not sure if ccleaner will help with gaming performance, but it should most definitely help with browser performance and general maintenance. It basically clears out your cookies and other various cached files kept on your computer. In the modern age of computing, cookies are less of an issue than they used to be. Nonetheless they can add unneeded malarkey and nonsense, and ccleaner is a good way of clearing them and other useless files out. It also has a registry cleaner, which I run every so often to see if there are errors in my registry. You can backup the registry with the program, so it keeps your PC running smooth with no real risk. Best part about these two programs is that you can almost never beat free.