Assemble your own System Utilities Suite

If you followed my series on assembling your own Internet security suite, you can feel confident that your computer is now protected about as well as it would be if you had installed one of the $40 Internet security suites available on the market.

With that done, what about Windows performance and maintainance? There are literally hundreds of little tweaks you can make to speed up Windows XP (I'm sure the same is true for Vista as well, but I am not a believer). Here are some guides to get you started:

• 99 Performance Tips for Windows XP
• Optimize XP
• 10 Simple Ways To Speed Up Windows XP
• Ten Ways To Make Windows XP Run Better
• Top 10 Windows XP Tips Of All Time

On top of the plethora of one-off config boosts you can try, there are some regular steps you can take to ensure your computer is in top shape. Enter the "system utilities" suites, which make these maintenance steps as simple as possible.

A "system utilities" suite can mean different things to different people, and the various commercial packages out there contain a wide range of integrated tools for optimizing and maintaining your computer. While the actual list of included tools will differ from vendor to vendor, these suites typically contain:

• A registry cleaner/cleaner
• A startup optimizer
• A disk cleaner
• A disk defragmenter
  
• A registry defragmenter
• A memory optimizer

There are several choices out there for this type of application, and most of them will set you back about $50. If you're willing to pay, I'd recommend either Tune-Up Utilities or System Mechanic (yes, both $50). However, I think you can get most of the benefit of these packages without paying anything.

Shall we begin?

Software to Install

1. CCleaner: CCleaner is a disk cleanup, registry cleanup, and startup optimization utility, so if used regularly, it can go a long way to maintain your computer all by itself.
2. NTRegopt: this program optimizes your NT-based registry (e.g. Windows NT, XP, and even Vista). It works by defragmenting your registry to minimize registry size and therefore improve registry access speed.
3. PageDefrag: Standard defragmentation programs (including JkDefrag, see below) cannot defragment Windows paging files. PageDefrag is able to defragment your paging file, and works nicely in tandem with NTRegopt and JkDefrag to ensure all of your files are defragmented. PageDefrag does not need to be installed. Just download it, unzip it where you'll remember (how about C:\Program Files\PageDefrag ?) and run it from there.
4. JkDefrag: JkDefrag is a disk defragmenter that does a better job than the built-in defragmentation utility that comes bundled with Windows. Once you have downloaded the program, there is no installation. Just unzip it to a folder where you'll remember where it is, like C:\Program Files\JkDefrag. From there, you can just double-click JkDefrag.exe, and the process from that point is totally automatic.
   

These programs give a good platform for optimizing your computer. You'll notice that I haven't included a memory optimizer on the list, and here's why: there's very little proof that memory optimizers actually do anything to improve performance. If you absolutely must have a memory optimizer, why not try out Microsoft's ClearMem, which is available as part of a free download in this package, which includes an additional 125+ utilities that I have no idea what they do. Once it is installed, ClearMem runs from the Windows Command Prompt.

In my next post, I'll outline a simple maintenance routine to follow to keep your computer firing on all cylinders.