Always run a virus check on anything one downloads before they open it. Remove programs that one doesn’t use or need. Too many programs clog up the machine. Do periodic defragging. Anytime one downloads or removes programs, music etc. plus the normal creation of files, it fragments the computer and slows and confuses its proper function. “When system files are overwritten, such as .sys, .dll, .ocx, .ttf, .fon, and .exe files, system performance becomes unpredictable, programs behave erratically, and the operating system fails”.

If it is determined that one has one or more missing Dll file(s) that can be identified, they can be replaced. Find on say Google, a site that offers free Dll file downloads. Look for missing Dll. Download and Unzip the file to desktop. For this you need Winzip or WinRAR to extract file.

Now one needs to put the Dll file in proper folder. A way to find the program from which the Dll file is missing is by entering it into Google. For instance

q_encutl.dll+program’. Take for example the message as may be posted by ‘Norton Windoctor’: “C:\Program Files\Common Files\InstallShield\Professional\RunTime\0701\

Intel32\DotNetInstaller.exe” cannot access a necessary file, “mscoree.dll.” Download the Dll file mscoree.dll.

By using ‘Windows Explorer’, one would in this case go to Local Disk [C] Program files/Common Files/Install Shield/ and look through the sub-folders until one would find in this case Professional/Run Time/Intel32. In this case one could cut and past or copy Dll into that Folder. By copy instead of cut and paste, one can put the still desktop Dll download into something like ‘My Documents’ as an extra copy.

Or you can go to the “run” menu. Type “SFC” it will search for missing files or altered one. If this doesn’t work type the missing .dll manually overwrite it with your windows cd.

ipconfig is a commmand line utility available on all versions of Microsoft Windows starting with Windows NT. ipconfig is designed to be run from the Windows command prompt. This utility allows you to get the IP address information of a Windows computer. It also allows some control over active TCP/IP connections. ipconfig is an alternative to the older ‘winipcfg’ utility.

ipconfig Usage

From the command prompt, type ‘ipconfig’ to run the utility with default options. The output of the default command contains the IP address, network mask and gateway for all physical and virtual network adapters.

‘ipconfig’ supports several command line options as described below. The command “ipconfig /?” displays the set of available options.

ipconfig /all

This option displays the same IP addressing information for each adapter as the default option. Additionally, it displays DNS and WINS settings for each adapter.

ipconfig /release

This option terminates any active TCP/IP connections on all network adapters and releases those IP addresses for use by other applications. ‘ipconfig /release” can be used with specific Windows connection names. In this case, the command will affect only the specified connections and not all. The command accepts either full connection names or wildcard names. Examples:

ipconfig /release “Local Area Connection 1″
ipconfig /release *Local*

ipconfig /renew

This option re-establishes TCP/IP connections on all network adapters. As with the release option, ipconfig /renew takes an optional connection name specifier.

Both /renew and /release options only work on clients configured for dynamic (DHCP) addressing.

Note: The remaining options below are only available on Windows 2000 and newer versions of Windows.

ipconfig /showclassid, ipconfig /setclassid

These options manage DHCP class identifiers. DHCP classes can be defined by administrators on a DHCP server to apply different network settings to different types of clients. This is an advanced feature of DHCP typically used in business networks, not home networks.

ipconfig /displaydns, ipconfig /flushdns

These options access a local DNS cache that Windows maintains. The /displaydns option prints the contents of the cache, and the /flushdns option erases the contents.

This DNS cache contains a list of remote server names and the IP addresses (if any) they correspond to. Entries in this cache come from DNS lookups that happen when attempting to visit Web sites, named FTP servers, and other remote hosts. Windows uses this cache to improve the performance of Internet Explorer and other Web-based applications.

In home networking, these DNS options are sometimes useful for advanced troubleshooting. If the information in your DNS cache becomes corrupted or outdated, you could face difficulty accessing certain sites on the Internet. Consider these two scenarios:

• The IP address of a Web site, email server or other server changes (rare occurence). The name and address of this site normally stay in your cache for 24 hours after your last visit. You may need to clear your cache to access the server sooner.
• A Web site or other server was offline when you last visited it (hopefully a rare occurence) but since has come back online. The cache will normally keep a record that the server is offline for 5 minutes afer your last visit. You may need to clear your cache to access the server sooner.

ipconfig /registerdns

Similar to the above options, this option updates DNS settings on the Windows computer. Instead of merely accessing the local DNS cache, however, this option initiates communication with both the DNS server (and the DHCP server) to re-register with them.

This option is useful in troubleshooting problems involving connection with the Internet service provider, such as failure to obtain a dynamic IP address or failure to connect to the ISP DNS server.

Like the /release and /renew options, /registerdns optionally takes the name(s) of specific adapters to update. If no name parameter is specified, /registerdns updates all adapters.

Ever wonder what svchost is? Why it takes so much RAM? Why your explorer.exe keeps crashing?  Look no farther! Process explorer is a free utility that Microsoft redistributes that helps you take the mystery out of you processes and helps you find problem areas.  It can be used to trim down your RAM usage or even to find out what executables are running behind processes.  This is important because most of the time explorer.exe crashes it is indicative of a problem with your computer caused by executables hooking into the Microsoft process named explorer.exe.

Getting started

To begin, go grab the latest Process Explorer from Microsoft here. Alternately, you can go to Microsoft.com, and search for “Process Explorer”, either way click the download button and save the file wherever.  Unzip the file by right clicking on it and you should have three icons now.  Only one of them is of concern to us, and that is procexp.exe.

Search on microsoft.com	Click this button to download

The icons

Before we go any farther it should be noted that every process (in Windows) can host one of two different things:

• Services: These are programs that aren’t meant to interact with the user and instead provide functions to applications or perform simple tasks in the background.
• Executables: These are programs designed to interact with the user, they will always be followed by *.exe, whereas services are generally not appended with the *.exe extension.

Technically, they are both very similar, but they are treated very differently. Keeping notation correct will be important to understanding what I am trying to explain. If what you just read is a new concept, reread it and make sure you are comfortable with the difference before moving on.

The Interface

Double click procexp.exe and you should get a window similar to this that pops up.

It may seem overwhelming at first, but bear with me for a moment, let’s go over each of these labels.

A) Process: This is the name of the process, once expanded it also shows the names of the executables and services working under each process. An executable is any *.exe file and a service is any program that is usually running in the background and is considered ‘important’ to your operating system functioning.

B) PID: This is a unique identifier for each process, note that even though some processes can have the same name, no two processes can have the same PID.

C) CPU: This is the percentage of your processors cycles that go to this particular process and its subcomponents.

D) Description: This should be the proper name for each process, if this isn’t enough information I would suggest googling the process and seeing if it yields more information.

E) Company Name: Pay attention to this as you decide what’s important and what isn’t, it can give good clues. Also it should be noted that just because it says “Microsoft Corporation” does not mean that every item in that process is made by Microsoft or even good for your computer.

F) Processor Usage Graph: This graphs all of your processes in terms of processor usage. Each process is an individual color.

G) Virtual Memory: This shows you how much of your virtual memory is being used, if this gets fully yellow, you’re in trouble.

H) Hard Drive Usage Graph: This graph shows how much your hard drives are being accessed by your processes. Obviously, if this bar fills the box, you have a system resource problem.

I) Summary: This is the total impact all of your processes have on your computer’s resource pool.

Now that you understand the basic parts of the interface let’s modify some things to make it easier to see each process’s impact on your computer. First you need to change the views on the process tab, click on it 2-3 times until it has a tiered look. This will become important when you get swamped with processes in a second.

It should look like this

After you get the tiered view, right click on the word “Process”, the same one you clicked to change the view. Hit “Select Columns” and a dialog box should pop up. At the top hit the “Process Memory” tab and check the box that says “Working Set” and another that says “Virtual Memory”. Quickly and oversimplifying (see here for more details).

• Working Set: Amount of physical RAM used by a process
• Virtual Memory: RAM usage plus page file usage (not precisely, read here if you’re curious *technically in depth*).

Right click “Process”, then left click “Select Columns…”

Check these two boxes

Now you can see how much memory each one of these processes take up, but we still haven’t found any information that we couldn’t have with task manager. This changes when you find the “services.exe” entry and expand it. Your window will get flooded with new entries including the infamous svchost.exe. What you want to do here is inspect each of the processes under each svchost.exe and then also by mousing over it and see which services are running under the processes.

A lot is going on inside of the interface of process explorer right now, but don’t worry, we’ll go through what’s important.

A) Tiered View: This view lets you see which processes are hosting what executables and so on. It shows you what task manager fails to do, and that is what exactly is running in the background. I would strongly suggest going through explorer.exe. Inspect each executable in it and see which you don’t recognize or want there. As a rule of thumb, anti-viruses, driver type applications, and open applications should be there, but if you start seeing other things there get rid of them. More on how to get rid of unwanted processes and executables later.

B) Memory usage: This item is here to give you an idea of how important each process is to your system resource pool.  A process using 1 kB of memory and almost no CPU bandwidth isn’t even worth inspecting most of the time, but one using 200 MB of Virtual memory carries a bit of weight. Notice how the memory doesn’t add up to the total, this is what we call in engineering “space math” don’t worry about it, memory is a complicated issue and you can read the articles I linked earlier if you care to learn more. If you got nothing else from this paragraph, the bigger these numbers, the worse they are.

C) Hovering over an entry will cause a pop up to appear containing a list of the services being run through that process.

Executables

I’ll quickly talk about how to stop an executable from running and how to get rid of one, and then I’ll spend the rest of this article talking about how to deal with services.

Hovering over an entry will cause a pop up to appear containing a list of the services being run through that process.  Literally right click on it and click “Kill Process”. To prevent it from running again at start up follow these instructions:

1) Hold down the windows key and press ‘R”

2) Type in msconfig, press enter

3) Click the startup tab and uncheck it’s entry, if it doesn’t have an entry it means that something you did post-startup caused that process to run.

Right click and hit “Kill Process” to close an executable

Windows key + R gives you this, enter “msconfig” and hit enter

Uncheck the items you don’t want to run at start up, then hit apply

Services

Finally, lets talk a bit about services and how to reclaim system resources from them. A service is a program that runs in the background to perform a task or set of tasks. Every time you hit the print button in Word or attempt to access the internet a service is called to aid in the task. Processes and services are the things that allow basic windows functions to happen and allow programs to run without being in your hair (the taskbar or the tray). Services are vital to the operation of your computer, disabling the wrong one can have staggering consequences. Basically, only do this if you are sure what you are doing.

Typically a lot of services are enabled on a computer by default, your desktop computer probably has a service running right now to manage its battery, what’s that? Your desktop doesn’t have a battery? Well, Windows doesn’t know that and will try to manage it anyways. If you have Vista you are probably aware of the fact that Vista likes to eat RAM. Vista takes your RAM and it caches frequently used programs into your RAM in order to speed them up. This means you sacrifice about 400 MB of ram so that when you hit Firefox or any other program you use frequently it opens almost instantly. If you would like your RAM back, disabling a service called SuperFetch is what you want to do.

To access the list of services on your computer, once again hit Windows key then R, this time type “services.msc”. This will open up the services control panel; let’s dissect it like we did to the process explorer interface.

Click to enlarge

Once again:

A) This is how you stop a service that is already running.

B) This is the name of the service, if you do not know what a service is, do not alter it.

C) This is the status and the Start up type, the status tells you if the service is currently running. The start up type tells you when and how a service can be started.

• Automatic: Service is started when your computer starts
• Automatic (delayed): Service is started when your computer starts, but this service waits until other services have been loaded.
• Manual: A call to this service to perform a task will cause it to start, it remains disabled until a function call to it is made.
• Disabled: No circumstance can cause the service to start (other than a user override).

Using the services.msc configuration tool is has easy as it looks, find a service you don’t think you need and disable it. A word of warning, if you don’t know what a service does and you don’t understand the description DO NOT DISABLE IT. Google will also help you a lot here, just google the name of a service and read what people have written about it.

Conclusion

Hopefully this article will be helpful to you in your quest to free more system resources and make your computer run more efficiently. If this guide isn’t clear or you’re having trouble deciding what processes/executables are worth terminating feel free to check out our forums.  Remember, safe mode can be used to fix any mistake you make with regards to turning services off, and this is also an excellent tool to have at your disposal should you get a virus (they love to latch on to svchost.exe or explorer.exe).

Allow me to answer by way of a mnemonic: hibernate is great. You see, sleep mode (a.k.a. standby) puts your system into an off-like state, allowing you to pick up where you left off after just a few seconds (unlike rebooting, which can take minutes). But a PC in standby mode continues to consume battery power, so it’s not uncommon to return to a “sleeping” PC to find that it’s just plain dead.

Hibernate, on the other hand, writes your machine’s current state to a temporary hard-drive file, then shuts down completely (much like “off”). When you start it up again, it loads that file and returns you to where you left off–no booting required.

Both ends of the hibernate process take a little longer than standby (usually 10-20 seconds, in my experience), but you avoid any of the issues that can arise when Windows suddenly loses power. What’s more, standby is a notoriously flaky mode. I’ve encountered plenty of systems that refuse to wake up properly, so you end up losing whatever work you were trying to preserve.

Consequently, unless you’re running your laptop on AC power, I recommend using hibernate most of the time.

Which doesn’t mean you have to remove the programs; you just have to turn off their autoloaders. I use Photoshop nearly every week, but I see no need for a Photoshop icon in the system tray, or a little piece of Photoshop always in memory.

Before you do anything else, create a system restore point: In XP, select Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, then System Restore. Select Create a restore point, click Next and follow the wizard. In Vista, click Start, type sysdm.cpl and press ENTER. Click the System Protection tab, then the Create button.

To see all of your autoloaders, select Start, then Run, type msconfig, and press ENTER (you don’t have to click Run in Vista). Click the Startup tab. You can uncheck any of the listed programs to keep them from autoloading.

Which ones should you uncheck? Not your antivirus, firewall, or security suite; you need those running at all times. Other than that, you have to use your own judgment and experiments to determine what you want running at all times and what you want to launch when you need it.

Sometimes an autoloader you’ve unchecked–perhaps days or weeks ago–will reappear on the list later. Why? Because the program that put it there in the first place senses that it’s no longer autoloading and corrects your “mistake.” In these cases, examine that program’s Options or Preferences menu and look for something like “Launch when Windows loads” or “Put in System Tray.” Uncheck that option.

What else can slow down a once-fast boot? An overloaded or corrupted Registry. But Registry cleaning is inherently dangerous, and I don’t recommend it unless things have become unbearable. See How Best Do I Clean My Registry? for details.

An overloaded and fragmented hard drive. If your drive is too full (more than about 80 percent), or too fragmented (the two often go together), it could be slowing down your PC, especially if you don’t have much RAM.

Defragging is the easiest solution, so you should try that first. To defrag in XP, select Start, then My Computer. Right-click your C: drive and select Properties. Click the Tools tab, then Defragment Now. Vista defrags automatically–or at least it does so in theory. See Vista Defrag Problems for details. Or you can go with a third-party defragger. Forum regular Flashorn recommends the free MyDefrag, which looked pretty good when I checked it out.

If your drive is getting full and defragging doesn’t help, you may have to make hard decisions about what you can delete or off-loaded to an external drive. Or you could replace the drive with a larger one.

Avoid new programs. Software has a way of cancelling out Moore’s Law–as hardware gets faster, software gets slower. (I attended a programming conference once where Bill Gates advised programmers to write for the most powerful PC currently available, because that would match a normal PC when their product was released.) So if you keep buying the latest office suite or photo editor, performance will suffer.

Watch your security software. You can avoid upgrading Office and Photoshop, but you have to keep your security software up to date or you risk infection. Major security suites like Norton and McAfee use a lot of resources, and keep using more with each major upgrade. They can seriously slow down an older PC. Consider switching to smaller, sleeker (and often free) alternatives. See Can You Trust Free Antivirus Software? and What Free Security Programs Can Protect My PC? for product suggestions.

Reduce the autoloaders. Your security programs probably aren’t the only ones that load automatically each time you boot and stay in memory, although they may be the only ones that should. Any number of programs you’ve installed may have inserted a piece of themselves into Windows’ Startup list, and could thus be slowing you down. See Why the Slow Boots? for more information.

You could be infected. See Remove a Virus or Other Malicious Infection for details.

And remember, when it comes to upgrading your hardware, adding RAM is relatively cheap and usually very effective.

technology used to program applications that can be accessed through a browser continued to be blocked for Firefox users Monday.

Mozilla had been blocking two Microsoft plug-ins after the discovery that Microsoft’s .Net 3.5 SP1 install silently adds a plug-in to Firefox allowing the surreptitious launch of a malicious XAML browser application that could take over infected machines.

One add-on, the Windows Presentation Foundation, aids programmers in developing applications using Microsoft technologies, including Silverlight, that can be accessed via a browser. It remains blocked, but Mozilla Vice President of Engineering Mike Shaver wrote in a blog posting on Sunday that the Firefox team is working to find an alternative.

Restoration Timing Uncertain

Mozilla initially blocked Microsoft’s .Net Framework Assistant as well, but reversed that policy after speaking with Microsoft engineers over the weekend and learning that it does not provide access to the same vulnerability.

The current blockade is redundant for users who have already applied Microsoft’s patch for the vulnerability, which rolled out Oct. 12 as part of what Microsoft described as its largest vulnerability patch of 2009.

Although Microsoft has patched against the vulnerability, it’s unclear when the Windows Presentation Foundation access will be restored.

Mozilla’s press office did not return an email message seeking comment by deadline for this article.

Microsoft’s Misbehavior

Most home users likely didn’t notice anything more than an odd security warning when they fired up their browsers, but some may have encountered malfunctioning Web apps. Also, some enterprise users and designers may have faced trouble accessing custom applications and design capabilities through Firefox with the technologies blocked, said Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of Qualys, a vulnerability management company.

This is the second time this year Microsoft has been called out for silently installing plug-ins into Firefox. The first time was when the company included the Framework Assistant add-on in a service pack for the .Net application framework without alerting users.

“That normally is not considered to be good behavior,” Kandek told TechNewsWorld.

Microsoft didn’t respond to requests for comment by deadline.

Cooperation Between Competitors

While it appears that Mozilla initially overreacted in blocking the .Net Framework assistant, which is necessary for many third-party applications to run, it restored access to the plug-in quickly.

Mozilla and Microsoft appear to be working well together to address the issue for the benefit of users, Kandek said.

“I thought it was a great example of cooperation between two companies that are competing a lot,” he said.

To use PhotoSketch, a user simply sketches a scene, using blobs to represent different components, with descriptive tags added to each blob. The software uses the tags to search for potentially suitable images on the Internet. It then tries to match the components within those images with those in the sketch and with a background before presenting the user with a selection of snaps that go together nicely. The video also includes a nice explanation of the technology. The resulting images are often very realistically Photoshopped.

Federal prosecutors have charged a prominent hedge-fund manager and five others with securities fraud resulting from insider trading involving some of the tech industry’s best-known companies, including Intel, Google, and IBM.

Raj Rajaratnam of Galleon Group was arrested Friday in New York according to various reports and charged with 13 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy following a FBI investigation into Galleon Group’s trading patterns. Also charged in the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, were co-conspirators Rajiv Goel of Intel and Anil Kumar of McKinsey, which provided consulting services to AMD.

A separate complaint charges two employees of New Castle Partners, another hedge fund, with insider trading along with IBM executive Robert Moffat, senior vice president and group executive for IBM’s Systems and Technology Group. Danielle Chiesi and Mark Kurland of New Castle Partners allegedly exchanged information with Rajaratnam regarding the negotiation process surrounding AMD’s decision to spin off its chip-making arm and receive outside investment, and obtained other insider information for the purpose of trading in Akamai and Sun Microsystems.

Galleon Group told CNBC that it was unaware of the investigation but planned to cooperate with authorities.

An Intel representative confirmed that Goel works in the treasury department of Intel’s finance organization, and has been “placed on administrative leave as we look into this matter.” Intel said it was never contacted by authorities regarding the investigation.

McKinsey said in a statement that it was “distressed” about Kumar’s involvement in the case and was “looking into the matter urgently. AMD said it was looking at the complaints and had no further comment. IBM declined to comment.

A representative for Akamai did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

According to the complaint, Rajaratnam obtained information about strategic investments that Intel and others were about to make in Clearwire from Goel, and details about AMD’s proposed fab spinoff from Kumar and Chiesi. Galleon Group and New Castle Partners then allegedly used that information to trade in shares of Clearwire and AMD, resulting in millions of dollars in profits.

Moffat is also said to have provided details about AMD’s GlobalFoundries spinoff, which required IBM’s approval due to an extensive technology-sharing partnership between the two companies. In addition, Moffat allegedly gave the traders information related to upcoming earnings announcements from IBM and Sun, which IBM was considering acquiring in early 2009.

Rajaratnam also had hired an individual identified in the complaint only as a “confidential witness” who has been cooperating with the FBI since November 2007 after agreeing to plead guilty to securities fraud and conspiracy. The witness had insider contacts at Polycom and a company called Market Street, which helps publicly traded companies–such as Google–prepare earnings reports.

The FBI said Galleon Group was able to learn through its Market Street contacts that Google’s second-quarter 2007 earnings results were going to miss analyst expectations, which would usually send the stock down the following day. Before Google’s earnings were released, Galleon Group purchased put options and sold Google’s stock short in hopes of turning a profit, which, of course, they did, to the tune of $8 million.

Shares of Polycom and Hilton Hotels were also involved in the insider trading, according to the complaint. The FBI said it obtained its information by placing a wiretap on several phones–including Rajaratnam’s mobile phone–as well as the participation of confidential witnesses.

Rajaratnam was named to Forbes’ 2009 list of the world’s billionaires, with an estimated net worth of $1.3 billion. He is a former employee of Needham & Co., an investment bank.

Understandably a certain amount of delay can occur in such return journey, also due to the fact that the signal has to go through several routers on its way there and the way back. Those routers belongs to different providers and their response time can vary a lot. Also the signal will not take the same route all the time, some system will take care of routing your request to the first available route or better to the fastest available route after a real-time evaluation.

There is a simple way in Windows XP to check the path that your request, it is the tracert which can be called from the command prompt. You can open the command prompt from Start>>Run and type cmd and press Enter.

The following command

will give the following output (the request was sent from a computer in Hong Kong in this case)

The program tries to access the same router three times (that is why you see 3 columns of ms values) and reports the milliseconds elapsed at each attempt. If the connection times out you will see a * instead of a number.

This simple command could be useful to troubleshoot connection problems. You can immediately spot whether the problem is within your local network, your local internet service provider or on the overseas side.

As a comparison a ping command

will give the following output

We see the traveling time is 180ms which corresponds to any of the values returned by the tracert command. This makes me think that the those returned by the tracert command are actually parallel routes which the data will alternatively take to get to our desired destination.