Ask A Geek

Q: I have over 100,000 small file frags that I cannot get rid of. What area of my PC am I missing.

Q: My Dell PC has been running very slow for the past year. I have high speed Internet and I recently tried to clean up the hard drive using the clean-up/de-fragment application. It took off a ton of unnecessary files but my computer is still running very slow.

The computer takes along time to start up/re-boot and the fan speeds up as well. After the files were taken off the CD drive won’t start up, via the media player anymore. I ran a diagnostic, it tried to fix the CD drive problem but it did not work and it told me that it is disabled even though I restored all the files taken off via the recycle bin.

So I need help figuring out how come my computer is so slow and how I can go about solving my CD drive issues.

Q: I am going through my services using the system configuration utilities and saw pdwebwmi. Is this something I need to have running or can I stop it?

A: The pdwebwmi program is part of Perfect Disk Live, which is a disk defrag program. The program is something someone most likely paid for but is possibly a free trial. The program runs all the time to, as they say, “Defrag your hard drive – the smart way, Remove duplicate files, increase disk space, Protect your privacy, and Repair your registry with confidence.” Read the rest of this entry »

Q: I downloaded a crack and ran the .reg. Then I tried to defragment my disk. After that it seems like my sony Vaio (CR353) running vista home premium crashed. The computer boots up to a blue screen with some errors. When I boot up it shows me two options:

(a) repair

(b) start windows normally

If I chose repair it says-comp will go to the factory settings. If I chose start windows normally”- again the blue screens comes. It’s not even opening in the safe mode.

I tried to open in safe mode, safe mode with command prompt, and all other safe mode options but all of them lead to the blue screen.

I don’t want to format my hard drive. It has lots of movies and software I don’t want to lose. Is there anyway I can make a backup now? Is there anyway to fix this?

Q: I am using Windows 2000 Pro on an Omnibook 6100 and was wanting to defrag my laptop. When I accessed defrag , I only see volume C: to defrag. Is this all that I am able to defrag? Someone told me I have to have administrators access. What does that entail?

Q: I have a Compaq Presario 2200 laptop computer. Recently, it has been running slowing (e.g. taking a lot of time to open simple programs). I defragmented the disk a few weeks ago, but it is still running slowly. I don’t have that much on the laptop – the usual programs – Office 2003, Windows Media Player, iTunes, Nikon Picture Project (I have about 300 pics stored)

Is there anything else I can do in the way of regular maintenance to improve performance?

Q: I need to install security software on my Dell 2400 Dimension computer running Windows XP. I am wondering if it is better to free security software or security software that costs money? I am trying to speed up my computer, delete viruses, fix errors, and stop popups. My problem is I believe I find more junk popups when I install “Free Software” so what do you suggest?

A: All the security and protection software that I use is free software and I do not have any trouble with popups. The reason that you are getting the popups and such is more than likely because of the spyware on your computer. Let me give you some selections of free programs that you should download and use. Once you start using them you should no longer have issues with popups.

The first program I would try is called Adaware. They have a free version available so just download and install the program. I would recommend running two full scans in a row just to make sure it catches everything and then delete everything that it catches.

The second free program is an anti-virus program called PC Tools. Download and install this and run a full scan of your entire computer and delete any viruses that it finds.

As far as speed I would recommend the following:

1. Run the scandisk/disk cleanup on your computer.

2. Run a system defragmentation utility on your computer.

Once you have done all of the above you should notice a huge difference.

Q: My PC was off for 6 months while I was away. I turned it on, and updates will not download. I click the icon, it says it is, but the update # is always the same. I have Windows XP Home.

A: A computer hard drive is a magnetically based storage medium. One negative consequence of this property is that if a hard drive remains unused for a long enough period of time, the data on that drive can become somewhat difficult for a computer to access. Except for very extreme circumstances, this is something that can be fixed rather easily by running some routine maintenance in Windows XP. A procedure for your particular problem follows:

1. Disconnect your computer from the internet so that you don’t risk getting a computer virus during the maintenance. This can be accomplished by unplugging the cable that brings internet to your computer or by going Control Panel -> Network and Internet Connections -> right click on all active connections -> Disable.
2. Disable automatic updates by right clicking on the My Computer icon -> Properties -> Automatic Updates. Select the option with the red symbol.
3. Deactivate all of the programs running in your system tray, which is probably located in the lower right hand corner of your screen. To disable a program in your system tray, right click on the program’s icon and choose Exit or a similar option. The icon should then disappear or change to signify that it has been turned off.
4. Run the Disk Cleanup utility by going My Computer -> right click on your hard drive (probably drive letter C) -> Properties -> Disk Cleanup. A window with tabs should appear. You will want to check all of the boxes in the Disk Cleanup tab except “Compress old files” when you run this utility. Don’t worry about any of the other tabs in the window. Among other things, running Disk Cleanup forces Windows to erase any half-downloaded updates that may be failing to install.
5. Return to My Computer -> right click on the same hard drive again -> Properties -> Tools tab. Go into Error-checking and check both boxes. Clicking Start should prompt you to schedule an error-check for the next time your computer restarts. Accept the message.
6. Go into defragmentation and defragment your main hard drive. This will help Windows to locate any data that became difficult to access during the 6 months you were away.
7. When Windows reports that your hard drive has been successfully defragmented, restart your computer.
8. Repeat steps 1 through 7 for all other hard drives in your computer, if you have more than one hard drive that is.
9. Enable your internet connection by doing the opposite of step 1.
10. Then go to Start -> All Programs -> Windows Update (probably at the top of the list). This will allow you to manually update Windows XP. While in Windows Update you may wish to install Microsoft Update. Microsoft Update allows Windows to update other Microsoft products, such as Office.
11. Reactivate Automatic Updates by returning to the Automatic Updates tab described in step 2. I recommend the setting that asks for your permission before downloading and installing the updates.

Your computer should now be in good working order!