The Basics
A) Install a good security product. I prefer ESET Smart Security for it's stellar performance and 100% rating by major antivirus testing labs, and its' included firewall. If you have Norton or McAfee pre-installed on your computer I recommend you uninstall them. Norton and McAfee are programs that are known for being overly complex, having poor stability, and high resource usage.
B) Now that you have your protection set up go to the Microsoft Update site and perform ALL updates.
C) New computers come with tons of programs and free trials installed. They do this to offset the cost of the computer. Your current computer probably has lots of programs you have installed but don't use. The problem here is these programs take up disk space, and some start automatically and slow your computer.
Open the Add/Remove Programs applet by clicking Start>Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs. You might also want to try MyUninstaller which I prefer. Remove any programs you don't recognize, don't use, or don't want. If you are unsure of what a program does enter the name in Google or if you know the actual file name, such as myprogram.exe, you can go to www.processlibrary.com and enter it there. Leave any programs that you are unable to determine what it is or if it's needed. Reboot.
D) Install all programs you need or want on the computer. Most programs attempt to install into the c:\Program Files directory. They don't always use the most intuitive name when installing. The problem is when you open My Computer and navigate to Program Files you see a folder with some obscure name, which doesn't ring a bell. Most programs allow you to change the install location, and I recommend you do so. I always make sure I install programs in a folder I will recognize later, when possible. This allows you to remember which programs you've installed and makes programs you didn't install stand out and easier to find later.
The not so Basics
A) If this is a new computer you will notice the desktop is bare. Let's fix that and make some of the later changes easier! Click the Start button and put your mouse over My Computer. Right click on My Computer and left click on Show on Desktop. Do the same for My Documents.
B) Windows wastes a lot of disk space. Let's get some of that back! Right click on the new My Computer icon on the desktop and left click on Properties at the bottom. This will open a new window (This will only work if you followed the above instructions).
C) System restore is allowed 10% of your drive space. If you have a 300GB drive 30GB is wasted, especially if you are using a good backup plan like I discussed in Issue #1. By moving the slider to the left we can regain some of the wasted space. As you move the slider notice the numbers at the bottom change. 3000MB should be more than enough. If you have more than one drive installed you can disable System Restore an all drives except your c: drive by clicking the checkbox. Click Apply after you have made changes.
D) While we're here let's take care of a few other things. This may seem tedious so follow the directions and use the pictures for reference. Click on the Remote tab and uncheck the checkbox, then click Apply. This disables the ability for someone to connect remotely to your computer, and closes a security hole. Click the Advanced tab and then click Settings. A new Performance Options box will appear. Click the Advanced tab and then the buttons next to Programs in each box. Click Apply, then click the Change button at the bottom. A new Virtual Memory box will appear. If you only have one drive click System Managed Size, then Set, Then OK. If you have more than one physical drive I suggest moving the paging file to the second drive. Highlight the c: drive and choose No Paging File and click Set, then highlight your second drive and choose System Managed Size and click Set again. When finished click OK and the virtual memory box will go away. Click OK at the bottom of the Performance Options box and it too will go away, leaving you with the original System Properties box. Click Error Reporting on the Advanced tab, which will open an Error Reporting box. Click Disable Error Reporting so it looks like the picture below. Click OK to close the Error Reporting box, and OK again to close the System Properties box. You should now be back at your desktop.
What you have just done is close a security hole in remote access, taken back some space from system restore, ensure that programs get memory priority, and disabled those annoying popup windows that appear when a program crashes.
E) Continuing with our disk space theme, Windows also reserves 10% of your hard drive space for the Recycle Bin. There is no reason to use this default if your hard drive is over 30GB. 5 to 10GB is more than enough so let's fix it! On your desktop right click on the Recycle Bin and left click on Properties, which will open a Recycle Bin Properties box. On the Global tab click Configure Drives Independently and uncheck Display delete confirmation dialog. The delete confirmation dialog is the warning that appears when you delete a file. If you want the warning to continue then leave the box checked. Next click the (C:) tab. You will see a slider and Space Reserved. Move the slider to the left until the number is between 5GB and 10GB. If you have a drive smaller than 100GB, I would use 5GB. If you have a drive larger than 100GB, I recommend 10GB. If you have more than one hard drive, I recommend that you disable the Recycle Bin on those drives. At the least, you will also want to lower the setting to between 5 and 10GB.
Now we'll tackle power management. By default your computer will stay on and use full power unless you turn it off. This wastes electricity and causes undue wear on components with moving parts, such as your hard drive.
Click on Start>Control Panel>Power Options. This will open the Power Options Properties window and the Power Schemes tab. Look at the three arrows below. By changing the monitor and hard disk to 30 to 45 minutes you will save electricity and increase the longevity of both. System standby turns the monitor and hard drive off and puts the CPU into low power mode. This is a nice alternative to shutting down your computer. When you resume from standby, your computer turns on almost instantly and everything is right where you left off. I'm constantly on my computer so I enter standby manually. You may find a setting of 1 hour useful. If you have a laptop, you should change the settings under battery to a setting of 5 or 10 minutes. This will extend the time your laptop will last while not plugged in. Next we will disable the Hibernate feature. Hibernate writes the contents of RAM to the hard drive, then shuts down the computer. It allows the computer to boot faster than normal, but not as fast as resuming from standby. It also wastes disk space. If you have 1GB of memory, Windows will create a 1GB file called "hiberfil.sys" on your C drive, even if you never use the feature. I prefer to disable hibernate and either shut down or standby. To disable hibernation click on the Hibernate tab and uncheck the box next to Enable Hibernation.
Taming the Browsers
<>I know you're using FireFox! Right? If you haven't installed it yet please do so. You won't regret it! FireFox and Internet Explorer use a feature called cache. The purpose of the cache is to store graphics and bits of websites on your hard drive. The next time you visit that page you don't have to download as much of the website as you did the first time. When most users were using dial up to connect to the internet, this made browsing appear slightly faster. With the number of users using broadband connections, such as cable and DSL, climbing the cache is not as important as it once was. FireFox and Internet Explorer still are set to reserve a large portion of the hard drive for this. If you have a broadband connection, you can easily change the reserved size and save a huge amount of disk space in most cases. If you use Firefox (and you should), you should do this for both FireFox and Internet Explorer as Internet Explorer still reserves this space even if you don't use it. Here is how.Internet Explorer
Open Internet Explorer and click the Tools menu at the top. Click Internet Options on the menu that opens. The Internet Options window will open. On the General tab you will see that it is divided into 3 sections. The middle section is labeled Temporary Internet Files. Click the settings box and a new Settings window will open. At the bottom is a slider with a box to the right. Change the number in the box to 25 and click on OK. The Settings box will go away. Click the Delete Files button which will open a Delete Files window. Click OK and the window will close. Click OK at the bottom of the Internet Options window and you are done. You've just gained a lot of disk space.
FireFox
Open FireFox and click the Tools menu at the top. Click Options on the menu that opens. A new window labeled Options will open. At the top you will see several icons. The second one from the left is Privacy. Click on Privacy. You will see several tabs, the one on the far right is labeled Cache. Click Cache and then change the number in the box to 25. Click the Clear Cache Now button then click OK at the bottom when you are done. You've just gained a lot of disk space.
Now you can set back and relax. Have a beverage, turn on some soothing music, and prepare for Part #2!