use MSCONFIG to boost speed for XP Vista Windows 7

"MSCONFIG." was designed to help you troubleshoot problems with your computer, it enables you to turn off some of these hidden programs meaning you can significantly increase your computer's performance and reliability

warning
make sure you follow the steps below, doing anything else as it could break your OS.. I repeat do not change any of the other tabs in MSCONFIG unless you know what you are doing.

Doing the following is safe.

1. Click on start
2. Type MSCONFIG in the search box
3. now Microsoft's System Configuration Utility will load,
4. Click on the Startup tab
5. This will now take you to a page startup items.  Startup items are items which load when you start you computer, for example MSN is a startup item which will load in to memory as soon as your pc starts (however if you do not use it then you can unselect it, this is the same with many of the startup items such as google and Quicktime player there not needed)
6. deselect your startup items you dont want running and click apply
7. you can click ok and the restart your computer
8. if you want to turn the startup items back on just follow these steps again.
   
   
   As soon as your computer loads you should notice that MSN or Skype assuming that you unselected them for example no longer load, this means you are saving your computers ram and cpu time.
   
   last note
   for example if you do use msn and you remove it from the start up list then you can still manually start it by going to the start menu and clicking on MSN the old fasioned way.

Safe Mode Uninstaller (for when you cannot uninstall normally)

When installing any software that fails to complete, Windows can sometimes refuse to boot after restart. however not all is lost as Windows can be booted in safe mode in such circumstances but the installer will not work.

to boot in safe mode you need to reset the computer and press F8 during bootup at the black screen before the windows loading page, then at the dos menu select safe mode from the list.

one windows loads in to safe mode, do the following.

To enable Windows Installer in minimal Safe Mode execute the following command in a CMD window:

REG ADD "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Minimal\MSIServer" /VE /T REG_SZ /F /D "Service"

or for Safe Mode with network:

REG ADD "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Network\MSIServer" /VE /T REG_SZ /F /D "Service"

now to finally start the MSI installer 

in CMD type net start msiserver

User Folders - Change Location

Open the Start Menu and type shell:UsersFilesFolder in the search line, press enter.

 Right click on a user folder you want to move My Music, My Documents, My Pictures, etc.. then click on Properties. (See screen)

Click on the Location tab, and Move button. See screenshot

Now navigate to the location you wish to use (for example another disk) D:\my documents folder and click on OK.

Important, make sure that you Click on Yes when prompted to.

After a few seconds when the location has been changed.

Disk Management, for disk issues formating and memory sticks/drives not showing in my computer

The most useful thing about Disk Manager is that if you have a memory stick that is not showing when you plug it in you might find that it is simply not assigned a drive letter so read on and you will find out how to check if the system can see the device and if it is assigned a drive letter.

Disk Management is a snap in that is part of the Microsoft Management Console supplied with Windows XP Vista and Win 7

Accessing Windows Disk Management

• Press and hold the windows button and then press R, this brings up the run box. Now type diskmgmt.msc in the Open: line and click OK. The Disk Management snap-in will open.

now you have done this you can see that the drives in your system, if you are looking for a memory stick then look for the 4gig (for example) drive and see if it is assigned a drive letter. if it has no drive letter then right click on it and  select change drive letter now you can assign a letter to the drive.

Other Basic Disk Management Functions

• Mark partitions as active.
• Create partitions, logical drives, and volumes.
• Delete partitions, logical drives, and volumes.
• Format partitions and volumes.
• Assign or modify drive letters for hard disk volumes, removable disk drives, and CD-ROM drives.
• Overview of the properties of all disks and volumes in the system.
• Create mounted drives on systems using the NTFS or FAT file system.
• Convert disks to dynamic disks.
• Create a number of specialty volumes including spanned, striped, mirrored, and RAID-5.

Right clicking on a drive or partition will normally present a menu that contains the options and procedures available for the particular device some can be destructive so be careful.

Device Manager to install those pesky drivers

So you cannot get your TV, USB device or Memory card to install this is where Device Manager comes in...

Device Manager is where all the systems devices are listed and where you can manually update the drivers, as you can see below the PCI controller is not installed this could be any device such as a network card. 

 

right click on the device with the missing driver, select the second tab (driver) and select update driver this is where you can try to get windows to search automatically for a suitable driver. 

if windows cannot fint the driver then you will need to do the following, click details and select hardware id in the drop down menu.

once you have the hardware ID copy and paste the hardware ID in to google and it should tell you the device and driver you need... fyi the 3rd one down is normally the best but if that creates no results try the others 3.

once you have the driver go back to the general tab and select update driver, this time select browse my computer for a driver ensure you navigate to the file and select it. this will then install the driver for the missing application.

hope this helps you.

First Steps, Windows Management Console

• Is your computer running slow? 
• is it crashing a lot and you dont know why? 
• issues with drivers not installing?
• pesky memory stick not showing a drive letter?

There are hundreds of things you can diagnose easy if you follow the steps I will provide below valid for XP, Vista, and 7...

Getting the error and more information about it.

click start > right click computer > left click manage

this then opens up Computer Management, in here you can look at the system "Windows Logs" in event viewer Device Manager and Disk  Managment.

in the screen above you can see I am looking in the system logs on my computer, I can see that an error occured with my CD rom, often disk errors appear here so you can hopefully catch the disk before it totally fails for example (if you have a noisy disk in the computer, or your computer has become slow it is well worth checking the event logs just in case.) a failing disk would often look like the screen below.

the "Application Logs" section is where errors for applications such as Internet explorer, word or games crashing are kept. the error often give detail of the faulting module and the fault address. in the screen below you can see IE crashed with a 0x0000000 often a crash like this with a 0x0000000 address will be profile related, therefore creating a new account to log in to and test would be a great starting point.

if you have an issue you need help with then leave as many details in the comments section, provide screens if possible.