t e c h i e - t a l k s ::: technology at its best

There are times when your Windows machine starts to slow down or when everything comes to a halt frequently. Although there might be many reasons to why such a slow degeneration of your Windows machine occurs, most of the time these reasons are related to malwares/spywares. These nasty programs attaches itself to your computer unknowingly (when you browse untrusted sites or download & install spyware-packed programs) and cause unnecessary memory usage. Hence, your computer’s speed will start to degenerate and kick into slow-mo.

Well, you can of course just run free anti-spywares/malwares available out there. However, there are times that your computer’s slow-mo gear might not be caused by unauthorized programs. There are few ways on how to check background programs. One of the most popular ways (although it doesn’t give detailed explanations) is by pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL. I guess almost everyone knows that.

Another way is by using Spybot S&D advance mode, where running programs are listed in a neat table. You can also download other third party programs to do your forensic investigations.

In my experience of fixing troubled computers, one of the most disturbing problem is when you cannot find the root program that is causing all these madness. CTRL+ALT+DEL just doesn’t work for me all the time. Hence, I keep myself a copy of Process Explorer in my portable thumbdrive. Process Explorer (v11.04) is a program that allows the user to get detailed information on what programs are utilizing all the resources you have on your computer with a neat table interface. It can be downloaded for free on the Microsoft website. Although it takes a while to get used to it, the potential of this program is unleashed when you are able to understand it thoroughly. It takes a while but it is pretty simple too.

Now you can see which programs are causing the slow-mo issue and interrupt and terminate these programs immediately. With the process names, you can find out what these programs actually are (by simply searching) and find the easiest and best way to remove them. Keep on in your portable storage device! It may be of help when you least expected.