WyzGuys Tech Talk

While these tips have been handed down since the early days of DOS, they really have no impact on performance on today’s computers and operating systems. 

Cleaning the Registry

Spending money on registry cleaning or optimizing software will not really improve performance by much at all.  And tweaking the Windows Registry on your own via Regedit can be dangerous.  You can skip this chore.

Disk Defragmentation

Back in the day when hard drives were expensive and had relatively small storage capacities, running a disk defragmentation routine from time to time could save some space and improve performance.  Current operating systems do a fairly good job of staying on top of this, and today’s high capacity disks usually never come close to becoming full.  This task takes time, and can be skipped or limited to once a year.  I still like Diskkeeper for it’s ability to keep a disk defragmented on the fly, so if this is even a concern, Diskkeeper is worth the price.  Otherwise, skip it.

Disabling System Restore

There is a certain mythology out there about the hard drive space and processor cycles that System Restore requires causing performance issue.  This is largely false.  Plus, the ability to revert back to an earlier system state as a quick and dirty virus repair or to recover from a failed installation is just too important to live without.  Don’t do this.

Deleting Temporary Internet Files

Again, back when hard drives were small and spendy, this was important.  While it is still ok to do this periodically, it will not really do anything to improve system performance.  You can do this if you wish, but don’t expect anything more than a little increase in disk space.