Last week, I dug deep into Windows Task Manager and explained the most critical Windows processes, such as “lsass.exe” and “Explorer.exe”. In this second installment, I’m going to explain the more common Windows processes, some of which are important and some of which you can even disable to avoid unusual CPU and hard disk activity. [...]
It’s the Achilles’ heel of older and slower machines—you try to watch HDTV on your PC or netbook, and it stutters. You try to play a Blu-ray disc, and it won’t start. You try to play a 720p or 1080p video file, and the image immediately starts to tear and lag. In this post, we [...]
Imagine that you’re on a flight from New York to Los Angeles. You pop a DVD into your notebook to watch a movie. After the credits roll, you take a look at the battery meter in Windows’ taskbar and are shocked to see: What is going on here? Your notebook is supposed to run for [...]
The PC optimization process does not just make your computer run more smoothly. It also has an impact on Mother Nature—and consumers’ bills, too! In this post, I’ll discuss the environmental benefits of PC optimization and how consumers can “go green” when it comes to Windows tuning. What Is Green Computing? To understand what green [...]
Remember the disaster that occurred after we installed 200 programs on a notebook? Our PC became so slow and was essentially unusable. The TuneUp Blog team then uninstalled all of the programs and compared the machine’s current performance to its original state. The results? Performance significantly improved, however, it was still not at the optimum [...]
PC users often get frustrated with their computers’ poor performance and find slow start-up and response times as well as laggy applications unacceptable. This podcast discusses the best ways to gain peace of mind when it comes to maintaining your PC and using utilities software. It includes results from a recent TuneUp research study, conducted [...]
Astonishing! When we launched this blog, the goal was to help the average PC owner get the most out of their computer. According to a survey that TuneUp recently worked on with Harris Interactive, our hunch that users could benefit from some tips and tricks was right. Let’s dive into some of the interesting trends [...]
We often hear questions like “Why is it taking ages to boot-up Windows?” or “Why is it taking so long to start the Web browser?” The major culprit here is file fragmentation, which means that your files are scattered all over your hard disk in a chaotic manner. Since this is a major performance hit, Windows [...]
The advent of netbooks has recently taken the PC market by storm—accounting for nearly 20 percent of global laptop sales in Q1 2009. Many have tested the performance of these mini-notebooks and compared them to laptops (check out Cisco Cheng’s PC Magazine article and John Morris’ ZDNet post). Netbooks are a little slower than their [...]
