Windows Readyboost 9/22/08

Hello again, today I would like to talk to you about a new feature added onto Windows Vista called Windows Readyboost. Windows Readyboost is a program which allows you to use a flash drive to create a bigger paging file, or virtual memory as it is more widely known as. 

Virtual memory is a file that is written to a harddisk on your machine instead of to RAM.  Virtual memory was made so computer with very little RAM can still run IE and other programs at a reasonable speed.  

Despite the ads and hype about this new feature, it is really not that great. Any harddrive with sufficent space can run a pretty good sized paging file, for all those programs that dont need extremely fast data, like Internet Explorer, or Microsoft Word. One of the biggest points of this feature is that it is supposed to be a replacement for actually adding physical RAM. Nothing can compare to physical RAM. Games especially need physical RAM, because everything in a game reads and write things very fast. 

This paging file however, can be useful in day to day tasks such as reading email. However, once you go over a certain limit (limit differs per computer) it doesnt matter anymore. 

What I am trying to say is that you really dont need readyboost unless you have limited harddrive space. If you are on a laptop or even a computer with very little RAM this can be a handy feature. 

Greetings from the World of Tommorrow!

Hello, my name is Milandon and I am going to talk about different types of technology, their functions, and ways to make them better.

Today I will start off with a simple way to stop all your applications from starting up when you first boot up your computer.

I will start off with some explanation of this Windows tool.

This tool is called Msconfig. Apart from being used to disable random/unwanted programs from starting up this can also be used for troubleshooting purposes. This can tell your computer how to start up, and what system services to start up, and which .ini files to load and read.

Now first thing you want to do is go to start and click "run" and then type in msconfig and click okay.

Note: if you are using Windows Vista (god forbid) go to start and type in msconfig. Double click on the msconfig program.

Now, there are seven tabs. The first tab is "general" it allows you to select how you want you computer to start up. It also allows you to do a system restore. The next three tabs are "system.ini" "win.ini" and "boot.ini" these are extremely important to the system and they tell how everything boots up, which windows are loaded and so on. DO NOT TOUCH THEM UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. The tab "services" shows what windows services actually start up. You probably wont need to do anything in this tab. Now "startup" and are what we are going to be focusing on. The tab "tools" shows you different windows tools for fixing you computer.

In "startup" there is a whole list of programs. Most of them are the programs that you have installed on your computer. There are three categories where your stuff is listed. We are going to focus on "startup item" and "Command".

First up, the commands that end in .exe without specifiying a path are not to be messed with unless you have a certain problem.

Now first find a program you dont want starting up. Here are a couple ones that I have on my computer. aim6 which is Aol Instant Messenger. (If you have a different version it might say something like aim5 or aim7). Reader_sl is Adobe Reader and avgtray is AVG anti-virus.

To figure out what the programs are that you want to disable you might have to go into My Computer and trace the path. A path is the location of your program.

Once you find the program all you have to do is uncheck the checked box and then click "apply" and "ok" and follow the prompts. I would recommend choosing to restart your computer now becuase you might have a problem otherwise. It is rare but it can happen.

Once you have restarted you want to tell it to never show up on startup again. Now your are rid of those pesky programs that start up when you boot up your computer.This is also a good way to get rid of programs that track your movements or keystrokes.

Disclaimer: In no way do I take responsibility for what happens to your computer if you decide to mess around with settings in your computer. Please do not go off and mess with something you dont know about.