Toku's Easy Guide To Getting Your Computer In Healthy RuneScape-able Condition

Recently, my brother’s old computer would not play RuneScape effectively at all. He offered to pay me 15 million GP just to fix the problems, but I decided to write an article for him and all of RuneVillage. Not only will this guide help your computer play RuneScape better, it will also help keep you from getting hacked. It could also make your computer faster by freeing up your computer’s resources and will greatly decrease your computer’s start up time. I will have another guide in next month’s Villager that will be more based on PC performance and reducing start up time. I hope everyone enjoys this guide!

Step 1: Disable System Restore
Only remove this if you have a very good antivirus and firewall program. System Restore can be great, but it can also be bad, because it can use up a lot of space on your hard drive (10 gigabytes on mine). Turning this off, using the steps below, will increase your computers speed greatly and free up space on your hard disk.

1. Right click on My Computer and select Properties.
2. Select System Restore.
3. Check “Turn off System Restore”.
4. Click Apply when finished.

Step 2: Turn off Disk Indexing
Disk indexing allows you to search for files faster, but it will also reduce your computer’s speed and performance. Personally, I would rather have better performance rather than a faster search speed. In my opinion they should have never spent money on coming up with this technology, so turn that bad baby off! Follow my instructions below to learn how to disable Disk Indexing.

1. Open up My Computer.
2. Right click on your hard drive (Usually C and select Properties.
3. Uncheck “Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching”.
4. Click Apply when finished.

Step 3: Disable Automatic Updates
Microsoft gets a lot of beef for not having the security strength of other operating systems, and for good reason. They try to make your system more secure by using the Automatic Updates system at the expence of your computer’s performance. However, as long as you check for updates at www.microsoft.com at least once a week, you will no longer be in danger. Not only that, but you will slightly increase the performance of your computer as well. It is up to you to keep your PC up to date.

1. Right click on My Computer and select Properties.
2. Then go to the Automatic Updates tab.
3. Check “Turn off Automatic Updates”.
4. Click Apply when finished.

Step 4: Keeping your System Virus and Spyware Free (for Free)
Having good Virus and Spyware removal programs is essential to keeping your computer healthy. Not only will Viruses and Spyware slow your computer down, they will also steal information and possibly leave your bank account empty! Using a variety of antivirus/spyware programs is good, but never use more than one virus scanner or firewall at the same time. I will list a couple of Adware/Spyware and Virus removal programs. You only need one Virus removal program, but feel free to download as many Adware removal programs that you like, because different Adware programs are better at catching different things. Most of the programs will come with a guide on how to use them.

All programs listed below are free unless they are noted otherwise.

Virus Removal Programs
AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition - http://www.grisoft.com/doc/1
McAfee VirusScan (30 day free trial) - http://www.McAfee.com
Kaspersky Anti-Spy (30 day free trial) - http://www.Kaspersky.com

Adware and Spyware Removal Programs
Ad-Aware - http://www.lavasoftusa.com
Spybot Search and Destroy - http://www.spybot.info
Yahoo Anti Spy note - http://toolbar.yahoo.com
Spyware Doctor - http://www.pctools.com/spyware-doctor

Firewall Programs
McAfee Personal Firewall Plus (30 day free trial) - http://www.McAfee.com
AVG Anti-Virus Plus Firewall (30 day free trial) - http://www.Grisoft.com

Step 5: Defragging your Hard Drive
Defragging your hard drive is a good thing to do after you have installed or uninstalled software. This program will free up a small bit of hard drive space and also speed up your computer. You should defrag your hard drive at least once a month, although most would say once a week. Follow the steps below to use the default hard drive defragger. Note: Make sure to always run Virus and Spyware scans before defragging your hard drive.

1. Open up My Computer.
2. Right click on your hard drive and select properties.
3. Select the Tools tab.
4. Click on Defragment Now.
5. With the Defragment Tool open, click Defragment to start defragging your hard drive. Note: This may take a while depending on the size of your hard drive.

Check in next month’s Villager for another guide to increase PC performance!



Written By: Tokuman
Edited By: TheAmericanIdiot
Coded By: J@nr0k