Dealing with BSOD and/or Computer Slowing Down

[MetalLobster]

I found a few graphics that sums up the majority of causes to the blue screen of death and/or computer slowing down. Note, info-graphs like these are not the end-all-be-all guide. These are very simplified information rooted from technical sources, so any solution you implement from these should be further researched.

Ignore DriveBoost.com and Pchealthboost.com. You don't need to pay for shit.

Ignore DriveBoost.com and Pchealthboost.com. You don't need to pay for shit.

In case you are wondering, here are a few things I recommend downloading.

Go to http://ninite.com/ and find the following:
- CCleaner - Cleans shit (cookies, registry, history...etc) up
- Auslogic - Also cleans shit up, good alternative to CCleaner
- Malwarebytes - Malware scanner and cleaner. Cleans up a lot the shit you get from clicking on "You've won" links.
- AVG - Pretty good Anti-virus
- Avast - Also a good anti-virus
- Revo - Uninstaller, that also scans for left-over files and cleans that shit up too

 

[OG buckshot jr]

I really hope no one actually falls for the advertisements here... Things like RegistryBooster, Registry Cleaners and DriverBoosters (just what the fuck are these things, anyway?!) are, in many cases, the exact reason for having to re-install the Operating System from scratch.

Also, these graphics seem really outdated - the first bubble seems to want to talk about your computer being slow, but then mentions dial-up internet:
"A slowdown usually occurs over a period of time. Unless you are on dial-up that is slow to being with and have less than 512MB of RAM, that too can be a major issue." Wharlt?!

 

[Brades]

I've never had/felt the need to use any of these... I guess it helps that I don't download a bunch of AIDS on my computer.

 

[OG buckshot jr]

I've never had/felt the need to use any of these... I guess it helps that I don't download a bunch of AIDS on my computer.

Agreed, and that's cause shit like this doesn't actually make any sense/fix anything. It preys on people who know no better to buy some Booster (the aforementioned AIDS) to install. Imagine, paying for something to fuck your computer up

 

[MetalLobster]

I really hope no one actually falls for the advertisements here... Things like RegistryBooster, Registry Cleaners and DriverBoosters (just what the fuck are these things, anyway?!) are, in many cases, the exact reason for having to re-install the Operating System from scratch.

Also, these graphics seem really outdated - the first bubble seems to want to talk about your computer being slow, but then mentions dial-up internet:
"A slowdown usually occurs over a period of time. Unless you are on dial-up that is slow to being with and have less than 512MB of RAM, that too can be a major issue." Wharlt?!

Lol I noticed that too, but whatever. That's not the point.

I should also put that red warning before the thread :facepalm:

 

[OG buckshot jr]

Lol I noticed that too, but whatever. That's not the point.

I should also put that red warning before the thread :facepalm:

Ya, I'd appreciate having our users come into the tech section and getting proper advice lol

 

[Hinouchi]

What a scam, everyone knows that you can boost your computer up by downloading more RAM!

on a serious note, NEVER EVER "defag" your SSD drive, you will never be less of a fag! Brains.

 

[OG buckshot jr]

What a scam, everyone knows that you can boost your computer up by downloading more RAM!

on a serious note, NEVER EVER "defag" your SSD drive, you will never be less of a fag! Brains.

There's good tools for this to do it properly now, I think it was.. Maxtor/Plextor that had it? I read a review of the tool and how it functions in a CPU Magazine article a few months back. I'll try to google it...

 

[Hinouchi]

There's good tools for this to do it properly now, I think it was.. Maxtor/Plextor that had it? I read a review of the tool and how it functions in a CPU Magazine article a few months back. I'll try to google it...

oh really? but still I don't even think an ssd needs defraging, any defrag will just wear out the drive faster. Probably what the company wants you to do so you can BUY MORE! Marketing 101.

 

[OG buckshot jr]

oh really? but still I don't even think an ssd needs defraging, any defrag will just wear out the drive faster. Probably what the company wants you to do so you can BUY MORE! Marketing 101.

haha maybe!

Basically, it's about blocks - flash memory stores information in blocks. So (this info is wrong, but just for example) a block contains 8 squares. And let's say the hard-drive has 100 blocks. Well, a file in block 1 takes up 5 squares, leaving 3 squares left. If you try to save another file, say 4 squares in size, it will have to pick another block to be stored on. Therefore, you end up with a ton of blocks with spare space because shit didn't fit. So this program will re-match all these bits of info to blocks where they fit. Lemme try to pull the article because I'm sure my example sucks balls...

EDIT: Can't find it, but it's basically a better version of TRIM. Ah well, fuck it.

Anyways - why not defrag an SSD? Educate me, I've not heard this before...

 

[Hinouchi]

http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-S...use-any-long-term-performance-loss/ta-p/71051 Answered by a mod at Curial forum.

Question

Can defragmenting an SSD just once cause a loss of performance, or is that something that occurs only if done regularly?
Answer

The short answer is this: you don't have to defrag your SSD.

To understand why, we need to look at the purpose of defragmenting. Defragging ensures that large files are stored in one continuous area of a hard disc driveso that it can be read in one go. Mechanical drives have a relatively long seek time of approximately 15ms, so every time a file is fragmented you lose 15ms finding the next one, And this really adds up when reading lots of different files split into lots of different fragments.

However, this isn't an issue with SSDs, because the seek time is about 0.1ms. You aren't really going to notice the benefit of defragged files--which means defragging has no performance advantages with an SSD.

An SSD moves data that's already happily on your disk to other places on your disk, often sticking it at a temporary position first. Thats's what gives defragmenting a disadvantage for SSD users You're writing data you already have, which uses up some of the NAND's limited rewrite capability, -- with no performance advantage to be gained from it.

So basically, don't defrag your drive because at best it won't do anything, at worst it does nothing for your performance and you will use up write cycles doing it. Having done it a few times ain't gonna cause you much trouble, but you don't want this to be a scheduled, weekly type thing.

 

[OG buckshot jr]

Snap, so you're taking life off of your drive... makes sense, given NAND flash has a finite amount of write-cycles. Thanks Hinouchi!

 

[$alvador]

i live in perpetual fear of the day when i'll forget to deselect the "INSTALL ASK TOOLBAR" option. If there's a hell, it's run by Oracle