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PC Computer Diagnostic Software Tools to Speed Up Windows

Now that we know we need to speed up Windows, the first order of business is to aquire some PC computer diagnostic software tools to aid in the effort. The first order of business is to download some operating system level utilities.

SysInternals Tools

There is one toolset that no one should be without. It's from a company called SysInternals that was assimilated by Microsoft and is now part of the Microsoft TechNet. It's important that we install two of the tools from this toolset, namely SysInternals Process Explorer and SysInternals AutoRuns.

SysInternals Process Explorer

We need to download and install the application. We'll do this by going to the Microsoft TechNet site. Unfortunately it doesn't come an installer, so you'll have to create the installation folder and unzip the files into it yourself, but it's not as hard as it sounds.

Here are the step by step instructions:

If you're running Windows Vista you will first have to disable “User Access Control” by logging in as a user who has administrative rights (by default the user you created when you installed Windows is an admin) and using the [User Accounts] application, which can be found within the Control Panel, to disable it.
Download SysInternals Process Explorer.
Save the .zip file to your desktop
Right click on the start button at the bottom left corner of your display and choose “Explore”
Select "Local disk C:" in the tree view and expand it
Right click on the “Program Files” subfolder and select “New/Folder
Rename this new folder “SysInternals”
Right click on the “SysInternals” subfolder and select “New/Folder”
Rename this new folder “ProcessExplorer”
Unzip the contents of the ProcessExplorer.zip file you downloaded into the “C:\Program Files\SysInternals\ProcessExplorer” sub-folder
Go to the "C:\Program Files\SysInternals\ProcessExplorer" folder and double-click ProcessExplorer.exe.
The first time you run SysInternals Process Explorer it prompts you with a confirmation dialog (accept it).
In the ProcessExplorer window that comes up, choose “Options”/”Replace Task Manager”

From now on, when you right-click on the toolbar at the bottom (or press Cltr+Alt+Del) and choose Task Manager, the SysInternals Process Explorer application will come up instead.

Start out by familiarizing yourself with the Process Explorer.

The tool includes the unique process tree along the left-hand side that lets you look at the different processes running on your box and see which processes spawned sub processes.

Each processes select includes an assortment of properties such as the program identifier, CPU usage, a description of the application, which is really important, the company name, and even the commandline that was used to execute the process.

Process Explorer, not only to look at applications running on your machine, but also lets you see hardware interrupts and deferred procedure calls. Of great important is the svchost.exe subprocess, because there are a lot of different operations in Windows that use svchost.exe.

Anything that's highlighted in pink is a service-level process. The yellow highlighted applications are .NET applications. There are a number of different types of processes highlighted, and you can see which type of highlighting is for, which, by going to:

"Options/Configure Highlighting..."

By pressing Ctrl+I you can bring up the system information window. This is similar to the task managers, system information window, except it provides a lot more detail, including I/O information.

What I really find Process Explorer handy for is monitoring what processes are running and ensuring that there are no rogue processes on the box. I also use it to watch for things like processes that her eating memory like crazy at which point I make the decision to either kill the processes or reboot the box. It's a good way to be proactive in dealing with him slow PC performance.

Process Explorer isn't meant to clean up your PC, it's more of a tool that you use on a regular basis to keep track of what's running on your box and kill those processes that have sort of gone sideways.

If you happen to notice something weird going on your box. It's also a good way to check to see whether you've inadvertently got a virus on your machine.

I once had a situation where things weren't working the way I expected. And I use process Explorer, and I found this strange process it had a weird filename like yrewuiys.exe. Somehow I'd managed to get a virus on my box. In this case, the virus was extra nasty, because it hooked itself to the Winlogon.exe which meant I couldn't remove it off the box without actually rebooting with the Windows CD, using the command prompt and then removing it manually.

But more on this later...

SysInternals AutoRuns

...and now for the next tool AutoRuns... man this is a cool tool.

Once again, we'll need to download and install the application manually, because it doesn't have it's own installer. As before, here's the procedure:

Here are the installation instructions:

If you're running Windows Vista you will first have to disable “User Access Control” by logging in as a user who has administrative rights (by default the user you created when you installed Windows is an admin) and using the [User Accounts] application, which can be found within the Control Panel, to disable it.
Download SysInternals AutoRuns.
Save the .zip file to your desktop
Right click on the start button at the bottom left corner of your display and choose “Explore”
Select "Local disk C:" in the tree view and expand it
Right click on the “Program Files” subfolder and select “New/Folder
Rename this new folder “SysInternals”
Right click on the “SysInternals” subfolder and select “New/Folder”
Rename this new folder “AutoRuns”
Unzip the contents of the AutoRuns.zip file you downloaded into the “C:\Program Files\SysInternals\AutoRuns” sub-folder
Go to the "C:\Program Files\SysInternals\AutoRuns" folder and double-click AutoRuns.exe.
The first time you run SysInternals AutoRuns it prompts you with a confirmation dialog (accept it).

When I became suspicious of the virus I just mentioned, I use the AutoRun's program to try and figure out why every time I deleted the application file and log back into my box it was back again. I quickly discovered that the Win logon Showed me this executable with a different name was starting up during Win logon. The problem is, you can't remove applications that are started by Win logon, because the file is always being held open by when logged on.

The only way to remove these types of files is to log off and boot up with the Windows CD, then press F3 at the main screen, go to the command prompt, and delete them manually. I never would've figured out what the problem was if I hadn't used AutoRuns. None of the antivirus tools that I use was even able to recognize that there was a problem let alone tell me why the virus was still around.

As I'm sure you can already tell, AutoRuns will come in very handy in the future...

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