I'll bet my PC boots faster than yours does. I'll even wager it's got a cleaner Registry file and less Temp folder garbage to slow down its performance. And I probably have more control over apps that open my files. My secrets? A handful of useful Windows utilities and a nifty (and free) spyware catcher that outdoes Ad-aware.

If you're using Windows XP, try BootVis, a free Microsoft utility that speeds up your machine's boot time, sometimes substantially: I saw a 25-second improvement in my PC's start-up after running the tool. (If you use another version of Windows, check out Kirk Steers's BIOS tutorial, "Tweak Your PC's BIOS Settings the Safe Way".)

BootVis offers a graphical view of your PC's boot performance and shows you why booting your system takes so long. After you download from BootVis, create a folder named 'ptools' and install the utility into that folder. Launch the program and choose Trace, Next Boot + Driver Delays. When the dialog box appears, choose four repetitions and then go grab a cup of coffee. Don't interrupt the process, even if your PC seems to be frozen--BootVis takes its sweet time. The program watches the boot process and figures out how to load drivers, DLLs, and other components simultaneously. It also determines how to start loading some drivers before others have finished, and it identifies the files that no longer need to load.

Once BootVis is done, select Trace, Optimize. The program shuffles drivers and their load order based on what it has learned, making for faster boots. BootVis provides the details you need to find the problems that are slowing the boot process. For instance, my system stalled when trying to connect to a nonexistent networked PC; removing this item from Network Neighborhood helped speed up my machine's boot process.

Anti-Spy vs. Anti-Spy

I know that we tout Ad-aware in "20 Tools for Trouble-Free Computing" as a great tool for finding and removing those insidious spyware programs that lurk on your hard drive and extract details about you. But I discovered an app that outshines Ad-aware: Spybot Search & Destroy. Both Ad-aware and Spybot are free, so I downloaded and ran them both, and then I compared the results. (If you do this, make sure to set the programs to find spyware, not remove it, during the test.) The score? Ad-aware found 9 items (cookies and one false-positive program), while Spybot red-flagged 26 items (cookies and two spy apps). Guess which of the two I always use now? Go to this page at PCWorld.com's Downloads to get either program.

Having too many files in your PC's Temp folder can bog down system performance--but you already knew that. If you use Windows' Disk Cleanup utility to remove those files, your Temp folder still has files that are less than a week old. To empty the folder entirely, use JV16 PowerTools, a free utility that also finds invalid and obsolete Registry entries. Go to this page to download a copy.

This happens all too often: You double-click a file, and--instead of a familiar program launching--a different app starts. But now I'm happily protected by Open+, a nifty tool that lets me decide which program to open a file in. For example, when I click a .jpg or other image file, I can choose to open it in a file viewer such as ACDsee or in a picture editor such as Paint Shop Pro. Ditto for playing an MP3 file: Open+ lets me decide between Winamp and Windows Media Player. For safekeeping, I can back up all of my file associations to a removable medium. Open+ costs $30; visit Capio's site to grab a trial version (registration required).

Okay, one more: ChangeExt is a free Windows Explorer add-on that displays details about a file when you right-click it. I use it to copy the file's name and path to the clipboard for pasting into shortcuts and elsewhere. Go to the JACS home page for your copy.

So, what am I doing with all my newfound spare time? I've spent some of it looking for other handy Windows utilities. You can read about them in one of my upcoming online newsletters. Go to PC World's Free Newletters to sign up.

SUMMARY

Capio Open+ $30

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