Keeping Your Computer Clean!

Does your computer lag at any given moment?

Does it take 5+ minutes to load up GW?

Do you wish you could throw your computer from the top of a 10 story building?

Well before you decide to go to that extreme, follow this guide first and let me see if I can't change your mind.

Now to start off, there are 2 main basic components built-in Windows that will do a great job of keeping your computer running smoothly:

• Disk Cleanup - A great program, removes junk internet files, stored cookies, old scripts, and more. If you do this once every couple weeks, you will be in good shape. To browse to it from Windows XP, go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup. There is also a great program called CCleaner that safely removes junk and unused files as well. You can get it from www.ccleaner.com
  
• Disk Defragment - Ah, the wonders a simple disk defragment can do. Basically it compacts and rearranges junk files on your HD. This can be cookies, old pictures, almost anything that is hardly ever touched. Now this can be very lengthy, depending on how often you do it and the size of the Hard Drive. Now my backup computer has a 60GB HD, which takes about 20 minutes. My 200GB HD on my main computer takes about an hour. If you do this every week or so your time will decrease. To browse to it from Windows XP, go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragment.

Now everyone fears viruses and spyware, and why shouldn't you? They are the scum of the internet and computer world. Unfortunately unless your computer is Fort Knox, you will most likely get infected with viruses and/or spyware/adware. But luckily, there are great programs on the internet that can stop this.

Now the most basic and kind of secure feature is Windows Service Pack 2. This huge Windows update includes a new boot screen, countless security updates, and a Security Center, which includes Virus Protection and Firewall.

If you do not have SP2, download it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sp2/default.mspx

Now let it update, reboot, and the security features should be enabled. If you want to disable or check to see, browse to Start > Control Panel > Security Center.

Unfortunately there aren't many virus protection programs that will let you download without buying. There are several virus scanning sites, but they do not let you quarantine the viruses, they just let you look at them.

If anyone knows of any, let me know and I will add.

Spyware/Adware Scanning Programs

Now there are several free programs that let you scan for and remove spyware and adware, here are just a few of the more popular ones:

Ad-Aware SE Personal - http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
Spybot Search and Destroy - http://www.safer-networking.org/
Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware - http://www.microsoft.com/athome/secu...e/default.mspx

Now that we have the computer cleaned up, hopefully you should be noticing that GW loads a bit faster. I would recommend if you have a slower computer to run Guild Wars by itself with no other programs in the background, as it eats up RAM.

Now we need to take a look in Guild Wars, because maybe you are lagging in there. A great way to reduce the game load time is to set to a lower resolution, and turn some of the texture quality down a notch or two. Running in a window does not help much, but if you think it does, then try it.

Now here is a cool thing that not many people know about, heapsize. Heapsize is how much allocated RAM you specify for your computer to use on a specific program. Usually you set about 1/2 of your RAM to it.

For example, I want to play GW with heapsize, and I have 1GB (1024MB) RAM. I would set the heapsize to 512000 (512MB).

To put in a heapsize, right-click the GW desktop shortcut, select the "Shortcut" tab, and in the text area "Target" insert this after the last character, with a space:

-heapsize (1/2 of RAM)

EXACTLY like that, with the hyphen and everything. Here is what you insert according to your RAM:

128MB - "-heapsize 64000"
256MB - "-heapsize 128000"
384MB - "-heapsize 192000"
512MB - "-heapsize 256000"
640MB - "-heapsize 320000"
768MB - "-heapsize 384000"
1024MB - "-heapsize 512000"

There is one last thing I can recommend, and that is disabling all programs at start-up, except the necessary programs to run Windows. This saves a lot of RAM, and will load XP faster and hopefully GW. To do this, go to Start > Run. Type in "msconfig" and hit Enter. Under the "General" tab, select the radio button "Selective Startup," and then un-check the checkbox "Load Startup Items" Hit "Apply" and "Ok" You can then restart, or it will do it next time you load Windows.

Now that is all I can recommend for GW. If you do all the following steps, I will guarantee you GW will load significantly faster. A complete re-format would do the best job, but that is a big, huge pain in the butt, and is not worth the time and effort.

So hopefully GW will run much faster now, hope this guide helped!

(5 stars again)

Here's an advance trick to you for your spyware / adware. Make sure you have the three spyware/adware programs installed and up to date. Then boot your pc in Safe mode. Then run each of the different programs (one at a time) in safe mode. This way spyware that normally can't be removed due to running in the background and can't be removed due to being "in use" usually get's zapped.

Going to try the heapsize tweak on the shortcut.

I have 768mb RAM, this right? + Can you elaborate what this exactly does?

Yes that is an option, but usually most spyware and adware programs have a restart function that scans before the services and applications of Windows loads.

Oh, and yes that is right.

I told you, it uses a set amount of RAM instead of a minimal amount, using approximately half will increase of course the speed of the game.

Oh and this is off topic, but lvl RS character do you have?

Mine is lvl 103, I hardly train him anymore heh.

I thought computers broke if got them wet?




-Ok...im lame >.<

i find spyware usually is my problem....grrrr

Wanted to add this, this is a great freeware program for removing junk files. Falls under Disk Clean up alternative. http://www.ccleaner.com/ - Cleans a lot more safely.

My only tweak would be to turn OFF (System - "Old Prefetch Data") otherwise you would have slower boot up times.

If you have to clean up a system with a lot of spyware, I'd rather do clean in windows safe mode then doing scan(s), reboot scan(s).

One thing I will add, If anyone does download and install service pack2 for windows xp, make sure there is no programs running in the background, most importantly antivirus. This can and most probably cause your pc to crash or not even boot up. link here for how to perfom a clean boot.http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;310353

Lvl 112, 94 Atk/90 Str/86 Def/92 HP/62 Prayer/83 Range/87 Magic.

Quit RS to play GW.

Heh I still play every now and then, getting very boring

I know some/one free antivirus program that works and not just lets you look at them. It deleted them too!

I think Grisoft AVG, avast, trend micro housecall are some.

Since you are doing a defrag on the filesystem you may also want to include PageDefrag.

It is designed to defragment your various registry hives (files) and your page file. The normal defrag can't do that.

Thanks for your time in making the guide.

Edit: Forgot the link http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/PageDefrag.html

Smippitysmoo, that is a great utility for defraging what you listed, use it myself.

For Anti-Virus I use Nod32 - http://www.eset.com/home/home.htm

It's not free but it extremely light on system resources, I can play doom3, fear, and Gw without it impacting the games running. If you have an open internet connection it micro updates, as soon as there is a new virus, they release an update as soon as it's done, not tend to wait and release once a week like other's do. It supports Dos to Windows XP 64 Bit as well as linux and novell and will catch stuff in Mozilla Thunderbird E-mail messages virus or phishing email attacks. Does also do some basic spyware/adware detection / removal too. They have a free trial you can use to.

Here are two free ant-virus programs. They are AVG and avast! I hear praise for both, so it's really a matter of preference. Housecall is a free online scanner that is good if something is preventing you from running/installing an anti-virus program.

When using Disk Cleanup, make sure to uncheck or leave unchecked Compress old files as this slows things down quite a bit.

heh old school RS was great, i dont like the 3d and nice guide, now I dont join a game in 4vs4 pvp when 45 seconds already passed thanks to my crappying integrated vid card and 56k!

ah.....runescape, runescape, brigns back old times......i played for about 7 months lol, my character unfortunately was only lvl 70(non member) cant remember my other stats though about 800+ total lvl i think..... oh, i also quit rs to play guild wars.....try comparing the graphics XD, oh yea btw this guide rules =]

Hehe, lvl 108 with 1563 skill total :P

I don't play as much anymore, too busy with skating, can't wait for winter!

Excelent job. Not only will this help run GW better but my computer as a WHOLE! Thanks for taking out the time to put this together an share it for all to use! Keep it up!

Also there is a thing called AntiVir
I have CCleaner and disk defragment and all those stuff and with AntiVir It detected 6 trojan (Trojan = one of the worst spywares u can get, could possibly be keyloggers)
http://www.free-av.com/

I'm just here to put more support towards Trendmicro.

Once every 2 weeks or so I'll run Trencdmicro and Adaware and my computer will be all better again.

If you are the type of person that likes to delete viruses by yourself (I know I am), look into Dr. Delete(http://www.docsdownloads.com/Tier1/dr-delete.htm). It queues files to be deleted on startup. Use to get rid of those pesky "Cannot delete because its in use" files.