This video's picking up views again, so here's a quick pin with some notes: 1. I DO NOT USE CCLEANER ANY MORE. Piriform is now owned by AVG and riddled with adware. I consider it to be hostile software. 2. Yes an SSD will massively help a system like this. 2017 they were still expensive enough that they weren't really worth going for on a service job unless the HDD was failing. These days I upsell SSDs for nearly all service jobs, because they're cheap enough to be a no-brainer. 3. Although my service checklist has changed over time, the gist of it is still the same. Reduce background processes, clean up stuff that doesn't need to be there, look for bottlenecks and relieve them. 4. Yes, a clean-install is a much faster solution, but on Joe Public's laptop you need to remember that they don't have any of their Office licence info, they probably don't know their email password, they don't know what programs they use or need, etc etc. Re-installing windows on a stranger's laptop is a can of worms itself, and might be even more of a headache. The last thing you want is a review saying "I took it in for service and they deleted everything." 5. Most of us professionals all have our own methods, there's lots of ways to do this, this is just how I do it. Feel free to use this as inspiration, but figure out what works for you 👌
Just a slight correction on AVG owning Piriform. AVG Technologies is a "sister" company to Piriform. Both AVG and Piriform are owned side by side along with a VPN company called HMA. All of the aforementioned companies are owned by Avast. In the whole scheme of things I don't know that it really makes any difference. I used to use AVG a very long time ago and abandonded use of it for Microsoft's built-in antivirus programs.
I remember way back in the windows 9x days, I had a co-worker who asked me to come look at his system because it was running like a snail. It was your usual OEM system, which means it was pre-loaded with bloatware from the start, and then he had used it for a few years. I brought my usb flash drive with all the tools I use and gave it a good tuning up, ending of course with a defrag of the hard drive. His jaw hit the floor when he saw how fast things opened after the tune up. Everything was literally at least 10 times faster. I'm so glad we don't use HDDs as boot drives anymore since defragging was the part that usually took the longest.
Good video, funny to see that this stuff hasn't really changed in the last 15 years (or more). This video being 3 years old even now, and it's still spot on. Sure SSDs are great now, but 2017 on an AMD e2 proc laptop... that customer wouldn't have spent the cash for the upgrade and clone. People could follow this video today (kinda) and kickstart their own repair business.
One of my favorite tuning tricks is to go into Advanced System Properties/Performance/Settings/Visual Effects and turn off: animation for minimizing and maximizing windows, all of the fade options, and show window contents while dragging. Even on higher end systems turning off those "fade" options makes things feel zippier. On something using lower end graphics, turning off the min max animations and show window contents is essential
Thanks for the video! Appreciate the time taken to show the steps you use. Other comments saying just chuck an SSD in it and reinstall Windows, yes that would solve the problem and yes there would be a significant performance increase but you wouldn't have seen the steps and solutions that were implemented to improve the speed and performance of this particular computer...Would have been a totally different video :) Perhaps you cant afford an SSD and running a health check is your only option...:)
Couple tips that you may find useful: 1) In task manager you can click on any of the headings (i.e. CPU, Memory) to have it sort processes by that criteria (in increasing or decreasing order) 2) You can quickly find the version of Windows you are running by holding the Windows key on your keyboard and pressing R. You'll see a run dialog appear and simply type winver This will bring up the About Windows dialog which amongst other things contains the build you're running on that system. 3) I would advise against people using the Registry Editor to adjust system settings, as you can do a lot of damage with very minor changes. A better option is to use MSConfig which you can access by pressing Windows Key + run and typing in msconfg as the command you want to run. From there you'll get a nice overview of what's starting up with your computer with the option to disable any of the items. In any event interesting video and thought I'd pose a few questions that might be worth creating a future video of: 1) At what point would you consider upgrading a customer's hardware? For instance, on the customer's laptop it seems like they have 8 GB of RAM and a spinning hard disk. Would it have made sense to upgrade the drive to an SSD? What if the customer came in with just 4 GB of RAM. Would it have been advisable to upgrade? 2) At what point does it make more sense to do a clean install of Windows versus manually going through and cleaning stuff out? I would imagine the clean install is the simplest and quickest option that would likely offer the best results for the customer. On the other hand one has to balance potentially backing up data and/or reinstalling applications. 3) Is it ever advisable to build out a set of policies you set in Windows to prevent customers from rolling back the fixes you have (i.e. a installing a Windows policy that prevents AVG from being installed)?
j2simpso Resorting to a 'Clean Install' would only be a 'last resort' IT may appear to be a quick solution at first glance, however, one has to consider the impact of reinstalling other software. One also has to consider other files that may be critical to the user, such as various documents, including text files - pdf - saved web pages - video Saved URLs and ther may be critical cookies that permit access to specific websites. Also, some paid software, site membership - add-ons - installed cookies so the user can log in. When those are deleted, one has a disaster and in some instances, the user may have to pay a specific fee again to gain access or buy the software or app that no longer functions. The cost in time to restore proper operation would be an enormous headache, loss of time and monetary loss. So in order to do a complete re-install one would have to back up critical data. It would be somewhat if you, for instance, taking your car to a mechanic and getting back 6,809 pieces for you to resemble yourself. At least the mechanic would have CLEANED all the components so you would not have to get your hands dirty. When your WINDOWS are dirty,, do you clean the Windows or call the Glazier to replace the GLASS?
@@andrew_koala2974 I had to deal with this once and it was a nightmare. How badly I just wanted to nuke everything with a reinstall... It's also the reason why you store all significant programs and important files not on the system drive and use this awesome thing called network storage. Or cloud storage if you don't want your own NAS. That works pretty well assuming you have decently fast and stable internet. I'm still using my 80gb intel x25 from 2009 as a system drive. Those early ssd probably have somewhere around a 100 year lifespan, how far we've fallen. If you care about personalizations you create a remote script and do an autorun. It does everything for you grabs all of the personalizations and configs and you're good to go. Reinstalling windows takes me like an hour max if some update screws something up which is rare nowadays.
I don't believe you should really do that. It is after all the customer's machine and not yours. If they want to mess up their machine then that is their prerogative. If they want you to clean up their mess then that have to pay your prices to do it. If you start putting in anti install or rollback policies then you are no better than Apple and their _walled garden_ locking you out of *your* hardware.
the best thing you can do with a machine like this, is install an SSD, and have minimal background software running, so that the CPU will actually idle.
Great video! This is what I do for living, and I just learned a few things. It's usually better to first open AVG, let it update itself and wait for it to say that everything is OK, then remove it.
Very informative and useful video. I will be adding the registry and task scheduler routines to my to-do list when servicing Windows. Thank you and greeting from México.
As a Linux user I found this very interesting. Every now and again I think about using Windows and videos like this remind me of why I did not use Windows :-)
Best rule of thumb I usually do if i get bad apps like avg or my computer is running slow like this is to back up my games/files and just re install windows to clean out anything that causes issues.... so far it works great for me
One of my first steps include running event viewer > windows logs > system > filter ( critical , warning , error). Occasionally, the issue might be in plain sight. Windirstat is another handy app, sorts by large files.. when space is critical
had to rewatch today as id forgotten it all but ive now done this routine a few times for family / freinds and it works very well , from painfully slow to fast again it takes a while though on a bad computer .
Why won't it happen Thomas? You can always learn by playing round with a cheap second-hand machine. Nobody has ever gotten a computer job of any sort without first playing round with the hardware and/or software. Give it a try coz you have nothing to lose except the cost of the second-hand machine. I suggest a second machine so you don't mess your personal one up.
Revo uninstaller is a great free uninstall program that deletes programs and also deletes all remaining files in the directories as well. It's one of the first programs i install when i get a new pc and want to erase all the windows bloatware. Some of the default windows stuff is hard to uninstall from control panel.
You are the most use full tech youtuber I have seen in years been watching quite a lot an you are helpful. I know the tech stuff but the one that really notice you where the video about desoldering bios chip. To fix motherboards :)
Usually when I'm servicing computers I prefer to leave intact the icons and the preferences of the owner and in principle being the less intrusive possible but I remove all sorts of crapware and services around anyway.
I always do some optimizations by turning off telemetry, changing updates to deferred, disabling experiments, and a few more. oosu10 is my favorite tool because i could just create a cfg file and put it on a flash drive, and then load the cfg and reboot and everything's to the cfg's standard edit: you can disable cortana completely, and enhance the search by removing it's ability to use web and location search, turning it into a purely local search, and it tends to be much faster as a result.
I was fairly well streamlined since a reinstall of win10 on a new SSD in my lappy - However i did pick up some top tips - Aus defrag - my old HDD was well messy and the defender icon now gone, thanks for that big time!
29:07 you don't need the flash drive, just run the Media Creation Tool app and tell it to do an in-line update right there, but it still needs to download everything. No need for a USB flash drive and boot off of it, and apps and user files will be left intact. Also when you do an update like this, it still makes a backup of the old windows files, but it's not very big.
Another Useful Tip: Go to power / energy settings (right click on battery icon) and select the Performance Profile. This setting remove power saving locks and level up your CPU frequency.
I enjoyed your video. /there are a couple of things I do differently. I don't use CCleaner because it misses so much junk. I use Findjunkfiles and Drivetidy. Either one of them does better than CCleaner, but together they are very effective. I do recommend running Malwarebytes in the background because it catches so many bogus websites before they can do damage to you. As some of the other comments have suggested, I use Revo Uninstaller rather than Windows. And I would never, ever use Windows Defender for anything.
I've had McAfee entries I couldn't delete via autoruns even running as admin. I think I deleted them by running autoruns from safe mode with command prompt (not sure if that's still an startup option these days?)
Windows Update: You can do this in powershell. I find this a much more satisfactory process than usning the gui, which is crock. First open powershell as administrator - Set the execution policy: set-executionpolicy -scope currentuser -executionpolicy unrestricted -force -Install the updater install-module pswindowsupdate -run and repeat until no more updates install-windowsupdate -acceptall -verbose -microsoftupdate -AutoReboot *note, you can omit 'autoreboot' if you are doing other things Defragging. Don't defrag SSDs. Just don't. You don't need to.
This was a great guide. I copied parts of it following a reinstall of windows. I'd be interested if you were to make a similar video to this showing your process during/following a reinstall of windows.
Blocking scripts by default when browsing and creating a whitelist for the sites you use is in my opinion the best protection from malware. Combined with windows defender, the odd 3rd party scan and not blindly clicking on things. Keep yourself clean :)
TIP PRO: If you have a desktop and a very slow laptop. Install Teamviewer on both and renovate your slow laptop with your desktop. Much easier than doing USB transfers and all that.
I'm surprised you didn't use Revo Uninstaller to get rid of AVG; it also does a good job of deleting the leftover files, folders and registry entries that the windows uninstaller usually misses. I'd go for that over AVG's removal tool. Also, have you ever tried Puran Defrag and if so, what are your thoughts on it?
It would be great if you could do a tune up on a different laptop. My Acer aspire is very slow but I'm terrified of deleting the wrong stuff. Great video. Your repair videos are wonderful.
Put an SSD into it. Buy a 2½" HDD enclosure, put the old HDD into it and then copy your data and setting (Bookmarks etc) onto the new drive. Once that is done format the old HDD and then backup all your data and setting to it. Alternatively you can image the new and clean install to the old HDD so it is easy to "install" clean again. If you get a HDD enclosure, get a USB 3 one. Makes data movement a lot faster than a dinosaur USB 2 one.
Only time I have found CCleaner causing an issue is when there is any Sage Accounts Package on the system, seems to remove the registry entries for Sage.
I sadly suckled at the bloaty teats of AVG, their tune up utilities used to be abs spot on but this year they changed it and it is very horrible. I am going to follow your guide with my HP Elitebook which runs atrociously and has very little except the bloat from HP. Showing me age being a Windows 2 and 3 PU, Windows 3.11 PU MS Dos 1-6 Power User, oh those were the days when hard drive booting wasn't even a thing and you had to boot from a command prompt via dos and typing in the Win to get going hehe All to run Doom, Heretic, Wolfenstein with the various "mods", EotB1/2/3, Elite, Frontier Elite 1 and 2 and the silly little keywords from page such and such... happy days :)
I use autoruns from sysinternals to check all the starting process on Windows you should try it. Well is a 3 years old video so probably you never read this comment
I love autoruns, I can safely untick starting processes without deleting the regkey. Just in case something goes horrible wrong, I can undo the change.
right-click My Computer, click on the left on Advanced System Settings, it brings up System Properties, go to Advanced tab, DISABLE EVERYTHING THERE or at least the Animate and Fade options, BAM! your Windows 10 on the intel core 2 quad is snappier than on an intel i7. *assuming the system is clean, like this video instructs.
This is a good shout actually. I used to do this years ago, and then we went into a phase where it didn't seem to matter. But now I feel like the minimum standards have fallen low enough that desktop animations actually matter again. I've been doing this on a few service jobs recently, and can confirm it helps.
You can click the CPU, Disk, Network on the tab to sort it what is the busiest Process/services on PC I did this everytime Edit: Killing the windows update is not recommended instead wait for it to finish for more stable performance.
Really enjoy your videos... AVG has become such an awful invasive program. Maybe 10 years ago customer could install it & get some value. Nowdays it's become malware that you have to alter registry to get clean. Ugh!
While I'm doing some stuff differently it's a similar approach to cleaning Windows and speeding up. Personally I also like to reduce Windows' visual effects on the desktop, especially on slower hardware.
Reducing visual effects is a method I used to do in the vista/XP days. I thought we'd left that behind - but on some of the stuff people are running today it remains effective! I consider it a last resort, but you're stuck with some wretched 1GHz dual-core CPU to service then I absolutely agree!
@@Adamant_IT the 1GHz AMD quad-core of my girlfriend's may benefit from it too... I didn't even know such a thing existed. It does turbo to 1.2Ghz... www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/13631396 do you think something like this could be made into a snappy internet browsing machine? despite the SSD and quad core CPU, it's agonizing to use...
How do you see cleaner I quit using it because it did cause registry problems when you went to clean up the registry I guess it depends on something that we haven't been able to identify yet for some reason whether it be some type of harmful virus to what I don't know but I've ran it on some computers and it was okay I rented on others and it's it was pretty bad literally forcing to have to reboot the whole window system to correct it if it corrected it it's kind of iffy 👍🇺🇸
in firefox you can use the second search bar to write things, cortana doesn't seem to keep things written. maybe not the intended use but i think it's pretty convenient
this machine have an old iron ore hard disk? CPU sometimes sits high waiting for disk. I replaced my son's HD with an SSD and all of a sudden, as if by magic, his cpu dropped.
A simple, but not easy, way to speed up any pc/laptop is to reinstall the operating system. Doing a clean install will return the machine to "new" state. But then can only install software that is used as needed. Just be sure to back up anything first that is needed.
This is the problem with shitty laptops. Easy to waste half a day or more on these and the price of that service can't be higher than the laptop's worth. It is fine if you have stuff to work on while these junks take 40 minutes to uninstall 1 bloatware. Also it is funny how getting a major windows update takes longer than a fresh install. Great vid!
Hello Adamant IT, I want to use a good reputable registry cleaner to get rid of some leftover registry keys from some uninstalled programs on my PC. Should I use a registry cleaner? and can you recomend any good ones? I prefer for the program to be lightweight and not bloaty and install a bunch of files.
I always run O&O ShutUp10 and disable some of the stuff that I know the user will never use, like windows telemetry. you can def do most of the same stuff in the registry, but I can just as easily keep a flash drive with that stuff installed since OOSU10 is a portable application.
This removal video is why you should use Iobit Uninstaller 9.6 as this not only removes any program, but also its leftovers and residual files. A very reliable program indeed, (except when it comes to removing Norton Anti virus, you'll need the Norton removal tool for this).
I would have started with the power profile, because the problem with Windows is that the default power profile is set to run poorly on desktops as well as laptops. Set the min CPU to 100% and hard drive turn off to 0 before you do anything. Otherwise, when you stop interacting with the computer, Windows thinks the computer is idle and drops the CPU speed and turns off the hard drive; everything then takes much longer than necessary. It may be advisable to leave the HP Support adviser in place, as that downloads firmware updates for the UEFI and Intel Management Engine to prevent security breaches, as well as keeping the HP specific drivers up to date. Remove the 3rd party antiviruses and run MalwareBytes ADWCleaner instead of their free version, it doesn't install itself and it takes care of adware and spyware just the same as the full program. WiseCare 365 is a better choice than CCleaner as you don't have to mess with regedit to turn off startup items or system services. Run a scandisk through the drive before running a defrag to make sure the drive isn't corrupted. It also optimises the computer, changing Windows features to make the computer run better. Consider installing Sandboxie so that any adware or spyware downloaded by the customer's kids gets sandboxed and the computer doesn't get adware in the future. Servicing is more than just software, take the laptop apart and take out the fan, peel off the fluff and rake out the build-up with a stencil brush. Finally, take the computer outside and hook up your air line, and using the dust head, dislodge any dust particles inside the laptop.
You can click on the cpu and all the other tabs in task manager to sort the list by cpu usage to make it easier to see what's going on, this works on most apps like explorer, control panel, and most things that have lists
Best thing to do with a store-bought laptop is to immediately reinstall a fresh, vanilla copy of windows that way you won't have all the preloaded manufacturer bloatware.
I have a Sony Vaio laptop at home with a celeron processor (the original) with a maxed out 1GB of ram. Haha XD Running XP is a bit of a struggle now, considering downgrading it to 2000 or 98 for retro gaming.
Backup up installed programs is the hard bit. Otherwise I'd just clean-install everything that comes into the shop. There's no way to meaningfully save all installed programs. It can be done on a case-by-case basis, but not for the whole machine. For image backup I use Drive Snapshot, not the most polished, but incredibly tolerant of failing hard drives, which is a common environment I'm working in.
@@Adamant_IT Thank you very much, i think i'll clean install the System. Hope the next core update will allow us to make a software/data of the apps and registery backup, like Titanium Backup on Android
surely you can stop the updates in services tab by disabling ? ccleaner is an easier way of doing some of that task scheduler deletion, then doing registry clean, i find rermoving microsoft bloatware and stopping windows search helps a lot
i must say i just discovered your channel, and i plan on using this guide on my desktop as even though i like to think i take great care of it, its clear i still have a lot to learn. Also in your opinion do you suggest that users run no third party antivirus and just use Windows Defender?
Cheers! Yes I recommend Windows Defender. It's all I have on my work PC, and it catches viruses on customer HDDs all the time. You still want to scan with an anti-malware app (such as Hitman Pro or Malware Bytes) now and then, but for background protection, Win Defender is free, fast and stays out of the way.
@@Adamant_IT Hello Adam just a suggestion for you ... just today I was watching a UA-cam about Windows Defender as well as the firewall ... well the results I saw in the video ... let's just say I was NOT impressed at all with either one at least at default settings especially with the firewall (no question(s) at all about anything ... in what I saw it took a half second for a program installing itself to allow the IP address full access to call home ... not an issue with legitimate programs but all the nasty stuff can do the samething ... Windows Defender well it didn't fair well at all against 2 of (at the time lates up to date files) the latest ransomware... and that was its connection to its cloud data base through the internet ... without the internet the test machine couldn't even finish the scan it maybe worth your time to watch this guys video about Windows Defender ua-cam.com/video/VXtTgP8JkSk/v-deo.html
Hi I have a hp N3710 15.6 inch laptop which cuts out (powers down) randomly in about 10 or 15 or 20min.. infact there is no specific interval. Sometime it runs upto 2 hour also... When I opened the laptop to check if it was due to lack of heat dissipation, I found there was no fan at all.. and just a aluminium plate stuck to CPU with a thermal paste.. I tried replacing the thermal paste with new one.. still the same. Any bright suggestions pls?
Hi! I love watching your videos. I learn a lot from you. I have one question, do you keep gaming pcs without windows update or do you recommend to update them daily? Thanks!
I have my gaming rig at home on normal Windows Update. It gets shut down every night when I go to bed, and I don't even notice it installing updates. The problems most people have stem from delaying or ignoring updates all the time - so eventually windows starts getting impatient with you and saying 'you _need_ to update'.
Would be a good idea to use revo uninstaller or similar, because the default windows uninstaller does not remove anything that the uninstaller doesn't remove, and something like revo will remove all the extra files and reg entries afterwards.
Defragging HDDs now n then is still a Should do, always has been always will be. SSD's are the drives that don't need to be defragged, but they can be TRIM'd.
Interesting, thanks. I remember I did much the same back then, but today? ... Its all changed and I do less of that and more of other things not covered here ☕
This video's picking up views again, so here's a quick pin with some notes:
1. I DO NOT USE CCLEANER ANY MORE. Piriform is now owned by AVG and riddled with adware. I consider it to be hostile software.
2. Yes an SSD will massively help a system like this. 2017 they were still expensive enough that they weren't really worth going for on a service job unless the HDD was failing. These days I upsell SSDs for nearly all service jobs, because they're cheap enough to be a no-brainer.
3. Although my service checklist has changed over time, the gist of it is still the same. Reduce background processes, clean up stuff that doesn't need to be there, look for bottlenecks and relieve them.
4. Yes, a clean-install is a much faster solution, but on Joe Public's laptop you need to remember that they don't have any of their Office licence info, they probably don't know their email password, they don't know what programs they use or need, etc etc. Re-installing windows on a stranger's laptop is a can of worms itself, and might be even more of a headache. The last thing you want is a review saying "I took it in for service and they deleted everything."
5. Most of us professionals all have our own methods, there's lots of ways to do this, this is just how I do it. Feel free to use this as inspiration, but figure out what works for you 👌
Thankyou for a very informative video. What do you use instead of CCleaner?
can you make a new version of servicing ? thanks for the information 😊
@@robinpeat A good CCleaner alternative is BleachBit.
@@daza0166 Or just don't use any of those and only use the Disk Cleanup utility in Windows, and enable Storage Sense. Windows takes care of itself.
Just a slight correction on AVG owning Piriform. AVG Technologies is a "sister" company to Piriform. Both AVG and Piriform are owned side by side along with a VPN company called HMA. All of the aforementioned companies are owned by Avast. In the whole scheme of things I don't know that it really makes any difference. I used to use AVG a very long time ago and abandonded use of it for Microsoft's built-in antivirus programs.
I know it's been 4 years already, but I'd love to see a 2021 version of this awesome video of yours. Thanks
I remember way back in the windows 9x days, I had a co-worker who asked me to come look at his system because it was running like a snail. It was your usual OEM system, which means it was pre-loaded with bloatware from the start, and then he had used it for a few years. I brought my usb flash drive with all the tools I use and gave it a good tuning up, ending of course with a defrag of the hard drive. His jaw hit the floor when he saw how fast things opened after the tune up. Everything was literally at least 10 times faster. I'm so glad we don't use HDDs as boot drives anymore since defragging was the part that usually took the longest.
I member...
I genuinely appreciate your time and effort with your vids. Extremely helpful. Thanks
Good video, funny to see that this stuff hasn't really changed in the last 15 years (or more). This video being 3 years old even now, and it's still spot on. Sure SSDs are great now, but 2017 on an AMD e2 proc laptop... that customer wouldn't have spent the cash for the upgrade and clone. People could follow this video today (kinda) and kickstart their own repair business.
Pretty much what i currently do.. no studies and half of my costumers just need a service like this
@@calvitocalvon1711 Same.
One of my favorite tuning tricks is to go into Advanced System Properties/Performance/Settings/Visual Effects and turn off: animation for minimizing and maximizing windows, all of the fade options, and show window contents while dragging. Even on higher end systems turning off those "fade" options makes things feel zippier. On something using lower end graphics, turning off the min max animations and show window contents is essential
I am more on the higher power user side and keep my PC fairly clean. Still have learnt a few tricks added my knowledge. Thanks, mate!
Thanks for the video! Appreciate the time taken to show the steps you use. Other comments saying just chuck an SSD in it and reinstall Windows, yes that would solve the problem and yes there would be a significant performance increase but you wouldn't have seen the steps and solutions that were implemented to improve the speed and performance of this particular computer...Would have been a totally different video :) Perhaps you cant afford an SSD and running a health check is your only option...:)
Couple tips that you may find useful:
1) In task manager you can click on any of the headings (i.e. CPU, Memory) to have it sort processes by that criteria (in increasing or decreasing order)
2) You can quickly find the version of Windows you are running by holding the Windows key on your keyboard and pressing R. You'll see a run dialog appear and simply type winver
This will bring up the About Windows dialog which amongst other things contains the build you're running on that system.
3) I would advise against people using the Registry Editor to adjust system settings, as you can do a lot of damage with very minor changes. A better option is to use MSConfig which you can access by pressing Windows Key + run and typing in msconfg as the command you want to run. From there you'll get a nice overview of what's starting up with your computer with the option to disable any of the items.
In any event interesting video and thought I'd pose a few questions that might be worth creating a future video of:
1) At what point would you consider upgrading a customer's hardware? For instance, on the customer's laptop it seems like they have 8 GB of RAM and a spinning hard disk. Would it have made sense to upgrade the drive to an SSD? What if the customer came in with just 4 GB of RAM. Would it have been advisable to upgrade?
2) At what point does it make more sense to do a clean install of Windows versus manually going through and cleaning stuff out? I would imagine the clean install is the simplest and quickest option that would likely offer the best results for the customer. On the other hand one has to balance potentially backing up data and/or reinstalling applications.
3) Is it ever advisable to build out a set of policies you set in Windows to prevent customers from rolling back the fixes you have (i.e. a installing a Windows policy that prevents AVG from being installed)?
j2simpso
Resorting to a 'Clean Install' would only be a 'last resort'
IT may appear to be a quick solution at first glance, however, one has to consider
the impact of reinstalling other software.
One also has to consider other files that may be critical to the user, such as
various documents, including text files - pdf - saved web pages - video
Saved URLs and ther may be critical cookies that permit access to specific
websites. Also, some paid software, site membership - add-ons - installed
cookies so the user can log in.
When those are deleted, one has a disaster and in some instances, the
user may have to pay a specific fee again to gain access or buy the software or
app that no longer functions. The cost in time to restore proper operation would
be an enormous headache, loss of time and monetary loss.
So in order to do a complete re-install one would have to back up critical data.
It would be somewhat if you, for instance, taking your car to a mechanic and
getting back 6,809 pieces for you to resemble yourself.
At least the mechanic would have CLEANED all the components so you would
not have to get your hands dirty.
When your WINDOWS are dirty,, do you clean the Windows or call the Glazier
to replace the GLASS?
@@andrew_koala2974 I had to deal with this once and it was a nightmare. How badly I just wanted to nuke everything with a reinstall...
It's also the reason why you store all significant programs and important files not on the system drive and use this awesome thing called network storage. Or cloud storage if you don't want your own NAS. That works pretty well assuming you have decently fast and stable internet. I'm still using my 80gb intel x25 from 2009 as a system drive. Those early ssd probably have somewhere around a 100 year lifespan, how far we've fallen.
If you care about personalizations you create a remote script and do an autorun. It does everything for you grabs all of the personalizations and configs and you're good to go. Reinstalling windows takes me like an hour max if some update screws something up which is rare nowadays.
also you can run avg remover in safe mode. A lot time saved.
I don't believe you should really do that. It is after all the customer's machine and not yours. If they want to mess up their machine then that is their prerogative. If they want you to clean up their mess then that have to pay your prices to do it. If you start putting in anti install or rollback policies then you are no better than Apple and their _walled garden_ locking you out of *your* hardware.
@@josephking6515of course heres the muh Apple bad comment
That owner will have that machine back to garbage speed in a month flat.
Can't polish a turd.
@@DaleDix I mean you CAN, why is another question lol
the best thing you can do with a machine like this, is install an SSD, and have minimal background software running, so that the CPU will actually idle.
@@DaleDix Apple keeps trying and people keep buying.
Use linux my dude
Great video! This is what I do for living, and I just learned a few things.
It's usually better to first open AVG, let it update itself and wait for it to say that everything is OK, then remove it.
Kind of like a last meal before the hanging... lol
"HP software is all bollocks!" love it!
Very informative and useful video. I will be adding the registry and task scheduler routines to my to-do list when servicing Windows. Thank you and greeting from México.
Very well done! I just love how because of you and others the last time I was in a computer shop was many years ago!!!!
As a Linux user I found this very interesting. Every now and again I think about using Windows and videos like this remind me of why I did not use Windows :-)
the absolute best anti virus in the world is the Linux Kernel :)
Naaa FreeBSD is the best ☺️
Best rule of thumb I usually do if i get bad apps like avg or my computer is running slow like this is to back up my games/files and just re install windows to clean out anything that causes issues.... so far it works great for me
have watch many videos like this but this one is very straight forward and very informative. . .#Respect
One of my first steps include running event viewer > windows logs > system > filter ( critical , warning , error). Occasionally, the issue might be in plain sight. Windirstat is another handy app, sorts by large files.. when space is critical
had to rewatch today as id forgotten it all but ive now done this routine a few times for family / freinds and it works very well , from painfully slow to fast again it takes a while though on a bad computer .
The newest version of CCleaner renamed their monitor settings, it's now called Smart Cleaning. It's still located in settings. Just a heads up.
I love these videos man! I would love to be an IT technician but that will never happen - so this helps get one step closer 🖒
Why won't it happen Thomas? You can always learn by playing round with a cheap second-hand machine. Nobody has ever gotten a computer job of any sort without first playing round with the hardware and/or software. Give it a try coz you have nothing to lose except the cost of the second-hand machine. I suggest a second machine so you don't mess your personal one up.
Don't let your dreams be dreams
Thanks for your videos very informative, nice to know just how little I no about computers. Please keep informing us
Revo uninstaller is a great free uninstall program that deletes programs and also deletes all remaining files in the directories as well. It's one of the first programs i install when i get a new pc and want to erase all the windows bloatware. Some of the default windows stuff is hard to uninstall from control panel.
You are the most use full tech youtuber I have seen in years been watching quite a lot an you are helpful. I know the tech stuff but the one that really notice you where the video about desoldering bios chip. To fix motherboards :)
Slight mouse movement = 99% CPU USAGE!
lol I know the type
E2 CPU is the main problem. Extreme low-end of AMD's offerings. Very good cleanup tips.
Usually when I'm servicing computers I prefer to leave intact the icons and the preferences of the owner and in principle being the less intrusive possible but I remove all sorts of crapware and services around anyway.
This is guide is good for technician like me. Thanks !
Best tutorial i see fantastic job man ......
I always do some optimizations by turning off telemetry, changing updates to deferred, disabling experiments, and a few more.
oosu10 is my favorite tool because i could just create a cfg file and put it on a flash drive, and then load the cfg and reboot and everything's to the cfg's standard
edit: you can disable cortana completely, and enhance the search by removing it's ability to use web and location search, turning it into a purely local search, and it tends to be much faster as a result.
I loved this video! Please make more like this!
This is where I change power options to never switch off and leave the thing to update and do its thing while I go out to the shops.
I was fairly well streamlined since a reinstall of win10 on a new SSD in my lappy - However i did pick up some top tips - Aus defrag - my old HDD was well messy and the defender icon now gone, thanks for that big time!
If it has not been mentioned already, upgrading the memory on this laptop will speed it up as well.
Absolutely superb ,sir,very helpfull indeed,steve from the uk
29:07 you don't need the flash drive, just run the Media Creation Tool app and tell it to do an in-line update right there, but it still needs to download everything. No need for a USB flash drive and boot off of it, and apps and user files will be left intact. Also when you do an update like this, it still makes a backup of the old windows files, but it's not very big.
Another Useful Tip: Go to power / energy settings (right click on battery icon) and select the Performance Profile.
This setting remove power saving locks and level up your CPU frequency.
I enjoyed your video. /there are a couple of things I do differently. I don't use CCleaner because it misses so much junk. I use Findjunkfiles and Drivetidy. Either one of them does better than CCleaner, but together they are very effective. I do recommend running Malwarebytes in the background because it catches so many bogus websites before they can do damage to you. As some of the other comments have suggested, I use Revo Uninstaller rather than Windows. And I would never, ever use Windows Defender for anything.
Those avg leftovers best to use autoruns run as admin and you can delete.
I've had McAfee entries I couldn't delete via autoruns even running as admin. I think I deleted them by running autoruns from safe mode with command prompt (not sure if that's still an startup option these days?)
Windows Update: You can do this in powershell. I find this a much more satisfactory process than usning the gui, which is crock.
First open powershell as administrator
- Set the execution policy:
set-executionpolicy -scope currentuser -executionpolicy unrestricted -force
-Install the updater
install-module pswindowsupdate
-run and repeat until no more updates
install-windowsupdate -acceptall -verbose -microsoftupdate -AutoReboot
*note, you can omit 'autoreboot' if you are doing other things
Defragging. Don't defrag SSDs. Just don't. You don't need to.
Nice guide. I've had issues with netframework when I clear the registry with ccleaner. But it was a long way ago.
Well Done, and thanks for the video!
I've done a few of the suggested things on my PC today its running far more smoothly, and CPU usage is down to a fraction of what it was.
This was a great guide. I copied parts of it following a reinstall of windows. I'd be interested if you were to make a similar video to this showing your process during/following a reinstall of windows.
what programs or *ware to remove after a fresh window install?
would be nice if it wasn't necessary
Blocking scripts by default when browsing and creating a whitelist for the sites you use is in my opinion the best protection from malware. Combined with windows defender, the odd 3rd party scan and not blindly clicking on things. Keep yourself clean :)
TIP PRO: If you have a desktop and a very slow laptop. Install Teamviewer on both and renovate your slow laptop with your desktop. Much easier than doing USB transfers and all that.
I'm surprised you didn't use Revo Uninstaller to get rid of AVG; it also does a good job of deleting the leftover files, folders and registry entries that the windows uninstaller usually misses. I'd go for that over AVG's removal tool. Also, have you ever tried Puran Defrag and if so, what are your thoughts on it?
It would be great if you could do a tune up on a different laptop. My Acer aspire is very slow but I'm terrified of deleting the wrong stuff. Great video. Your repair videos are wonderful.
Put an SSD into it. Buy a 2½" HDD enclosure, put the old HDD into it and then copy your data and setting (Bookmarks etc) onto the new drive. Once that is done format the old HDD and then backup all your data and setting to it. Alternatively you can image the new and clean install to the old HDD so it is easy to "install" clean again. If you get a HDD enclosure, get a USB 3 one. Makes data movement a lot faster than a dinosaur USB 2 one.
Only time I have found CCleaner causing an issue is when there is any Sage Accounts Package on the system, seems to remove the registry entries for Sage.
I sadly suckled at the bloaty teats of AVG, their tune up utilities used to be abs spot on but this year they changed it and it is very horrible. I am going to follow your guide with my HP Elitebook which runs atrociously and has very little except the bloat from HP. Showing me age being a Windows 2 and 3 PU, Windows 3.11 PU MS Dos 1-6 Power User, oh those were the days when hard drive booting wasn't even a thing and you had to boot from a command prompt via dos and typing in the Win to get going hehe All to run Doom, Heretic, Wolfenstein with the various "mods", EotB1/2/3, Elite, Frontier Elite 1 and 2 and the silly little keywords from page such and such... happy days :)
AVG has been bloatware for *years*
I use autoruns from sysinternals to check all the starting process on Windows you should try it. Well is a 3 years old video so probably you never read this comment
But i did! Cheers
I love autoruns, I can safely untick starting processes without deleting the regkey. Just in case something goes horrible wrong, I can undo the change.
So true over a hundred processes used to be a lot now im running 231 and my little athlon 5150 handles it with ease
Wow, so totally interesting, thanks for that!
Great video. Thanks
Links to the tools you use would be awesome. I learned a few things.
right-click My Computer, click on the left on Advanced System Settings, it brings up System Properties, go to Advanced tab, DISABLE EVERYTHING THERE or at least the Animate and Fade options, BAM! your Windows 10 on the intel core 2 quad is snappier than on an intel i7. *assuming the system is clean, like this video instructs.
This is a good shout actually. I used to do this years ago, and then we went into a phase where it didn't seem to matter. But now I feel like the minimum standards have fallen low enough that desktop animations actually matter again. I've been doing this on a few service jobs recently, and can confirm it helps.
I knew most of this, but this video was very interesting anyway.
Just dropped by to offer sympathies for anyone who's had to deal with wrestling AVG out of a Windows install.
love your videos
Your vid was as recomended and I learned few little things :) Thx.
You can click the CPU, Disk, Network on the tab to sort it what is the busiest Process/services on PC
I did this everytime
Edit: Killing the windows update is not recommended instead wait for it to finish for more stable performance.
Great video
Really enjoy your videos... AVG has become such an awful invasive program. Maybe 10 years ago customer could install it & get some value. Nowdays it's become malware that you have to alter registry to get clean. Ugh!
I learn a lot. Thank you
While I'm doing some stuff differently it's a similar approach to cleaning Windows and speeding up. Personally I also like to reduce Windows' visual effects on the desktop, especially on slower hardware.
Reducing visual effects is a method I used to do in the vista/XP days. I thought we'd left that behind - but on some of the stuff people are running today it remains effective!
I consider it a last resort, but you're stuck with some wretched 1GHz dual-core CPU to service then I absolutely agree!
@@Adamant_IT the 1GHz AMD quad-core of my girlfriend's may benefit from it too... I didn't even know such a thing existed. It does turbo to 1.2Ghz... www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/13631396
do you think something like this could be made into a snappy internet browsing machine? despite the SSD and quad core CPU, it's agonizing to use...
Very helpful thanks
I would not have spent so much time on this. Backup critical data, format drive and a clean Windows install.
How do you see cleaner I quit using it because it did cause registry problems when you went to clean up the registry I guess it depends on something that we haven't been able to identify yet for some reason whether it be some type of harmful virus to what I don't know but I've ran it on some computers and it was okay I rented on others and it's it was pretty bad literally forcing to have to reboot the whole window system to correct it if it corrected it it's kind of iffy 👍🇺🇸
Took a lot of notes from this video
Please share!
in firefox you can use the second search bar to write things, cortana doesn't seem to keep things written.
maybe not the intended use but i think it's pretty convenient
this machine have an old iron ore hard disk?
CPU sometimes sits high waiting for disk.
I replaced my son's HD with an SSD and all of a sudden, as if by magic, his cpu dropped.
A simple, but not easy, way to speed up any pc/laptop is to reinstall the operating system. Doing a clean install will return the machine to "new" state. But then can only install software that is used as needed. Just be sure to back up anything first that is needed.
This is the problem with shitty laptops. Easy to waste half a day or more on these and the price of that service can't be higher than the laptop's worth. It is fine if you have stuff to work on while these junks take 40 minutes to uninstall 1 bloatware. Also it is funny how getting a major windows update takes longer than a fresh install. Great vid!
Hello Adamant IT, I want to use a good reputable registry cleaner to get rid of some leftover registry keys from some uninstalled programs on my PC. Should I use a registry cleaner? and can you recomend any good ones? I prefer for the program to be lightweight and not bloaty and install a bunch of files.
I always run O&O ShutUp10 and disable some of the stuff that I know the user will never use, like windows telemetry. you can def do most of the same stuff in the registry, but I can just as easily keep a flash drive with that stuff installed since OOSU10 is a portable application.
This removal video is why you should use Iobit Uninstaller 9.6 as this not only removes any program, but also its leftovers and residual files.
A very reliable program indeed, (except when it comes to removing Norton Anti virus, you'll need the Norton removal tool for this).
will it work for McAfee crap?
@@nnm35 no, you'll need to download the mcafee uninstaller tool
I would have started with the power profile, because the problem with Windows is that the default power profile is set to run poorly on desktops as well as laptops. Set the min CPU to 100% and hard drive turn off to 0 before you do anything. Otherwise, when you stop interacting with the computer, Windows thinks the computer is idle and drops the CPU speed and turns off the hard drive; everything then takes much longer than necessary. It may be advisable to leave the HP Support adviser in place, as that downloads firmware updates for the UEFI and Intel Management Engine to prevent security breaches, as well as keeping the HP specific drivers up to date. Remove the 3rd party antiviruses and run MalwareBytes ADWCleaner instead of their free version, it doesn't install itself and it takes care of adware and spyware just the same as the full program. WiseCare 365 is a better choice than CCleaner as you don't have to mess with regedit to turn off startup items or system services. Run a scandisk through the drive before running a defrag to make sure the drive isn't corrupted. It also optimises the computer, changing Windows features to make the computer run better. Consider installing Sandboxie so that any adware or spyware downloaded by the customer's kids gets sandboxed and the computer doesn't get adware in the future. Servicing is more than just software, take the laptop apart and take out the fan, peel off the fluff and rake out the build-up with a stencil brush. Finally, take the computer outside and hook up your air line, and using the dust head, dislodge any dust particles inside the laptop.
You can click on the cpu and all the other tabs in task manager to sort the list by cpu usage to make it easier to see what's going on, this works on most apps like explorer, control panel, and most things that have lists
Yes my thought too - click on the column headers to get sort them in a descending order.
I have a question, how to remove regedit entries for Microsoft store apps? seems like its not on the usual HKLM or HKCU path..
Not do an update to Windows Defender before scanning the laptop? Using old definitions might not find all that could be on that laptop.
Best thing to do with a store-bought laptop is to immediately reinstall a fresh, vanilla copy of windows that way you won't have all the preloaded manufacturer bloatware.
@Adamant IT Have you got a list of utility tools that you use for maintenance etc?
I have a Sony Vaio laptop at home with a celeron processor (the original) with a maxed out 1GB of ram. Haha XD Running XP is a bit of a struggle now, considering downgrading it to 2000 or 98 for retro gaming.
That's exactly like my HP Envy laptop, always on 100% CPU or disk. Plus I had the one with the bang @ Olufsen sound, which always failed.
Dont forget to set minimum cpu status to 100% in the power options.
What software for image backup do you use? Also is it possible to just backup Data/softwares to restore on a clean windows install?
Backup up installed programs is the hard bit. Otherwise I'd just clean-install everything that comes into the shop. There's no way to meaningfully save all installed programs. It can be done on a case-by-case basis, but not for the whole machine.
For image backup I use Drive Snapshot, not the most polished, but incredibly tolerant of failing hard drives, which is a common environment I'm working in.
@@Adamant_IT Thank you very much, i think i'll clean install the System. Hope the next core update will allow us to make a software/data of the apps and registery backup, like Titanium Backup on Android
surely you can stop the updates in services tab by disabling ?
ccleaner is an easier way of doing some of that task scheduler deletion, then doing registry clean, i find
rermoving microsoft bloatware and stopping windows search helps a lot
Fit an SSD! Runs like greased lightning now! 👍😂
An SSD of the same size as the hard drive in this would probably cost more than the laptop is worth lol
@@jamescollins6085 note that she was using 1/8th of the hdd capacity lol, a 120-240 ssd would be more than enough for that user.
i must say i just discovered your channel, and i plan on using this guide on my desktop as even though i like to think i take great care of it, its clear i still have a lot to learn. Also in your opinion do you suggest that users run no third party antivirus and just use Windows Defender?
Cheers! Yes I recommend Windows Defender. It's all I have on my work PC, and it catches viruses on customer HDDs all the time. You still want to scan with an anti-malware app (such as Hitman Pro or Malware Bytes) now and then, but for background protection, Win Defender is free, fast and stays out of the way.
@@Adamant_IT Hello Adam just a suggestion for you ... just today I was watching a UA-cam about Windows Defender as well as the firewall ... well the results I saw in the video ... let's just say I was NOT impressed at all with either one at least at default settings especially with the firewall (no question(s) at all about anything ... in what I saw it took a half second for a program installing itself to allow the IP address full access to call home ... not an issue with legitimate programs but all the nasty stuff can do the samething ... Windows Defender well it didn't fair well at all against 2 of (at the time lates up to date files) the latest ransomware... and that was its connection to its cloud data base through the internet ... without the internet the test machine couldn't even finish the scan it maybe worth your time to watch this guys video about Windows Defender
ua-cam.com/video/VXtTgP8JkSk/v-deo.html
Hi I have a hp N3710 15.6 inch laptop which cuts out (powers down) randomly in about 10 or 15 or 20min.. infact there is no specific interval. Sometime it runs upto 2 hour also... When I opened the laptop to check if it was due to lack of heat dissipation, I found there was no fan at all.. and just a aluminium plate stuck to CPU with a thermal paste.. I tried replacing the thermal paste with new one.. still the same. Any bright suggestions pls?
I can hear quick click (which is very low though ) when it cuts out..If that helps.
Hi! I love watching your videos. I learn a lot from you. I have one question, do you keep gaming pcs without windows update or do you recommend to update them daily? Thanks!
I have my gaming rig at home on normal Windows Update. It gets shut down every night when I go to bed, and I don't even notice it installing updates. The problems most people have stem from delaying or ignoring updates all the time - so eventually windows starts getting impatient with you and saying 'you _need_ to update'.
@@Adamant_IT Thanks for answering! I have had this question since I started with computers services. Love your content! Keep it up 💚
Would be a good idea to use revo uninstaller or similar, because the default windows uninstaller does not remove anything that the uninstaller doesn't remove, and something like revo will remove all the extra files and reg entries afterwards.
Don't they say that defragmenting is not nessaily nowadays even with a HDD?
Defragging HDDs now n then is still a Should do, always has been always will be. SSD's are the drives that don't need to be defragged, but they can be TRIM'd.
Would you not be better with a fresh install of Windows and installing an SSD?
Hi. Have you try Revo Uninstall portable?
How relevant is this today? Any changes to software you currently use, etc.?
My process is more or less the same... I'd have to watch through the video to check the details, but the principles haven't changed.
@@Adamant_IT Thanks, man.
Interesting, thanks.
I remember I did much the same back then, but today? ... Its all changed and I do less of that and more of other things not covered here ☕
Would you bother defragging a laptop with an SSD? My HP laptop has an M.2 SSD.
14:25 reminded me of the IT guy from Bruiser.
You know there is a sort option on the task manager right?