Servicing Windows Machines

joonwatch

Servicing Windows Machines
I'm looking for advice on tuning up Windows machines. I'm a long time Linux user who occasionally helps others with the Windows PC's. Very frequently people tell me their machines have slowed down. I am interested in what free tools a person could use to tune up a Windows PC. I'm interested in Virus / Spyware removal that is not bloatware and nagware.

It's always bothered me that it is difficult to put another copy of Windows on a machine if the user does not have backup CD's. I don't want to have to download an illicit copy of Windows in order to restore a machine to it's original state. What have you done to have fresh images of XP / Win 7 around and not break the law?

fwor

There's a huge thread on this stickied at the top of the board.

TBH, XP is getting so near end-of-life that I'd do my best to persuade the owner just to upgrade to Win7 or, if the hardware can't handle that, get them to move over to one of the excellent (as I'm sure you know) Linux distros.

For Win7 there are places where you can download an original copy (with no key included, obviously). You should be able to activate this with their original key, though possibly with a need to phone MS and explain.

GunJack

For tweaking yes, the sticky is good, but it doesn't go in-depth enough for some. E.G., I have a dell optiplex sff box parked next to my sky box. It's running xp pro, av, firewall, and at idle it shows 16 processes and a commit charge of around 120 Meg.

Virus/malware removal covers a massive amount to really get into it, try looking through some of the threads on here about removing some of the infections people have suffered, or with Hijack This log in the title

waddler_8

joonwatch wrote: »

I'm interested in Virus / Spyware removal that is not bloatware and nagware.

In an online or offline environment? - they're two different approaches.

For offline, take a look at the Sysinternals tools - Process Explorer, Autoruns, Process Monitor etc.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062

http://download.sysinternals.com/files/SysinternalsMalwareCleaning.pdf

As GunJack said, there's a lot to learning malware removal outside of just running generic scans with AV's etc. You need to keep abreast of the current infections you're likely to see - ie. those that AV's etc have failed to deal with. You need to learn about the infections, what affect they have on the system, how they load, where they load/run from, where they drop files/install to, how best to remove them etc etc.