55KEEP YOUR PC RUNNING SMOOTHLY
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Clean up PC memory
The quickest way to free up
memory when you start running
short is to reboot, but that
interrupts your work and requires
you to save your work and quit
every program you’re running.
A better alternative is to use
memory-cleaning software to
work out which data your memory
chips no longer need to retain,
and clear it out.
Mem Reduct does this by
using features that are difficult
for users to access. Visit http://www.
snipca.com/42059 then click
‘memreduct-3.4-setup.exe’ to
download it. It should launch
automatically once it has installed
to show how much physical and
virtual memory you have – and
how much is free.
Of our 7.85GB physical memory, we
were using 57 per cent (^1 in our
screenshot above right) when we first ran
Mem Reduct, along with 38 per cent of
our 11.9GB of virtual memory^2. After
clicking ‘Clean memory’^3 , the virtual
memory figure remained the same, but
the figure for physical memory dropped
to 25 per cent. We recouped just over
2.5GB of usable memory that our active
programs could put to good use.10
Analyse your hard drive
As the place where you store all
your photos and files, it’s important you
keep your hard drive healthy. SeaTools,
from Seagate, works with any brand of
hard drive or SSD, and can help you to
monitor its condition. Click ‘SeaTools 5
(Windows)’ in the Downloads section athttp://www.snipca.com/42061 then work
through the instructions.
Once it’s up and running, you’ll see a
list of all the drives installed in your PC.
Start by selecting the one you want to
analyse, clicking Quick Tests (see
screenshot below left) just below the
Health tab, and picking Short Self Test.
This tests all aspects of how the drive is
working, but doesn’t perform any
random tests on the read/write area itself.
It took around three minutes to complete
this test on our internal Intel NVMe SSD.
For a more thorough test, click Extended
Tests and choose one of the options. The
‘Long Drive Self Test’ goes beyond the
Short Self Test by performing limited
checks of random sectors of the drive’s
data storage surfaces to check that they
aren’t corrupted. The ‘Long Generic Test’
checks every sector, rather than justrandom areas, while the ‘2-minute
Generic Test’ limits the number of spots it
checks to reduce the working time.
Should the tests reveal any problems,
immediately make a complete backup of
your drive (or at least your User folder if
you only want to secure your data and
not your programs) before exploring the
Fix All menu. This has two options: Fix
All Short and Fix All Long, which both
perform a thorough check of every sector
and, when they find a problem, carry out
a fix or move the data in that location to
an alternative spot on the drive. The ‘Fix
All Long’ option is well-named, with
Seagate’s documentation advising that it
can’t be interrupted and may take as long
as one hour per terabyte to complete.11
Disable your startup items
Limiting the number of programs
that run when your PC starts means your
memory and processor capacity can be
devoted more fully to the software you’re
actively using. It can also reduce the time
it takes to get Windows ready for action.
WhatInStartup (www.snipca.
com/42062) reveals which programs your
PC runs automatically, and lets you
switch them off. Select one that you don’t
need and press F7 to disable it. As you can
see from our screenshot below, we’ve
disabled seven programs on our PC –
highlighted in grey, with ‘Yes’ listed in
the Disabled column.
You can easily re-enable a program by
selecting it then pressing F8. If you want
to take more drastic action, press Ctrl+Del
to remove a program from the startup list
entirely. The software itself won’t be
deleted, but it will stop running when
Windows starts.Issue 633 • 8 – 21 June 2022We were using 57 per cent of our physical memory
before running Mem ReductSeaTools took three minutes to run the Short Self Test on our internal Intel
NVMe SSDDisable any program in WhatInStartup and it will be highlighted
in grey1
2
3
BEST FREE
S O F T WA R E
FOR VITAL PC TASKS