RE: 10 tips for troubleshooting PC system slowdowns
There are so many issues with this blog post I do not even know where to begin.
First, the order of issues is completely out of whack. You start with simple, non-hardware based issues, after ensuring that fans are running and all the intakes and outflows are clear. Especially for a home user, going straight to a CPU or RAM issue is flat out stupid. Number 10 should be number 1 (although adjusting for "best" performance is really not a good idea. A REAL tech does a custom adjust, so that things like smooth screen fonts are not blown away), number 8 number 2, etc.
You do not even mention fragmentation until number 8. Are you aware that a seriously fragmented hard drive runs harder because of the way FAT and NTSF "manages," and I use that term loosely, files, thus reducing drive life, and that a disk does not have to be nearly full to be badly fragmented?
You do not mention putting dedicated heat sinks on the RAM.
A novice should never screw around with thermal paste (and there are different types). The norm, alas, is to OVER apply. Do you know how it is supposed to work? It is designed to spread, with the pressure of the heat sink and the heat of use, to a layer so thin it fills the microscopic gaps between the proc and the heat sink, producing an almost perfect mating. Applied in excess, it oozes out and can cause serious damage to the proc and socket.
This makes me wonder why the heck I am not writing articles, and how the heck this author was able to wrangle a forum.
