DNS servers supply information to your computer about the locations of websites and how to go get to it. In general, the faster the response from a DNS server, the faster will be your internet experience.

Go here: http://code.google.com/p/namebench/

Download and run namebench. Use the recommended DNS servers in your TCP/IP settings and you’re most likely to see a very noticeable improvement to your browsing experience.

Softwares tend to leave records within the operating system registry that tells the operating system how and when to access certain files. Unfortunately many of the entries are not removed upon software removal or are just orphaned by the operating system.

The bottom line is that, the larger your registry is, the slower your system is going to get because the registry is accessed frequently by the operating system.  Therefore its a great idea to keep your Windows registry clean and de-fragmented

There are many registry cleaners available. I have used only one paid product and I think its a good one.

The first time I used Uniblue’s RegistryBooster I found a notable decrease in my system’s booting up time. You may also like to look for free registry cleaners. There is a good free registry cleaner available at Eusing.com. Its not in the same league as the Uniblue product but if you are not in the practice of cleaning your registry, this is sure to be worth your while.

The Uniblue RegistryBooster Dialog

Much of it was picked up while browsing dubious file-sharing sites. Some of these fake ad generators are so insidious that a person using an infected computer can do nothing more than buy the fake virus/trojan removal product that is being advertised by the malware.

What I did realize is that only Internet Explorer and Firefox users were typically the victims of these infections. I did not try Safari but Chrome seems impervious to malware such as  “Antivirus XP 2010″ which tries to trick you into buying a fake anti-virus product.

Some research revealed that Chrome’s got a sandbox mode of controlling content within each tab where malicious code on one tab cannot do anything outside that tab.

So, while you may like any particular browser, if you are browsing some strange websites, do use Chrome – even temporarily.  Personally, I like the Firefox interface best.

A few months down the road, I had a Vundo infection on my PC. Lots of advertisement windows started popping up all of a sudden due to the infection. AVG detected it and supposedly cleaned it. In addition I ran Symantec’s Vundo removal tool. Now hopefully I thought that my system was clean and all I had to do was to reboot XP. After the boot sequence the problem I encountered was that my desktop disappeared. More accurately it used to show up for a millisecond with all the icons and then it used to disappear.

So I used my Windows Task Manager interface to run Malwarebytes from its hard drive location (You can do this by clicking “File” > “New Task (Run) in your Task Manager window which is accessible by hitting CTRL+ALT+DEL simultaneously). I first updated the malware database and then ran the scan. Malwarebytes found stuff AVG did not, cleaned it all up and asked me to reboot once more to remove those infections that it could remove only at boot time.

And this time, after bootup, my desktop was as it should be.

Lately, I have become a fan of this product that runs fast, has frequent database updates and their server is actually available all the time unlike many other products that you simply cannot get updates for due to busy servers or whatever other reason.

For more information and to download this free tool:
http://www.malwarebytes.org/

If you use a PC and want to convert any document into a PDF file, just download and install doPDF. It will appear as a printer on your PC. Print to the doPDF printer and you end up with a nice PDF.

In a bind, like I was in, this is a quick and easy lifesaver

http://www.dopdf.com/