Some Notes on the Machines

A good way to defrag the registry.

http://www.registry-clean.net/free-registry-defrag.htm

This tool definitely removes Norton protection suites. It also handles Symantec Core. Not certain about other Symantec products.

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/removal_tools/Norton_Removal_Tool.exe

Cleanmem is extremely simple in design, but shockingly good in result.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/CleanMem_d5993.html

It’s helping a whole lot on this 2G-RAM Windows 7 box, and reportedly does very well with low-RAM situations too.  Windows 2000 and newer.

When workstations on a Server 2003 domain, report an insufficient memory and/or disk space profile error at login, try this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935649

It also appears to help general memory usage issues.  The same settings are listed by Microsoft in Server 2008 for an antivirus issue:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/973366

This one is from the indefatigable Liz Landry.

Another new one, looking quite good so far:

http://www.freefixer.com/

This may be the best of all, it seems to have more ability than CodeStuff Starter and many others:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

Mark Russinovich is involved, which speaks very well for it too.

Here are some interesting items, including a good list of registry entries:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928218

This free-of-charge product, ‘Freeraser’:

http://codyssey.com/products/freeraser.html

appears to be quite good for files.  It’s GUI, and offers three levels of security.  This one:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443.aspx

is from Microsoft, it’s command-line, and will do files, folders, and whole drives by letter.

This tool:

http://download.mcafee.com/products/licensed/cust_support_patches/MCPR.exe

removes McAfee non-enterprise products.  No non-installer methods currently known for enterprise products.

In XP and up, registry entries have permissions. These can get corrupted in many ways, including by malware and by antivirus tools. If you get a “permission denied” when trying to change or delete a registry entry, you will need to right-click on the folder and add permissions, and then do the deletion. It is usually most straightforward to add the permission to the user logged in, though you’ll have to play with the dialog box if you’re on a domain.