Three Ways to Make iTunes Run Faster

This comes to us from PCWorld's web site. I am somewhat surprised to see that most of my customers' machines have iTunes installed, so maybe this will be helpful? I have not heard any of you complain about iTunes performance, but I guess that's because I am usually addressing more serious matters on your computers.

article written by Rick Broida

Jan 15, 2009 2:03 pm

I think I'm safe in saying that iTunes is the single slowest application on my PC. It not only takes a week or two just to start up, but also seems to pause indefinitely on simple tasks like switching between different sections of the iTunes Store.

Fortunately, there are a few ways to goose iTunes, to make it a little less pokey than usual. I'm not promising a dramatic speed increase, just somewhat more efficient operation.

First, turn off Genius by clicking Store, Turn Off Genius. (Note that doing so will delete all collected Genius data.) It's a neat feature, but I've noticed that it seems awfully "busy" at times. Anything that's demanding iTunes' attention is also hurting its performance. I never thought it was that smart, anyway.

Second, click Edit, Preferences, Sharing, and then disable Look for shared libraries and Share my library on the local network. Whenever there's ongoing network activity, you can count on a performance hit. Of course, if you are sharing your iTunes library, skip this step.

Finally, switch over to the Apple TV tab and disable Look for Apple TVs (unless you have one, of course). It's another case of superfluous network activity that can only hurt performance.

Have you found any other ways to give iTunes a kick in the pants? Or have you kicked it to the curb? As an iPhone user I'm kinda stuck with it, so I sure wish Apple would do some fine-tuning. Sorry, but I ain't gonna buy a Mac just to get a better-optimized iTunes.

The above article can be found at:

Three Ways to Make iTunes Run Faster

Another Spyware Guard 2008 rogue incident

Yesterday I spent quite a few hours removing yet another incident of Spyware Guard 2008 (see December 18 blog post below). This is one of the family of vicious rogue programs that is wrecking systems all over the place.

In this case I was pretty much able to tell that it was acquired from a rather bad web site. If you have kids in the house who just don't understand the dangers that are lurking out there, you need to talk to them about the risks they are taking by visiting web sites they should not be visiting.

It took my whole arsenal of weapons to get rid of it. I needed Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware, SuperAntispyware, Spybot, AVG Free Anti-virus, MSCONFIG, CCleaner, and a couple of other tools that I don't recommend for general users, like HijackThis and Tune-Up Utilities. For future defensive reasons on this particular customer system, I downloaded and installed Windows Defender and the HOSTS file I preach about so much.

As for the latter, I will soon post an item on how to get, install, and use the HOSTS file. This is a very important and integral part of what should be your defense against the bad guys out there.

In the meantime, be careful of the places you go and the things you download.

Hate Microsoft Outlook? Top 10 annoyances and how to fix them

Do you process your e-mail with Microsoft's Outlook? Outlook is a part of Microsoft Office. Microsoft's Outlook Express is a freebie that comes with Windows XP, and this excellent column from ComputerWorld addresses Outlook, not Outlook Express. Furthermore, the article addresses Outlook 2007, and many of you who use Outlook may not have upgraded to this latest version.

For those of you who have Outlook 2007, like me, and for those of you who like technical challenges, this article will be very helpful. I have not been through all 10 areas covered, but was impressed by those I have looked at.

Hate Microsoft Outlook? Top 10 annoyances and how to fix them