How to measure your true Internet speed

How to measure your true Internet speed

Curious about your Internet speed? Most Internet service providers (ISPs) offer some sort of throughput test tool on their sites — just click, and you’ll get a couple of often-impressive numbers.

It’s in an ISP’s interest to provide the best speed numbers possible; your actual throughput is probably something quite different.

Understanding the nuances of Internet speed

Let’s start with a few basics. In most cases, consumers measure Internet speed three ways: download speed, upload speed, and/or latency/ping time. Download and upload speeds are usually reported in bits per second — typically, kilobits per second (Kbps) for slower connections and megabits per second (Mbps) for faster connections. (Extremely fast connections might also be measured in gigabits or terabits. Convert-me.com has a handy online tool for converting transfer units.)

Almost all Internet speed–testing sites measure how long it takes to download one file over one connection from a webserver to your PC. Depending on where and how you download most files, that might be an accurate reflection of your average throughput.

However, all major browsers have download accelerators built in. (Free, third-party accelerators are also available as browser add-ons.) Accelerators typically download files over two or more connections — often without any indication to browser users. That makes it impossible to predict whether an accelerator is delivering a faster download — and how much faster that delivery might be.

Torrents (used for downloading large files; more info) take multiple data streams as an article of faith. So your typical Internet speed test probably won’t provide an accurate measure of torrent download speeds, which depend on mostly uncontrollable factors such as the number of sites (or seeds) offering the file for download and the speeds of those seeding sites. (This assumes your ISP doesn’t block torrents — more about that later.)

As with download-speed tests, upload tests measure how fast it takes to send one file over one connection from your PC to the cloud. Depending on your Internet service, upload speed can be one-third to one-tenth your download speed. (For example, the “A” in an “ADSL” connection means “asymmetric” — which, in almost all cases, is optimized for downloads at the expense of upload speeds. Some services — typically for business — provide similar upload and download speed.)

Ping or latency tests measure how long it takes for one small packet of data to travel from your computer to the testing site and back to the PC. Ping times are almost always measured in milliseconds (ms; thousandths of a second).

In short: Download speeds are important when downloading lots of small files or streaming large files such as video. Upload speed is important when sending large files to the cloud (such as uploading big photos and video) or when using Skype, live video cams, and video calls. Latency comes into, uh, play with online, interactive gaming — where a delay could leave you fatally vulnerable to zombie attacks.

When the Internet was relatively new, measuring connection speed was a sort of propeller-head pastime, run when we had a few spare minutes — kind of like reformatting the C: drive, only much faster. Today, the Internet is essential to our daily computing and to much of our entertainment. As we’ve become more sophisticated consumers, we want to know that we’re getting most of the connection speed our ISPs advertise. I’d be really disappointed if I bought a car advertised to reach 110 mph, only to discover that I needed a steep downhill and a significant tailwind to do so.

Some ISPs genuinely want to provide connection speeds their customers expect — hard to believe, I know — and their online, speed-test tools help them determine the rates they’re actually delivering. Many ISPs provide something far less than promised, resulting in lawsuits all over the world.

Tests that report intentionally inflated results

When you use an ISP’s speed test, you’re testing only the relatively short connection between your computer and the ISP’s server. And even at that, it’s probably not anything like a real-world connection; some ISPs skew the results by sidestepping their usual Internet routing. The result is a foregone conclusion: lightning-fast scores. These bogus tests have possibly helped bring down the legitimate wrath of ISP customers, and I hope — hope! — this kind of fiddling is on the way out.

There are other ways that ISP customers might get a somewhat skewed sense of their Internet connection speed. For example, almost all ISPs serve up popular webpages more quickly by caching pages on their local servers. If, say, a 100,000 Internet users in Seattle are watching their football team play in Chicago, the ISP doesn’t have to move 100,000 identical sets of digital video bits from Chicago to Seattle.

Caching’s great for many reasons, but if you’re trying to measure your typical Internet speed, it can gum up the results — especially if you’re using third-party, connection-speed test sites. When a latency/ping test comes in faster than the speed of light, either there’s something fishy going on or your ISP has learned how to exploit a wormhole.

A perfect Internet connection should travel around the world in about 13.3 milliseconds (the speed of light). Real connections run much slower because they’re routed through numerous servers and switches. If you run a speed test on a site halfway around the world and the latency comes in under 25 milliseconds or so, you’re undoubtedly looking at a cached test.

Another wrinkle I’ve seen with third-party test sites: Some ISPs, noting which outside test sites their customers are pinging, produce better test results by optimizing the connection with those sites. If you run the same test on a different site and get much slower results, you’ll know why.

Different testing sites, vastly different scores

Ready for an eye-opener? Try this quick experiment. Run speed tests on all the following, well-known sites and see whether there’s any consistency with your scores.

The most frequently used test is on Ookla’s Speedtest.net site. You must have Adobe Flash installed to run the test, and the site pushes you to download sponsoring apps, such as Google Chrome. You can pick available servers, world-wide, with the site’s on-screen map.

Using Speedtest.net, I connected my Thailand-based PC to a server in Los Angeles, Calif. I clocked a download speed of 9.0 Mbps — not bad for an ADSL line rated at 10 Mbps.

Another site, DSLReports, shown in Figure 1, is also Flash-based. I’ve used it for years. My download score on this site was 1.5 Mbps. That’s one-sixth as fast as Speedtest.net — same computer, same line, but very different results. There’s a problem, eh? DSLReports also has a Java-based test, which produced a nearly identical score of 1.4 Mbps.

Figure 1. DSLReports running its Internet speed tests.

MLab’s Network Diagnostic Tool is an open-source, distributed testing service that runs on servers all over the world. Sponsored by BitTorrent, Google, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft-owned Skype, and many other commercial and academic institutions, it’s an attempt to provide unbiased, research-oriented, test results. The site does not let you choose a specific server. My score: 7.3 Mbps.

In the oldie-but-goodie category, CNET’s Flash-based Bandwidth Meter uses a predetermined, but unidentified, server somewhere in the U.S. and a small, 1.5MB, download file. My score: 8.7 Mbps.

For a peek at an HTML 5–based site, check out the Bandwidthplace speed test. This site lets you easily choose servers in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. (I chose a server in San Jose, Calif.) My score: 1.1 Mbps.

Visualware has a compelling test site. It isn’t as pretty as the others, but it doesn’t require Flash and the results chart is a bit more informative (see Figure 2). My score (connected to a Los Angeles server): 1.9 Mbps.

Figure 2. Visualware's Internet test site includes an informative performance chart.

So what’s my true connection speed? Does my line run at 9.0 Mbps (Ookla), 7.3 (MLab NDT), 1.9 (Visualware), 1.5 (DSLReports), or 1.1 (Bandwidthplace)?

I took all those measurements on my main production machine — a basic system with Windows 8 and IE 10 installed. Could the browser or the OS have contributed to the squirrelly results?

To check, I reran the same tests on a Win7 PC (all patches applied) with Chrome Version 23. The results were all within 15 percent of the Win8/IE 10 scores — some a bit higher, some lower.

Clearly, the discrepancies lie with the testing sites.

No one site provides a clear answer

Given the wide range of results from the various test sites, which test should you use? I’m sorry to say, there’s no definitive answer.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission, which should be able to make the call if anyone can, waffles. It offers the Java-based, Consumer Broadband Test (Beta) on its Broadband.gov site. Just the fact that you must enter your full address is enough to put anyone off the test. And the FCC doesn’t even try to adjudicate which of the existing tests is the most accurate. Here’s how it punts on the topic:

• “Because measuring broadband speeds with software tools is not an exact science, we are providing two popular consumer broadband testing tools in this Beta version: Ookla and M-Lab. Both will enable consumers to test the quality of their broadband connection by transferring a small temporary file back and forth and measuring the results.

  “Users will be randomly assigned to one of the two chosen testing tools: Ookla or Network Diagnostic Tool (NDT) running on the Measurement Lab (M-Lab) platform, or they can choose their preferred tool by using links on this page. Each test is likely to provide a different result, and the differences may be significant in some cases.

  While the tests will give consumers some information on relative speeds, the FCC does not endorse either one as being a definitive testing method. In the future, the FCC anticipates making additional broadband testing applications available for consumer use. The FCC does not endorse any specific testing application.”

That leaves us up the ol’ creek without an officially endorsed paddle. But I do have two observations.

First, the tests I used are all surprisingly replicable. If you run the Ookla test on two different machines, attached to the same line, you’ll get roughly the same result. If you run the DSLReports Java test now, and then run it again 10 minutes from now, again you’ll get roughly the same result.

So the major benefit of running speed tests isn’t to get an absolute speed number. Instead, you should be looking for variations. Does your line slow down every weekday at 4:00 p.m., when kids come home from school, or at 9:00 a.m. weekdays, when the business day starts? Does it slow down on weekends or speed up in the middle of the night? Does your line fall on its knees when it rains? These tests will give you reliable answers to those kinds of questions.

Second, none of the tests listed above will definitively tell you whether an ISP is giving you significantly less speed than you signed up for. (You might get a clue if all the testing sites reported scores well below what you’re paying for.)

There is, however, a different kind of test that’s potentially worthwhile — and it’s more than a little disconcerting. MIT’s Max Planck Institute for Software Systems has a multifaceted test — Glasnost — that’s designed to “make ISPs’ traffic-shaping policies transparent to their customers.” The tests measure and compare data traffic that’s commonly throttled by ISPs: torrents, e-mail, common HTTP Web access, newsgroups, and Flash-based content (e.g., YouTube). You can run the tests directly from the Glasnost site. Each test takes about eight minutes.

The whole concept of “net neutrality” — preventing ISPs from playing favorites with certain kinds of data or giving preferred access to certain sets of sites — opens an entirely different can of Internet-speed worms.

Fortunately, in the long term, Internet speeds should not be as crucial as they are today — especially if Google can be convinced to extend its U.S. $75-per-month, 1,000 Mbps (up and down) Google Fiber service (site) beyond Kansas City. But even if speeds improve dramatically across the board, the thorny questions of net neutrality remain.

Technology to warm your heart — it works

Lounge member t8ntlikly needs to share a OneNote file with a known scatterbrain and is tired of sending and resending links that are lost and lost again.

Fortunately, he also has SkyDrive — and a good friend in the Lounge offering him excellent suggestions for the sensible use of OneNote and SkyDrive. Lots of us could benefit from this file-sharing method.

The following links are this week’s most interesting Lounge threads, including several new questions for which you might have answers:

Office Applications
General Productivity	Move live install of Office 2010 to different drive on same PC
Word Processing	Dictionary changing language
Spreadsheets	Need formula to extract from string
Databases	Capture file names of specified drive
Presentation Apps	Unable to open *.pps files in Outlook
Visual Basic for Apps	Find available UNC paths
Microsoft Outlook	Outlook 2010 Internet Security Warning
Non-Outlook E-mail	WLM not working after crash/restore
Other MS Apps	OneNote 2013 Preview
Windows
General Windows	Can I change icon for Adobe Reader?
Windows 8	Copying Windows Mail folder to Windows 8 from Vista DVD
Windows 7	Rebuild desktop icons?
	How to add program to right-click New menu in Windows 7?
	Using DVD drive causes infinite series of reboots
Windows Vista	Vista startup problems
Windows XP	Wrong amount of disk space reported
Windows Servers	Windows Server 2008 Foundation Edition
Internet/Connectivity
Internet Explorer	Weird hotlinks appearing on IE 9 webpages
Third-Party Browsers	Download folder won’t find containing folder
Networking	Randomly regular disconnect of cable Internet service (Cox cable USA)
Social Media	Downloading from YouTube
Other Technologies
Security & Scams	Dozens of phishing e-mails
Maintenance	Unable to partition new laptop
Hardware	Scanning old slides with HP Officejet Pro 8500 A909a
Graphics/Multimedia	Photoshop CS 6 installation
Other Applications	SkyDrive file sharing

starred posts: particularly useful

If you’re not already a Lounge member, use the quick registration form to sign up for free. The ability to post comments and take advantage of other Lounge features is available only to registered members.

If you’re already registered, you can jump right in to today’s discussions in the Lounge.

Middle Earth flies Air New Zealand

By Kathleen Atkins Middle Earth didn’t originate in New Zealand, but thanks to the celebrated movies based on the famous Lord of the Rings trilogy and filmed there, Middle Earth is pretty much part of the Kiwi landscape now. To celebrate the Hobbit (and the rest of the adventurers in these stories), Air New Zealand has produced an epic safety video. It’s certain to surprise and entertain jetloads of tourists on their way to see the fictional and real life of a dazzling country. Play the video

Help with changing a Wi-Fi network password

It’s easy to change a Wi-Fi router’s password and other settings — even if you can’t find the owner’s manual.

Some common shortcuts — and a built-in Windows tool — are usually all you need to access your router’s configuration software.

Shared Wi-Fi password needs to be reset

Reader SidW wrote:

• “Last summer, my neighbors wanted Internet access in their unit while their daughter was staying with them. So I gave them my Wi-Fi password. Now I’d like to change the password, but I can’t find how to do it.”

To change a Wi-Fi network’s password, you need to access your router’s or access point’s configuration software. (I’ll use the term “router” from here on.)

The exact method varies from brand to brand, but you typically access a router’s settings through any common browser such as Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or whatnot. You start by entering the router’s network address into the browser’s address bar.

Some of the most common router addresses are http://192.168.0.1, http://192.168.1.1, and http://192.168.11.1. But there are many others, and some routers (such as NETGEAR) also allow named addresses such as http://www.routerlogin.net.

The default address is usually listed in the router’s printed or online documentation. In some cases, it’s also printed on the back or bottom of the router itself.

You can usually also find a router’s numeric address via Windows’ ipconfig tool. Here’s how:

Open an admin-level command prompt, type ipconfig into the command window, and press Enter.

You’ll see a list of status information and numeric network addresses. Under the Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection section, look for Default Gateway (see Figure 1) and note its address.

Figure 1. For most small-office/home-office wireless networks, the Default Gateway address listed in ipconfig.exe is the router's address.

Type the Default Gateway’s address into your browser’s address bar, adding an http:// before the numbers. (In the example above, I typed http://192.168.11.1 into the address bar.) Press Enter, and you’ll likely access the router’s settings page.

When the router’s settings page opens in your browser, it will probably ask for an administrator’s sign-in name and password.

If you’ve forgotten the router’s sign-in name and password, you’ll have to reset the router to its factory defaults — usually by pressing a reset button on the back of the unit. Press and hold the reset button for about 15 seconds and then release it. The router should then reboot into its original, factory settings.

With the router reset, enter the default admin name and password. They’re typically simple, obvious, low-security phrases such as admin and password or root and password. Like the router’s address, the default sign-in info might also be printed somewhere on the router — and you’ll always find it in the router’s documentation. (There’s even an online site — routerpasswords.com — that lists default names/passwords.)

Once past the router’s sign-in, look for its wireless–security settings page or tab. (Different brands use different wording.) Among those settings, you’ll find a text-entry box (see Figure 2) where you can enter a new password.

Figure 2. Most routers make it easy to change the network-access password or passphrase.

Replace the current passphrase with a long and complex one. (Need help with that? See Microsoft’s article, “Tips for creating strong passwords and passphrases.”) Click OK (or Done, Apply, or whatever wording your router uses), and your new password is now in effect.

Distribute the new password only to people who should have access to your Wi-Fi, and you’re done!

Note 1: If you reset the router to its factory defaults, take a moment to step through all the other settings to make sure they are set as they should be. For example, be sure to change the factory-default Service Set Identifier (SSID — the network’s name) and admin sign-in name and password. Otherwise, unauthorized users could change your router settings and have full access to your network.

Note 2: A more sophisticated and secure way of controlling access to a Wi-Fi network is to enable the router’s Access Control List (ACL). It’s a kind of two-level authentication: To access the router, a network device (computer, printer, etc.) must provide the correct network password and have its unique Media Access Control (MAC) identifier (Wikipedia info) listed in the ACL. Remove a device from the ACL, and it can’t connect — even with the proper password!

The various brands/models of routers use different methods to set up an Access Control List — and might even call it by a different name. If the ACL is not immediately apparent in the setup menus, look in the router’s documentation for phrases such as “Access Control List,” “Access List,” “Access Control,” or “Media Access Control.”

Trouble with Win8’s “Windows to Go” option

Carl Richards is trying to make use of a new feature in Win8 — Windows to Go — which lets you boot a full version of Windows 8 from a portable flash drive. (See the TechNet Windows to Go FAQ.)

• “I’m trying to set up Windows to Go on a flash drive using the Windows 8 Pro ISO file. All the articles I’ve read state that the install.wim file, in Win8 Pro’s Source folder, is needed to complete the installation. Although Win8 Enterprise has a wizard to help set up Windows to Go, the Upgrade version of Win8 Pro I bought has no such file. (The Win8 Pro .iso has install.esd and install.exe files, but no install.wim.) Other Win8 users have noted the same problem, but no one provides a solution.

  “My Windows 7 installation has an install.wim file. Can I convert my Win8 .esd file to a .wim file? What gives?”

Carl, you (and other early adopters) have uncovered something interesting — and potentially disappointing — about Windows to Go and that low-cost U.S. $40 Win8 Pro upgrade.

Here’s what’s going on. A .wim file is a special kind of disk image that contains all the files needed in a Windows setup (.wim stands for Windows Imaging Format). Starting with Vista, all versions of Windows have used some kind of .wim file for their initial setup.

Windows to Go depends on two factors, one technical (the availability of a standard .wim file) and the other legal (a proper Windows to Go license).

The Win8 Enterprise edition contains a full, standard .wim file — plus the software tools needed to create custom .wim files, so your Windows to Go can be preconfigured the way you want. Win8 Enterprise is the only Win8 version that may legally be used to create distributable Windows to Go installations.

Although the full-retail Windows 8 ($100, list price) and Win8 Pro ($130) have a normal .wim file, their licenses don’t allow the creation of Windows to Go setups — even though it’s technically possible.

As you discovered, the Win8 Pro upgrade ships with install.esd, an encrypted version of the install.wim file. (The .esd acronym apparently stands for “encrypted setup disk.”) Windows to Go will not work with an .esd installation file, and Win8 Pro isn’t licensed for Windows to Go anyway.

So, if Windows to Go is important to you, you’ll have to purchase the full Win8 Enterprise version to meet Microsoft’s technical and legal requirements.

Problems with replacement laptop batteries

Bob Peercy had a string of failures with third-party replacement batteries.

• “I have a problem I can’t find a solution to. The battery on my HP laptop is weak. I have bought and returned three different third-party (non-HP) batteries. They will all run the laptop but won’t recharge. They won’t turn on the charging circuitry in the laptop. That suggests the problem is in my charging circuitry, but my old, original battery turns on the circuitry just fine. I’d like to have a new battery, but I don’t know what to do next. Any suggestions?”

Battery packs usually include several separate cells wired together, plus special circuitry for monitoring temperatures, voltages, etc.

Some OEMs also include proprietary identification circuitry in their battery packs; the laptop won’t charge the batteries unless it sees this special identification circuit. The OEMs say they do this “to ensure quality” — and that might be true up to a point. But in fact, it more or less forces you to use the OEM’s own brand of batteries.

This is similar to the way some printer vendors use custom circuitry in their ink cartridges to effectively force you to use only their brand of ink.

It makes you a captive customer, and I think it’s a lousy practice.

I know of serious hardware hackers who use Dremel-type tools and soldering irons to open the OEM battery pack, remove the dead cells, and put in fresh cells from a third-party vendor. But that’s a messy, complicated, and potentially dangerous route to take. I wouldn’t do it on my equipment.

Unless you can find a third-party battery vendor that includes the needed circuitry, you’re out of luck, Bob. Sorry!

Is Windows 8’s built-in e-mail crippled?

Chuck Brotman misses classic POP (Post Office Protocol) and SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) e-mail in Win8.

• “The Windows 8 e-mail client has dropped support for POP3 and SMTP. This means, for example, that if you used Outlook on, say, Roadrunner — which does not support IMAP — [before upgrading to Win8], you’re stuck.”

That’s right, Chuck. Win8’s e-mail client is really meant to work only with Windows Live Mail and similar cloud-based mail services. But you can install another e-mail client that works the way you want. Fortunately, there are plenty to choose from.

In fact, if you’re looking for a new mail client for just about any Windows version, check out the Oct. 25, 2012, LangaList Plus article, which discusses more than a dozen different reader-recommended alternative mail clients. To my knowledge, they all work on Win8!

Disable Win8's SmartScreen for better performance

Windows 8’s SmartScreen feature helps protect users from malicious software, but advanced users might find its warnings annoying.

Fortunately, as with all things Windows, there are ways to take control of SmartScreen — and a few other Win8 features.

Tipping the balance from safety to control

Like the User Account Control (UAC) found in earlier versions, Windows 8’s SmartScreen acts as a wall between your PC and unwanted software. Its roots go back to antiphishing technology introduced in Internet Explorer 8. In Win8, it has evolved into a tool that keeps malicious software from secretly installing itself on your system (which you’d discover only later, when your system failed). It’s a safeguard from those occasional, absent-minded clicks on bogus website and e-mail attachments.

SmartScreen takes application-checking a step further than does the UAC, which simply warns you that an application might not be safe. SmartScreen checks new apps by sending their file names and other information to a database on Microsoft servers. (This potential privacy issue raised a few eyebrows initially. Was Microsoft tracking every bit of software we installed on our Win8 PCs? Microsoft says no, according to an Aug. 25 Ars Technica story.)

Making SmartScreen a bit less intrusive

By default, SmartScreen requires administrator approval “before running an unrecognized app from the Internet.” That’s fine for inexperienced or casual Windows users, but most advanced users prefer greater control over their system and less safety oversight by Windows. Fortunately, downgrading SmartScreen’s security settings — or even disabling it altogether — is relatively easy (though the settings are somewhat buried within the Control Panel). Here’s how:

• The tool to change SmartScreen settings is found in Win8’s Action Center. To get there, bring up Win8’s Control Panel by hitting Windows key + X and selecting Control Panel from the popup list (lower-left corner of the Desktop), as shown in Figure 1.
  

  Figure 1. Accessing the Win8 Control Panel is quick, via the WinX popup menu.

• Next, select Action Center (via System and Security in the default Control Panel view) and then click Change Windows SmartScreen settings in Action Center’s left column, as shown in Figure 2. (You follow a similar path to change Win7’s UAC.)
  

  Figure 2. Look in Action Center for the option to change SmartScreen

• A new window with three options will appear . Get administrator approval … is the first option and is the default. The next option on the list displays a warning but does not require admin approval. The third option, highlighted in Figure 3, simply turns SmartScreen off — all applications will run with no warning. (Win7’s UAC has four notification settings.)

  The second option won’t change anything if you typically run in admin mode, but it can make life a bit easier when installing apps, if you’ve followed the advice of security experts and set up a non-admin account that you use most of the time. Obviously, the third option requires more discretion from you regarding the software installed on your system.

  

  Figure 3. You can turn off all application-installation warnings, but at increased risk of malware infection.

• Once you’ve made your choice, hit OK to return to the Action Center menu. There, you’ll see a new security notice along with a warning on the Windows taskbar. Just select Turn off messages about Windows SmartScreen to cancel these warnings. From this point forward, you can control your software, free from interruptions and administrative requirements — but at your own risk.
  

  Figure 4. Eliminate all SmartScreen notifications.

Boosting performance by disabling Visual Effects

Not everyone can or will run Windows 8 on the latest hardware. Many IT departments, for example, are testing the new OS on older workstations still used throughout the company. (The OS runs relatively well on even XP-era systems.) Win8 will also find its way onto ultra low-cost PCs — low-power systems typically used in public settings. Public PCs, such as those used in libraries, might benefit from Win8’s simpler, app-friendlier operating environment.

Visual effects and other display elements in Win8 can have small but noticeable effects on system performance. To get the most out of older hardware, it helps to scale back some of the gloss Windows 8 delivers. (Win7 has almost identical controls.) Here’s how:

• Start by entering Windows Key + X and selecting System from the popup menu. On the left side of the Systems window, click Advanced system settings.
• Next, in the System Properties popup dialog box, click the Advanced tab and then the Settings button (highlighted in Figure 5) in the Performance section.
  

  Figure 5. Click the Performance/Settings button to access system performance options

• The Performance Options menu offers many ways to customize your Windows 8 UI experience. By default, the OS controls these options itself, based on information it gathered about your PC. Although this generally works for matching visual effects to hardware capabilities, you can easily optimize Win8 for appearance or performance. Or you can select Custom and change Win8’s behavior by choosing from the list of options shown in Figure 6.
  

  Figure 6. Let Windows 8 choose its visual effects or define your custom set of effects.

Reducing visual effects, such as minimizing and maximizing windows animations, will eliminate those slight delays that appear even on high-performance machines. Sure, it’s just a fraction of a second, but if you really want to make Windows 8 zip, you have the option.

Set the number of tile rows on the Start screen

Windows 8’s new Start screen is an excellent way for users to quickly access specific applications and files. However, it’s not ideal for rapidly browsing through open windows. By default, the Start screen displays its tiles in one to six rows (or even 10 rows, on superhigh-resolution screens), depending on the screen resolution.

If you’d rather control the number of displayed rows, you can do so by making a change in the Windows Registry. (Yes, Win8 still lets you tweak the Registry.) Here’s how to make the change:

• Access the Win8 Registry editor by hitting Windows key + R (which brings up the Run dialog box), entering regedit (see Figure 7), and clicking OK.
  

  Figure 7. Enter regedit into the Win8 Run box to open the Registry.

• Next, navigate to

  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ImmersiveShell

  and click the Grid folder.

• Look for Layout_MaximumROWCOUNT (highlighted in Figure 8). If it doesn’t exist, create it by right-clicking in a blank area of the list, selecting New/DWORD(32-bit) Value, and naming it accordingly.
  

  Figure 8. You can easily change the Start screen row count in Win8's Registry.

• Next, double-click the Layout_Max… setting and change Value data to a number that meets your needs, as shown in Figure 9.
  

  Figure 9. The maximum number of rows you can set depends on your screen resolution.

  You can set a value from 1 to the maximum allowed by your screen resolution. Refer to the list below for specific screen limits.

  Value	Resolutions
  3	800 x 600
  4	1024 x 768, 1280 x 720
  5	1440 x 900, 1152 x 864, 1400 x 900, 1600 x 900
  6	1280 x 960, 1280 x 1024, 1900 x 1080, 1920 x 1080
  7	1920 x 1200
  10	2560 x 1920

• Once the number is set, hit OK and reboot your computer for the changes to take effect.

There are many other tweaks available in Windows 8 — many like the ones you’ve used in Windows 7.

Windows Secrets' guide to essential utilities

The holiday season is almost here for most Windows Secrets subscribers. Many of us are busily making our lists of gifts for friends and family. For those recipients who use Windows, may we suggest one of our series of e-books — compendiums of Windows Secrets articles, organized into concise, easy-to-read, guides. On our e-book page, you’ll find such helpful offerings as a three-volume guide to using Windows 7 and a Windows XP Survival Guide.

This week, we’ve released a new e-book — The Windows Utility Guide, Essential apps for every PC. This edition starts with our list of the 10 most useful utilities. We briefly describe their use, provide links to Windows Secrets articles they’re mentioned in, and list a few good alternatives. Chapter 2 of The Windows Utility Guide covers tools that let you peek into Windows’ inner workings. These utilities help diagnose those difficult problems that sometimes afflict Windows. The final chapter reviews tools for maintaining and troubleshooting PC hard drives. You can purchase the Windows Utility Guide at your Windows Secrets cart.

We hope these e-books will make your holiday shopping a little easier — and help friends and family have trouble-free Windows computing in 2013.

The Windows Secrets editors

Some end-of-the-year thoughts on PC maintenance

Free scanning products offer to diagnose and fix PC problems. But are they looking for the right problems?

A recent spate of TV ads for a PC scanning and repair suite prompted me to take a look at a couple of free scanners — and consider what’s really important for maintaining and securing our personal computers.

TV ads claim to fix every type of PC flaw

Last weekend, I was in the kitchen baking Christmas spritz cookies and sort of watching the TV. My attention was caught by seemingly endless advertisements for a computer service that would block malware before it executes, boot the speed of my PC, make it more reliable, and maximize my Internet connection speeds — all for free.

The software was PC Matic from PC Pitstop, a company that’s been around for years and started out as (the company claims) the first online PC diagnostics service. Over the years, PC Pitstop has added additional diagnostics and repair tools to PC Matic. And many other companies have released similar tools, some of which Fred Langa discussed in his Aug. 9 Top Story, “Test-driving ‘free scan’ tune-up suites.”

The “free” tune-up and repair suites are typically targeted at consumers and have a generally mixed reputation. Because I work primarily with business systems, I’ve not had a strong need to try the utilities out.

Nevertheless, the TV ads were quite compelling, and PC Pitstop has a fairly good reputation. So, curiosity getting the better of me, I downloaded the company’s software and tried it on a virtual machine.

Once the software had completed its scan of my test system, I reviewed its recommendations (shown in Figure 1). Some, such and clearing out temporary Internet files, were valid; others left me scratching my head. For example, it recommended getting rid of patch uninstallers (not the actual patches, but essentially their folders on the system) older than 90 days.

Figure 1. PC Matic's report on my test PC produced some questionable recommendations.

Although a blog on the company’s site states that it’s safe to delete old uninstallers, that’s not exactly true. With Windows XP, you can delete a patch’s folder if it’s no longer in the Windows add/remove programs KB listing. Just because some set time has elapsed doesn’t mean it’s safe to remove these folders to free up space.

Another questionable recommendation was to disable Google’s update service — the app that ensures Chrome is up to date. Chrome is a secure browser because it automatically updates itself — it’s not dependent on manually installed security patches.

Some of the tweaks PC Matic made had me looking up old MS Knowledge Base articles to see what exactly the utility was changing — for example, Adjusting MaxConnections per server, documented in KB 282402, and FastSendDatagramThreshold, described in KB235257. Those might be legitimate changes, but none of the PC Matic’s tweaks gave me faster Internet speeds. (Some of the Registry changes might have helped back in the dial-up days.) For faster Internet, I did far better by simply switching from DSL to cable.

PC Matic’s AV application — SuperShield — appears to use Sunbelt’s Active Protection (site). I noticed that sbaphd.sys, a hook for VIPRE antivirus software, was loaded on my system. However, my system didn’t indicate it was running AV software, and a PC Pitstop Forums post recommends disabling Windows’ alerts until PC Matic’s AV engine is approved by Microsoft. That’s not something I’d do on any of my systems.

For most PC scanners, free isn’t really free

Nearly all the “free” scanners are just that: scanning your system is free. However, fixing it is not — and many of these companies automatically charge to your credit-card or PayPal account. As Fred pointed out in his story, once the free scan has completed, the software will report all sorts of problems with your system. To make the fixes, you’ll be offered a suite of paid utilities — antivirus, an Internet-download manager add-on, etc.

In my case, it was clearly stated — after I’d purchased the suite — that the service would automatically renew with charges to my PayPal account. It was up to me to find the subscription in my PayPal account and cancel it (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. PC Matic automatically renews subscriptions paid via PayPal, unless you cancel it in PayPal.

Bottom line: I wasn’t impressed with the tweaks this software made, and I felt like there was some bait-and-switch between the free and paid parts of the software.

There’s normally something hiding behind free

Despite what the Web might lead you to believe, very few businesses do anything for free. Recently, I read a Download Crew article about a free tool that tests your computer for security issues. That caught my interest.

The software is offered by OPSWAT, a software-management and -security company that posts several free utilities, including its Security Score Beta tool (site), which scans systems and gives recommendations for enhancing their security.

OPSWAT’s primary focus is on tailoring software management solutions for businesses. Like many such companies, they provide a few free tools for personal use.

Surprisingly, Security Score actually pointed out some recommendations. On my home Win7 system, the utility gave a score of 88 out of 100, as shown in Figure 3. I lost points for not having a hard-disk encryption solution in place. That might be a fair criticism in a business setting, but I’m not comfortable deploying whole-disk encryption at home (at least not until I know how to keep the encryption keys safe). Still, I would consider full encryption in the future if I did put more sensitive information on that machine.

Figure 3. My home Windows 7 system earned an Opswat Security Score of 88 out of 100.

I was also downgraded for my use of Microsoft Security Essentials, which is not certified by OPSWAT. Although I don’t think Microsoft will worry about OPSWAT certification, MSE’s recent fall from AV-Test certification (more info) is a concern.

Security Score gave me 20 out of 20 points for having a backup set up for my computer. I use Microsoft’s Home Server 2011 program to back up my workstation, but any good image-based backup software — such as Norton’s Ghost (site) or Acronis (site) — will do. You can even use Google Drive or SkyDrive to back up data to a cloud location. (I recently worked on a laptop whose hard drive crashed so horrifically that none of its contents could be retrieved.)

That said, I was surprised by the one thing these PC-maintenance or -security scanners overlooked: running your PC primarily with a limited-user account and not in administrator mode. I use this practice daily on my Win7 machine. Whenever I install anything, I receive a User Access Control warning and am prompted to enter my admin-account credentials. Steve Friedl’s Unixwiz.net Tech Tip has excellent instructions for setting a limited-user account.

Other easy steps for truly fixing a PC

Setting up your normal, day-to-day limited-user account and having recent backups of your data are two of the best ways we can protect our PCs. Unfortunately, they’re probably the two things an average PC user does least. I can’t count the number of times a good backup has saved me, nor the times I’ve been unable to help someone who failed to back up files. But there are other little steps you can take to clean up your PC and get it ready for the new year.

If you’re still running Windows XP, take the time to review your options. Microsoft ends support for XP on April 14, 2014 — the last official day the OS will get security updates. With the verdict still out on Windows 8, now might be a good time to give yourself the present of a new Windows 7 machine. Think of Win7 as the “new XP SP3.” It might be the next long-lasting, long-supported Windows operating system that Microsoft will need to pry our fingers from.

Ensure you maximize the RAM on your Win7 systems. I go to crucial.com and run its system-scanner tool to see what memory upgrades I can add to my systems. I’m also moving my systems to solid-state drives where feasible — both in laptops and desktops. Consider rebuilding your existing systems with a relatively small, SSD C: boot drive and a larger spinning-platter drive for data.

Running a true, thorough scan of your systems

I’m not a fan of Registry cleaners — especially on Windows 7 — but I do use offline, bootable cleaners such as Kaspersky’s Rescue Disk (site). Pick your favorite offline bootable cleaner and scan your machine underneath the Windows operating system. That will ensure your system is free of viruses, malware, and other malicious critters.

Then follow up with another full scan using Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware software. Though I routinely use MSE, it’s important to run an additional AV tool on a regular basis.

So if you find a solution that sounds too good to be true, do some online investigating before offering up your credit card — or ask the knowledgeable members of the Windows Secrets Lounge. There are a lot of dubious claims out there, and they seem to increase around the holidays. Spend your money on solutions and recommendations that work rather than on ones that purport to try to solve problems that aren’t really problems.

A security warning about the holiday season

Ignore e-mails warning that your mailbox is full — and that unexpected fax, that airline boarding pass you weren’t expecting, or any number of other scams laden with viruses. A recent Threatpost blog post points out that targeted e-mails are being used to gain access to PCs. A simple click of a link in an e-mail can be all it takes for an attacker to assume control of your computer.

So this holiday season, the best way to really fix your PC is to be a bit more vigilant, a bit more paranoid, a bit more cautious in opening e-mails — even from people you know. Instead, text your friends or pick up the phone and make sure they really sent you something. And while you’re at it, wish them a happy holiday season and urge them to be a bit more cautious as well.