The Great Cache Hunt

The Great Cache Hunt

Windows - Past ArticlesThe Great Cache HuntKnock out the cache files that are slowing down your PC.By Joe DeRouen
As regular readers probably know, I'm a big supporter of Firefox. Their browser has proven to be leaner, quicker, and safer for Windows users than every one of their competitors, Microsoft's very own Internet Explorer included.
Have you ever gone to a Web site to find an article, story, or a piece of information that you remember reading, only to find that the relevant piece is missing--or worse yet, the entire site--has gone missing? That can be a frustrating experience, especially if you can't find the information anywhere else.
Enter Resurrect, a Firefox extension that just may save the day for you. The browser add-on allows you to search the Internet Archive (otherwise known as the Mr. Peabody and Sherman-inspired Wayback Machine,) MSN Cache, Yahoo Cache, CoralCDN, and the Google Cache for an archived version of the missing page or Web site. If the first one doesn't have the information you seek, chances are one of the other four will. You can activate Resurrect a number of ways, including right-clicking on a missing-page error message or selecting it through the Tools menu. Once you launch the plug-in, you can open the missing page in the same window you're currently browsing, a new tab, or an entirely new window. Sure, you can go to any of these services without this extension and manually enter the URL of the missing Web page yourself, but this extension is a great resource that makes finding that missing information just a little bit easier.
Resurrect is a free download.
Will Swap Cache for Windows Unlike the Internet Archive, you don't want your PC to save everything in its cache. In fact, you should periodically clear your Windows cache to prevent system slowdown. And that's where MemTurbo 4 comes in. This program helps you not only manage your PC's memory but also trains your computer to better use available RAM.
Cache, in this case, is an area of physical memory reserved by Windows to store the most recent operations and file requests. When a file is read from the disk, it's stored in the system cache. If there is another read request for the same file, Windows can retrieve it from the faster system cache memory instead of reading it again from the slower hard disk, which, in theory, will save you time.
File caching, however, can behave erratically after a period of time, corrupting your available RAM. Memory resources available to run applications will reduce and eventually bloat cache memory. In this situation, the system's performance may degrade, forcing you to restart your computer.
MemTurbo helps prevent that by sealing RAM leaks from poorly written programs, removing unneeded applications from your PC, and installing a memory monitor that keeps everything running smoothly and efficiently. Once the program is installed, the running apps will be able to use allocated memory without forcing Windows to swap from the cache.

The program is easy to install and, once it's loaded, you probably won't even notice it's there. An improved task manager helps you to better monitor processes in memory, while also supporting better graphic displays to improve performance of 3D games and graphics-intensive applications. And if you're a power user who wants to have more control under your PC's theoretical hood, you can do that too; MemTurbo allows you to tweak what parts of memory are allocated where, leaving you to decide your own destiny in terms of how your PC runs.
A 15-day trial version is available, and the application costs $19 to register.