One
of the best things about a new computer is the speed. It boots fast, opens
programs like a dream and generally doesn’t leave you checking your watch. Ofcourse,
the longer you use a computer, the slower it gets. You can get back most of the
speed with a few free tricks. They are simple enough for anyone to do, and your
wallet will thank you..
The causes of your
computer being slow can include:
- Not enough hard drive space, too many unused programs.
- Left over programs, old cached and temporary files
- Too many programs running at startup or in the background.
- Data corruption, hard disk fragmentation
- Missing windows updates or outdated drivers.
Whatever
the cause, there are lots of ways to help speed up your computer and make your
PC work better, even without upgrading your hardware.
There
are various reasons that could cause your computer to run slowly. This solution
provides methods that you can use to make your computer run faster.
- Clean up the disk: Uninstall unneeded programs (especially those that run at startup and/or put something in the system tray), run Disk Cleanup, and defragment the drive. This is a good first step that will always take a few seconds off boot time and application loads for any computer.
- Dont auto-start programs: Click Start > Run and type “msconfig” at the prompt. Click the Startup tab and look at all that junk that loads when you launch your PC. Do you really need “Adobe Reader Speed Launch”? Probably not. Turn off anything else that looks useless, but be careful not to disable your anti-virus and important system components.
- Run a full anti-virus and anti-spyware scan:
- Clean up the registry: Ccleaner, available at http://www.ccleaner.com is free and worth running. It will also remove unused files from your system-allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space.
Those
are the easy and free things you can do. If your computer is still slow, you
need to move on to the bigger guns.
- Upgrade RAM: this is the one killer trick that will make almost any computer run faster, RAM will give you a quick speed boost. Adding RAM is fairly simple, even for a novice, and you should be able to do the job in 5 or 10 minutes. You can run a free test at http://www.crucial.com and find out what kind of RAM (memory) your computer needs.
- Reinstall Windows: if the above tricks haven’t helped, it may be time to wipe the slate clean and start again, reformatting your hard drive, reinstalling your applications, and restoring your data files from a backup. You would be surprised how much more responsive a freshly reinstalled Windows system can be, as you have wiped out years of temp files, garbled registry entries, old versions of software programs that have been upgraded repeatedly.
- Upgrade your hard drive: This is a more complicated solution, but if you are reinstalling Windows (per the prior tip) you might consider upgrading to a bigger and possibly faster hard drive too. Hard disk storage is a performance bottleneck on every machine, and magnetic disks degrade over time. Some performance issues could be caused by a failing hard drive even, and upgrading to a new model could really put some zip back in your system. As a bonus, you can use the original hard drive for backups or occasional storage if you put it in an enclosure.
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