It's a well known fact that over time of usage the speed of a computer with Microsoft Windows installed can decrease. Eventualy it takes more and more time to respond to a user’s actions like opening files and folders and other documents, surfing the Internet and doing all other tasks. The end result is a slow PC.
Moreover, the reason of computer slowdown may be the fact that You have trojans or other "parasites" installed on the system without even knowing it. Eventually, it can simply be that for bad performance are responsible old computer components and that lack of resources is causing the software to run slowly.
However, here are the couple of things you can do to enhance computer performance by following a few simple guidelines. It should help to increase the speed of Your PC, and keep it running smoothly:
- Remove Viruses and Spyware
- Clean Windows registry ( if using Windows OS)
- Clean up Your Files and Free up Your disk space
- Defragment systems Hard Drive
- Disable unnecessary programs and startup services
- Upgrade computers Hardware
Viruses and Spyware can be the main causes of computer slowdown. You may have viruses, spyware or other "parasites" that are taking up your processor time for collecting and reporting your personal informations to spy databases (attackers) and hampering your computer's performance.
To combat those "parasites", You may try to use some of the tools intended to provide protect against malware and spyware. You may try to use Spybot-S&D , Spyware Blaster, AVG - "Anti-Vir Guard", Avast,NOD32, Avira or some other antivirus solution. Some of those are free for Personal Use, but are also usualy available in Business or Pro versions.
Also there's Microsoft's Windows Defender, anti-spyware tool that is currently distributed freely with a Genuine verified copy of Windows, and also included with other Microsoft services and products such as "Live OneCare" and "Vista."
Also, don't forget to Update and run your spyware and virus software for system scan every week or more often:
The Windows Registry is an essential system database that holds a massive configuration settings and collection of details on Windows Operating systems. As time of OS usage passes, orphaned or misplaced informations accumulates and potentially slows down PC causing error messages and system crashes. Problem with Windows is that old registry entries are never removed, even if we uninstal the programs.
To increase OS performance, try to use a free registry cleaner like CCleaner and clean the registry.
First backup the registry manualy or using the cleaner program.
(If something goes worong, You'll be able to restore Your registry entries)
To manualy backup Your registry:
1. Press "Win" logo key + R (at the same time) to open Run. Once opened, enter command "regedit":
2. Once registry opens, go to FileMenu > Export..., and chose where to Save You Registry backup:
3. Once instaled, clean Your registry with Registry cleaner program.
(In CCleaner, this can be done by clicking the "Run Cleaner" or Cleaner icon at the left.)
Clean up Your Files and Free up Your disk space
A Common misunderstanding is that having many data on a systems hard drive can causes it to run slow. Unless a hard drive is filled right to the end and has no longer enough space for Windows to write temporary files, it has nothing to do with computer performance. However, if system's hard drive is fully filled it will definitely cause the problems (system could automatically crash) - consider the cleaning up some files and making room for Windows to work properly.
Use Disk Cleanup to Remove temporary Internet and windows files, delete downloaded programs, empty the Recycle Bin, delete installed programs and Windows components that you no longer use.
To use Disk CleanUP
1. Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools and then click Disk Cleanup (If several drives are available, you can be prompted to specify which disk you want to clean)
2. Once opened, on CleanUP check the boxes for files that want to delete, and then click OK:
As data gets saved and deleted from hard drive all the time, data can scattered across the drive in pieces, rather than solid chunks. Hard drive may have to look on many places (rather than one) to retrieve a single file. This may drastically slow reading performance. Defragmentation will rearrange the pieces on a disk in an right order and speed up the access times.
To defragment the disk, use Windows utility that consolidates fragmented files and folders on hard drive so that each occupies a single space. With files stored correctly end to end, reading and writing to the disk speeds up.
To use Disk Defragmenter
1. Click Start, > All Programs, > Accessories, > System Tools, and click Disk Defragmenter.
2. In the Disk Defragmenter click the drive that you want to defragment, and click Analyze. (Once process is finished, it will let user to know whether defragmentation is needed.)
3. Click the Defragment disk:
If computer takes a long time to start, disabling some unnecessary programs and startup services could make the entire start-up process a lot quicker. The less items that computer have to start, the faster it will boot up.
To disable programs and services from starting, system configuration utility msconfig can be used.
To enable or disable programs or services from starting, use msconfig:
1. Press "Win" logo key + R (at the same time) to open Run. Once opened, enter command "msconfig":
2. Once system configuration window opens, look for the Startup and Services tabs to enable/disable programs or servises from starting:
(Un-checked programs or services will not start once the operating system starts.)
If already done all previously mentioned steps and still have issues running certain programs, You might to consider upgrading computers hardware.
The easiest to upgrade is system memory or RAM (Random Access Memory). If you tend to run a lot of programs, or programs for video and photo editing or new videogames, these programs uses a lot of memory so upgrading RAM can speed things up significantly.
To figure out status of system memory, look at “System” under control panel. Depending on computers motherboard support and sockets it provides, depends the number of memory modules that can be upgraded.
Checking more precisely RAM and CPU (Central processing unit) utilisation can be done from systems Task manager or Resource Monitor utilities.
Access Resource monitor
To access Resource monitor go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Resource Monitor
(From Resource Monitor it's posible to get info like used and available RAM, CPU utilisation and I/O Disk activity and find the weakest commponent that's causing the performance issue)
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