Does your computer take FOREVER to start up or load a program? Does it leave you frustrated and feeling unproductive? Well there's a few very basic things which you can do to try and get it running faster. These steps are very easy, most of the work can be completed within 10-15 minutes and even the worst technophobe can do it!
Step 1: Housekeeping
The first thing you can do is to get rid of any files, folders or programs you really don't need or don't use any more. The easiest way to do this is simply to delete files you no longer need, such as pictures, videos, documents etc. Now of course I'm not suggesting you delete precious photo albums or your music collection but have a look around your personal files and see if there's anything you really don't need. You'll see the files start to go into the Recycle Bin on your computer, just leave them there for now, we'll take care of that shortly.
The next step is to look for programs or applications you don't use anymore. You can normally delete these by going to the Start Menu then clicking on Control Panel. Then on the window that comes up there's normally a heading in green which says "Programs" and a blue link underneath it which says "Uninstall a program"... click on that blue link and a list will load up. Right click on the program you want to remove and click Uninstall and this will start the uninstall process.
**Advanced**
If you're comfortable using Windows Explorer, you can go to your local disc (normally your C: Drive) and go into the "Program Files" folder and delete any old program folders from here as well. Sometimes you can uninstall a program however it will leave a folder and sometimes some files behind.
Step 2: Disk Cleanup
There is a tool built into Windows which is used to delete and clear out temporary data which builds up on your computer and it's very straight-forward to use. Click on the start menu and in the little search bar type in "Disk Cleanup" and you'll see the program in the list above. Click on it and it will bring up a little popup and start searching your computer for temporary data it can get rid of.
This program will also clear out your Recycle Bin! So before doing anything else, you may want to double check that to make sure that all the files in there are things you want to get rid of. If you find something you want to keep, click on it and click "Restore" at the top and that will move it back to it's original location and it won't get deleted. Once you're happy, click on OK on the Disk Cleanup tool and that will automatically clear out your computer.
Step 3: Disk Defragmenter
This is another tool built into Windows which can really help the performance of your computer. Basically what this does is re-arrange the files on your hard drive. There's a description of how it works below. To run it, click on the Start Menu and in the search box, type "Disk Defragmenter" and click on the tool under the
Programs heading. Once it's loaded, click and highlight your local disk which is normally listed as (C) then click the "Defragment Disk" button near the bottom. You'll see that the tool is now running. Unfortunately, this can take up to a couple of hours to complete however you can still use the computer and leave that running in the background.
**How the defragmenter works**
When you save files onto your computer, the data which forms that file is not always stored in the same place. A computer's hard drive is basically a big CD and sometimes the data which forms a file is broken up and spread all over the disk. For example, half the data for a file could be stored on the outer edge of the disk, and the other half of the data could be right near the middle. What the Defragmenter does, is move the pieces of data so that they're right next to each other. How does this make your computer run faster? I'm glad you asked! When you open a file, the computer has to search for the data on the hard drive disk, and the computer will search and it will find the first half... and continue searching until it finds the second half, then stitch the two pieces together and load the file for you to see. When the two half's of the file are right beside each other, the computer spends much less time "searching" and will load up the file much quicker.
Step 4: Update and Run Anti-virus software
Sadly there are bad people out there who seek to take advantage of computers and the internet community and there are computer virus out there which will disrupt your computer if it becomes "infected". The good side though is that there a large selection of anti-virus software available to combat this problem. One of the possible causes of a slow computer is that it could be infected with a virus so it's important to have some anti-virus software installed. Not only that but it needs to be kept up to date on a regular basis, my
Computing teacher at school once advised me that it should be updated AT LEAST three times a day!
Software providers are very proactive when it comes to releasing updates for their antivirus and good software will do this automatically for you.
I'm not going to endorse a particular company and their software, but if you do an online search for "popular anti-virus software" you will find many reputable websites which recommend good products. Some anti-virus programs are free and others are paid for, both have their pros and cons. I personally use free anti-virus software and have never had any difficulty with it. That said, I consider myself to be tech-savy and I can recognise things which might be bad for my computer before they affect it. Paid anti-virus programs usually do have many advanced features which offer a higher level of protection.
So there you have four basic things you can do to improve the speed of your computer. If you're still having difficulties then you may need to seek professional help for some more advanced troubleshooting.
I have made a video to accompany this article, please click the following link to see me working through
these steps: http://youtu.be/bBHeyZt9TX4
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joss_King
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