Need To Speed Up Computer? Try These Suggestions

Paul Watson, PC Technician

Tuesday, December 8th 2009

Need To Speed Up Computer? Try These Suggestions

Working with a slow computer can be frustrating. When the cause of the problem is clear, you at least have something to work with. When the cause of your computer’s slow performance isn’t clear, you could spend hours trying to figure out what’s wrong and end up no closer to the solution to your problem.

Slow Performance, Many Causes

There are many things that can slow the performance of a computer to a halt. Virtually anything from bad device drivers to insufficient memory to a failing hard drive can rob your computer of its performance potential. For as much coverage as viruses and other forms of malware get, the more likely cause of a slow computer will be found in your computer’s registry database.

The registry is a centralized information store that the computer uses to run and configure programs, and keep track of operating system information. The registry is critical to your computer’s proper operation, but over time, the registry can accumulate a lot of useless information. This useless information slows your computer down because the computer has to read and interpret everything in the registry.

Little bits of programming code get left behind when an uninstall routine doesn’t do a thorough job of removing all of the application’s registry entries. Other programs like viruses and malware make additions and changes to the registry, and these are also frequently left behind when a virus program does its cleanup work.

Over time, all of these little bits of abandoned code can take a toll on your computer’s ability to perform. Everything from startup time to runtime performance can be affected.

Removing these entries from the registry sounds simple but it’s not! The registry can have millions of lines of code, and unless you’re an experienced programmer, you may have no idea what you’re looking for or what’s safe to remove. Moreover, changes you make to the registry are instant. That’s not always a good thing! If you make a mistake by removing too much code, not enough code or the wrong line(s) of code, you could end up with even worse performance than you had before you started editing the registry.

If you don’t know a great deal about your computer’s registry database, I recommend you use a product called RegCure to clean out your registry. You can configure RegCure to run automatically, so once your initial cleaning is complete, you can rely on RegCure to keep your registry tidy. This translates into improved performance over time without the hassles of trying to figure out what’s slowing down your computer.

Photo Credit: cod_gabriel, via Flickr