Speed Up Computer

Problems arise in computers all the time. Some problems need to be fixed immediately because they impact the way the computer operates. Other problems tend to “accumulate” over time and may not even be noticeable at first. When you finally decide that you do have a problem, the solution may not be apparent because you can’t say exactly when the problem started occurring, much less what exactly is going wrong. So how do you speed up your computer when you’re not sure what the problem is?

Windows Has Some Helpful Tools

Even if you know nothing about a computer aside from the location of the power switch, you can still do some basic troubleshooting to fix your slow computer. If you want to tackle the task of finding out what’s slowing down your PC, you’ll need to make some observations.

Shut your computer down and restart it. Restarting isn’t really a magic bullet, but if something’s gotten corrupted in temporary memory, or a part of the OS isn’t working properly, a hard reset might just do the trick. (Besides, restarting the computer is cheap and easy to do.)

Watch the computer as it starts up to see if you notice anything different about your computer. The computer will do a number of self-tests before it gets to the meat-and-potatoes of the OS. When the OS starts to load, see how long it takes to go from start screen to working computer. If this task seems to take longer than it did in the past, you may have many startup items configured to load into memory each time the computer starts. If this is the case, check the Task Manager (Ctrl+Ald+Delete) to get a handle on what’s running. If you see programs that are not necessary, reconfigure your startup items to exclude the unnecessary items.

Caveat: Don’t disable your anti-virus and anti-malware software.

Run disk cleanup, a free utility that comes with Windows. Disk cleanup will get rid of old bits of code on your hard disk and in your file structure that you no longer need. If you need heavy-duty help with this task, consider using a registry cleaner like RegCure. The registry cleaner isn’t the same thing as disk cleanup, so you can use both products as they’re needed.

Once your hardware is clean, reboot to see if this improves your computer performance.

Photo Credit: Alex Pearson, via Flickr