The Registry Can Slow Your System Down

Paul Watson, PC Technician

Tuesday, November 24th 2009

The Registry Can Slow Your System Down

In my last several posts, I’ve looked at common and uncommon causes of slow computer performance. The number of conditions that can affect a computer’s performance is almost limitless, so you may have to do some real detective work to figure out what’s ailing your own computer.

More Tips And Tricks To Speed Up A Slow Computer

If you’ve made it through the anti-virus and malware scans I’ve recommended, and you’re sure your computer is free of viruses and adware, here are some more basic moves that may give your computer a boost.
Defrag. Your computer has a defragmenting utility that will optimize the data that are stored on your hard drive. By putting pieces of files together, or at least near each other, you do two things: first, you make more useable space available on your hard disk and second, you reduce the amount of time the drive needs to spend finding the next bit of a file and repositioning the read/write heads to retrieve it and maybe write a fresh copy of it. The more fragmented the information is on your hard disk, the slower the computer will be when it comes to finding, displaying and writing new files. As a rule, if you use your computer a lot and files tend to come and go regularly, defrag your hard disk about once a month. If you use your computer less strenuously, defrag at least once each quarter.

Pare Down Startup Items. Users never seem to believe that even “small” applications can take a lot of performance power away from your computer. Sometimes, application installers ask if you want to start your new program up automatically each time you boot the computer. (Unless you’re talking about the OS itself, or anti-virus software – something that directly affects the performance of the computer – your answer should be No. Each time you say yes, that program “reserves” a bit of your operating memory for itself to use at startup. Pretty soon, all of your memory will be divided among users

Clean Your Registry Little bits of useless programming code accumulate in your computer’s registry over time. Keeping these bits from piling up can help your computer run more smoothly. Removing these orphans tends to reduce the amount of time the computer needs to read the rest of the information in the registry, and helps to prevent it from getting stuck in annoying time-out cycles that can really slow things down.

Photo Credit: technowannabe / Todd Baker, via Flickr