If you’re looking for ways to speed up your computer, performing a little routine maintenance can go a long way. Routine maintenance includes trimming the list of programs that start or load automatically when you boot the computer, cleaning the registry with RegCure, and defragmenting the hard drive on a reasonably regular basis. You could also add scanning your computer for worms, viruses and other malware that can seriously impact the performance of your computer.

Defragmenting Can Speed Up Your Computer

Defragmenting your hard drive is probably the easiest thing to do, since the defragmenting tool comes as part of the operating system. Defragmenting the hard drive periodically – at least twice a year if you don’t use your computer a lot, once per quarter if you use it frequently and about once per month if you’re a “power user” – can really cut down on the work your computer needs to do to write and retrieve files. The defragmenting tool is in the System Tools folder. If you’re not sure where you fall, the Defragmenter has an “analyze” function that will tell you how much your disk is fragmented. A good rule of thumb is 10%. If the analysis shows your disk is more than 10% fragmented, run the Defragmenter at your earliest convenience.

One word of warning about the Defragmenting tool: if you haven’t defragmented your computer lately, the defragmenting process could take hours. (Yes!) It’s one of those jobs that’s best saved for an overnight task or one that you start before you leave the house in the morning. It’s definitely not something to do when you’ll need the computer for something important.

Before you defragment your computer, you could also benefit by running Disk Cleanup and Disk Error checking (called Check Disk on older versions of the Operating System). These utilities, all found under System Tools, will check your disk for errors and clean up the little messes they find. Another tip: once you’re done with the Defragmenting, back up your hard disk using the Backup Tool, also found under the System Tools menu. Like disk defragmenting, the first backup can take a long time, but subsequent backups – especially if you schedule them – should go much more quickly.

You should be running an anti-virus program at all times on your computer. One big mistake people make is to assume that their anti-virus definitions are up-to-date. You need to download new definitions periodically to help keep your A/V protection current. If you haven’t downloaded your definitions in awhile, download the latest ones and scan your hard disk immediately!

Photo Credit: Soumit Nandi, via Flickr