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Posts Tagged ‘slow computer fixes’

Looking For A Good Way To Speed Up Your Computer?

Posted by paul on September 2nd, 2011

Looking For A Good Way To Speed Up Your Computer?

Looking For A Good Way To Speed Up Your Computer?

People who use computers (but don’t always take care of them) often remark that their computers seem slow. There’s either nothing specific they can point to as a potential cause, or they’re convinced that they’ve picked up a virus, whether they have or not! There are many more causes of slow computer performance than just age and viruses, but many people don’t take the time to find out what’s really happening.

Good Maintenance Can Speed Up Your Computer

Maintenance (or lack of it) is probably the number one cause of long-term slow computer performance. Software, toolbars, utilities, and old registry entries accumulate in a computer as you use it. Eventually, the performance drops to a noticeable level, and Presto! Your computer slows down.

Good maintenance habits can help your computer retain its lively performance for years. What, exactly, are good maintenance habits? Removing drivers you don’t need is a good habit to get into. Your computer will load the drivers you’ve configured it to load. If you don’t need the drivers, your computer will still load them. Each driver takes a little bit of memory, so removing the unused drivers is a good idea.

No technician in his (or her) right mind would argue with removing toolbars. Toolbars, at their best, take up memory that you probably could use for more interesting things like your applications. Pile on enough toolbars and your system will spend a lot of time tripping over itself.

At their worst, toolbars can disguise malware, adware and spyware that you don’t want on your computer any day of the week or for any reason at all. Yet another good reason to skip the toolbars when you download a program, or when you’re offered one as part of a download or installation process.

Keeping your hard disk defragmented is another good way to pick up a little performance boost. Regular defragging will not speed things up tremendously but skip the defragging for awhile and you’ll notice a big performance slump. Defragging is one of those things best done regularly to maintain a speedy system.

Cleaning your registry will also give you a good performance boost. Your registry gets loaded up with a lot of unnecessary code. Getting rid of this junk can help speed up a slow computer, and if done regularly, can keep a speedy computer speedy.

I like SpeedUpMyPC 2011 for general registry and disk maintenance. It works in about two minutes and you’ll be surprised by the performance boost you’re getting.

Photo Credit: Sean MacEntee, via Flickr

Try These Slow Computer Fixes

Posted by paul on April 15th, 2011

Try These Slow Computer Fixes

Try These Slow Computer Fixes

If you’ve been exceedingly patient with your slow computer, and you’re still waiting for its performance to improve, you could be waiting for awhile. That’s because slow computers rarely – if ever – improve themselves. Here are a few tips that may help improve your computer performance.

Start With The Basics And Move On From There

One good tip that few people think about when they’re trying to deal with a slow computer is rebooting. Rebooting the computer is one of the easiest things to do, and it will help you determine whether you have a real problem or are just being affected by a transient performance issue. Rebooting the computer will reset your computer’s RAM and video memory, and will clear out some temporary files, kill all processes and give you a fresh start.

Before you reach for the power button, remember to restart the computer normally. Just hitting the power button or unplugging the computer can cause damage to the file system. Windows computers have gotten better at recognizing and fixing file system damage, so being careless about how you shut down and restart can actually increase the amount of time you’ll have to wait to get back to work.

This approach is particularly important if you don’t usually turn off your computer. If you’ve restarted your computer, and it’s still slow, then you’re probably looking at a more significant problem. The next question is where to look for trouble.

If you’re working with a fresh reboot, check the Task Manager to see what’s running immediately after you’ve rebooted your computer. To access the Task Manager, press Ctrl+Alt+Del. Once the Task Manager is open, you can look at the processes that are running. Note any applications that are running. They’re files that end with .exe. Don’t get too excited about .exe files you don’t recognize; some of them are parts of the operating system that are required.

Look for applications whose names you recognize. If these applications are running and you didn’t start them, it means that you’ve configured these applications to start automatically. Don’t worry if you don’t remember doing this. A lot of installation routines are set up to configure the application to start automatically. You can go into your startup configuration and deselect the applications you don’t need to auto-start. That will save you a certain amount of memory and improve your computer’s overall performance.

Remove any toolbars that may have been loaded onto your computer or into your browsers. Toolbars are notorious avenues for spyware, malware and slow computer performance. If your computer is slow, try removing the toolbars you’ve installed.

You may also want to look for plug-ins and other little applets in your browser or on your computer that generate pop-up ads. If your browser blocks pop-up windows, you can activate this option, but it doesn’t stop the adware from taking up computer resources. Get rid of the adware. You’ll improve your computer performance and give yourself a better operating environment.

Photo Credit: Doc Groove, via Flickr