Speed Up Computer

If you’re having trouble with a slow computer, you may be tempted to think that the fastest solution is to replace it with a newer model. Don’t! You can spend a lot of money you don’t need to spend on new computer equipment. Yes, your computer performance will improve for awhile, but you could be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Find Out Why Your Computer Is Slow

You can indeed find out why your computer is slow. While it’s true, there are a lot of things that can impede your computer’s performance, you can eliminate the most common and obvious causes of computer slowdowns.

Most slow computers suffer from a lack of maintenance. That’s too bad because there are built-in tools to help you avoid computer performance problems. Most people either aren’t aware of them or don’t make it a habit to use them. The result: slow computer performance.

If you want to perk up your computer, start by doing the obvious. Are you running too many programs simultaneously? If so,close some applications you’re not using and configure your computer to avoid starting up programs when you boot the computer. Most applications aren’t needed immediately, so if you’re a fan of having your apps start automatically, be excessively choosy about which apps get the nod.

Make sure you have enough installed memory to run your operating system and your applications. If you come up short, install more physical memory in your computer. If that’s not a possibly, play with the size of the cache or set up virtual memory. Don’t go overboard, however. Devoting too much of your hard disk space to virtual memory can cause its own set of problems.

Keep your registry clean with a recognized registry cleaner like RegistryBooster. By keeping your registry trim, your computer can start up gracefully and minimize the amount of useless information that gets stored in memory. You’ll also avoid the “timeout” issues that abandoned registry entries can cause.

Defragment your hard disk regularly, using the built in tools provided by Microsoft. As long as you’re at it, correct any disk errors you find – also by using the built in Disk Check utility that comes with your Windows operating system.

Don’t be shy about getting rid of files you don’t use anymore. Empty out the temporary files and keep your files in the file system and not on the desktop. You can keep your file system tidy by using Disk Cleanup, another built in Microsoft tool.

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I’ve devoted a lot of time to identifying the myriad causes of a slow computer. There are almost too many causes to name. Just about anything from software to hardware can cause performance problems for computers. Recently, Intel released its new Dandy Bridge chipset. The chipset had been introduced in 2009, and Intel brought it to market in January of this year.

Sometimes Hardware Does Cause Computer Performance Slowdowns

The Sandy Bridge chips were designed to deliver improved video performance, specifically for gaming applications in a video market that’s currently dominated by AMD. The new chipset works with Intel’s i5 and i7 processors. As it turns out, the chips have a problem under heavy load with the serial ATA controller. Under the right conditions, the chips slow down to a walk, affecting communications to and from hard disks and optical disks.

Intel already knows about the problem and has determined that the newly minted chipsets are indeed, defective. Intel is no longer shipping the chip sets and is making plans to recall the affected chipsets that have already been introduced to the public.

The computer slowdown problem isn’t likely to affect a lot of consumers, and it isn’t likely to cause problems right away. That’s good news for consumers and bad news for Intel. The affected chipsets are more likely to be in desktop PCs, which have a larger drive-handling capacity than laptops do. Dell has said that some of its XPS, Alienware and Vostro computers have been built with the affected chipsets, and it will contact consumers about replacements. Intel says that it will resume production of the Sandy Bridge chipsets sometime around the end of the month, after having corrected the problem.

So the short answer here is “yes, hardware problems can cause computer slowdowns.” Failing hardware isn’t usually the cause of chronic slow computer performance, though. It wouldn’t be my first, second or third thought when it comes to diagnosing a slow computer.

If you’re experiencing a slow computer and don’t perform regular maintenance, consider doing the basics like clearing out old files, defragmenting your hard disk and repairing disk errors first.
If you do perform regular maintenance, consider using a registry cleaner like RegistryBooster to ensure that you have reliable computer performance all the time. RegistryBooster keeps your registry cleaner and makes your computer operate more efficiently. Regular registry maintenance with RegistryBooster eliminates many causes of slow computer performance and helps keep your computer fast and stable.

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Over the past several posts, I’ve given readers a good outline for a regular maintenance plan that can help to avoid slow computer syndrome. If you perform these maintenance tasks regularly, you’ll keep your computer in good working order. You’ll also avoid some common pitfalls that accumulate over time and rob your computer (and you!) of good performance.

When Maintenance Isn’t Enough

Nothing can take the place of regular maintenance. If you perform these basic tasks on your computer regularly, you’ll get good, reliable performance. If you regularly maintain your computer, and you’ve maximized your RAM, your hard disk is not approaching 75% of its capacity and you’re still experiencing slow computer performance, your next best bet is to use a registry cleaner to address problems that routine maintenance won’t touch.

On a PC, programs are supposed to have an uninstaller that works. The uninstaller is supposed to remove all traces of the program when you use it. Sometimes, uninstallers work well and other times, they leave behind useless information and instructions written into the registry. Your computer has to read and interpret this information each time it boots, and often while you’re using the computer, whether the offending program is still installed or not.

Over time, this abandoned code accumulates in the registry, increasing the likelihood that something will go wrong. For example, information in the registry may cause a computer to wait for a response from a long-removed program. Since the program isn’t capable of responding, the computer must “time-out” on the request. In other words, it sits there patiently waiting for a response that will never come.

Keeping your registry clean and free from this kind of “debris” can really improve the performance of your computer. Registry errors can indeed rob your computer of the performance it had when it was new. Using a registry cleaner like RegistryBooster can help identify troublesome code left behind in the computer registry. Removing this unnecessary registry data can improve the performance of your computer significantly and help you get more out of your computer system.

In addition, RegistryBooster can detect and repair or remove registry errors that may cause your operating system to become unstable and crash. When you run Registry Booster, you’ll get a complete diagnostic report that shows you exactly where potential problems exist in your registry.
To speed up a slow computer, try RegistryBooster. You’ve got nothing to lose but slow computer performance.

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In my last couple of posts, I’ve given you some solid advice about ways to speed up computer performance. In keeping with that theme, I have another performance booster to offer in today’s post: defragment your disk.

Do Your Routine Maintenance Before Defragging Your Disk

If you’re following my advice, you’re checking for disk errors weekly and whenever you experience an OS or application crash, and you’re cleaning up temporary files also on a weekly basis. If you’re getting close to 75% occupancy on your boot drive, you’re making plans to get the dead wood off of your main drive by storing it either on a secondary drive or on a CD/DVD or some other storage format.

When you move files around like that, you make “holes” in your disk. That could be a problem if you don’t keep your data tidy. Your disk is one of the slowest elements of your computer. It operates most efficiently when all of the data on the drive are clustered together. By storing your data in close proximity on the hard disk, you reduce the need for the read/write head on the disk to move around to read all parts of the file.

To keep your data clustered together, you need to use another built-in tool called Disk Defragmenter. Disk Defragmenter relocates data and condenses it on the hard disk so the read/write heads can move efficiently around the disk. This will save time and space on your hard disk.

To run Disk Defragmenter, right click on the target disk and select Properties > Tools. Find Disk Defragmenter and run it. This is a task you’ll want to do monthly if you use your computer a lot and at the very least quarterly. In fact, if you go a full quarter without having defragmented your hard disk you’ll notice a major improvement in performance once you’ve completed this important maintenance task. The less fragmented your disk is, the more smoothly it will run. Your computer will also run faster because it won’t have to reposition the read/write heads on your disk as frequently.

Warning: defragmenting a disk – especially a badly fragmented one – can take a lot of time. Defragging is virtually never a fast process, so this is one maintenance task you’ll want to do overnight, or when you’ll be away from your computer for several hours.
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If you’re suffering from slow computer performance, here are a few tips to help you put a little more pep in your computer’s step. These tips don’t involve spending money, and take little effort, require no special software, and can make a big difference in computer performance.

Doing The Simple Things Can Really Add Up

No one likes crashes. In the past, an application crash often meant an operating system crash. That was due, in part, to the way operating systems were designed. There wasn’t a whole lot to separate a running application from certain critical parts of the operating system, so when the application got hosed up, the OS often went down with it.

Today, the operating system is more compartmentalized than in the past, so it’s possible to have an application crash without having much impact on the OS. Regardless of whether the operating system stays up or goes down, a crash is a crash, and crashes can create disk errors.

Nothing good ever comes out of a disk error, so your best bet is to get rid of them as often as possible. Set up a maintenance routine that involves checking for (and repairing) disk errors frequently – perhaps even as often as once each week. Using Disk Check regularly will help avoid crashes that occur when an application or the OS encounters a disk error, and will also help “mop up” any disk errors created during a crash that occurs for some other reason.

Make it a habit to clean disk errors whenever a crash occurs. If, for some reason, you can’t mop up right away, your weekly Disk Check routine will prevent errors from having an ongoing impact.

Disk Check is a utility that comes with your Windows OS. You’ll find it by right-clicking the disk you want to check and selecting Properties > Tools. You can ask Disk Check to fix disk errors and attempt to recover any data that may have gotten damaged. You can also schedule Disk Check to run the next time you start the computer. Be careful with scheduling Disk Check on startup, though, as the process can take an extraordinary amount of time.

Disk Check is actually a good “overnight” task or a task you can run when you’ll be away from your computer for an extended period of time. You can also run Disk Check on other drives attached to your computer to make sure they are kept in good working order.
In following posts, I’ll provide some other tips that will improve slow computer performance and help keep your computer running smoothly.

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