This is a guest post from Candis Bradshaw, a new contributor to Digitizd. She’s a classical musician turned court reporter turned alphatechnogeek, and she’ll be around relatively often, so make her feel welcome!
Does your computer take an eternity to boot or shut down? Do you have frequent system freezes or slowdowns during the course of the day? You may be suffering from the computer slowdown blues. The “slowdown blues” can be caused by many things, but here is what you can do to help cure those slowdown blues.
We’ve discussed a few ways before to speed up your computer, and tips for fixing other problems, but now we’re going to dig into Windows itself.
A note before we get going: before you do anything that deals with your computer’s system and internal files, make sure you’ve got your most important files backed up somewhere. Basically any problem can be corrected, but you don’t want to risk losing some important data. Put it on a hard drive, in Dropbox, on 8,000 zip drives—just make sure you can always get it back.
Ready? Let’s rev your computer’s engine!
Defrag the hard drive
Defragmenting the hard drive is akin to cleaning and organizing your house. If you don’t clean up your house, over time, your house will become cluttered and disorganized. This is what happens when a computer’s hard drive is fragmented. To make your computer run better, defragment your hard drive at least once a month.
Windows comes with a built-in defragmenter. To access it in Windows XP, go to Start | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Disk Defragmenter. Windows Vista also has a built-in defragmenter, but this website supposedly offers a better, faster way to defragment a computer running Vista.
The Windows built-in defragmenter is a stripped down version of a commercial defragmenting software, Diskeeper, but the Windows defragmenter is more than adequate for the majority of users. Automate defragmenting by using the Windows Task Scheduler to automatically run the defragmenter. (Search your help files for how to set up Windows Task Scheduler.)
Although defragging a hard drive is good, you can over-defragment your hard drive. Frequent defragmenting can cause excess wear and tear on a hard drive and can actually shorten the hard drive’s life. Most experts recommend to not defragment your hard drive more than once a week.
Check your startup items
(David’s note: this one’s a lot more complicated, and thus more prone to error, than some others. Candis’ instructions are great, but proceed with caution.)
Look to the left of the clock on the system tray and see how many icons appear. These are some of the programs that start every time Windows boots, and these programs can create unnecessary system drains. Why do you need to have QuickTime, Adobe Reader, and RealPlayer start with Windows? You don’t.
To view what programs start with Windows, go to Start | Run (or press the Windows Key, which is between the control and alt keys on the bottom left of your keyboard, and R at the same time). Once you see the run dialog box, type “msconfig”, press enter, and click on the startup tab.
You will see a whole list of things with names that you probably don’t recognize. To see what you can uncheck, look at the location of the item. If the item points to something unessential, such as anything from Adobe, QuickTime, or RealPlayer, remove the checkmark.
If you’re not sure whether it is safe to remove the checkmark, go here and type the name of the item in the “startup” section on the webpage or visit this page to view a comprehensive list. A few items you should keep checked are your antivirus and firewall software, automatic backup software, and Windows files. After unchecking what you want to remove, msconfig will prompt you to restart the system for the changes to take effect.
If, after startup, your system does not work property, go back to msconfig and put a checkmark back in one of the items you unchecked and restart. Repeat this process until your system works properly. If you even take a few items off the startup list, your computer can speed up quite dramatically.
Clean out your junk
Computer slowdowns also can be caused by oodles of temporary files mucking up your system. These need to be cleaned out every couple of weeks–use either the Windows Disk Cleanup tool (Start | All Programs| Accessories | System Tools | Disk Cleanup) or use a freeware product like CCleaner. CCleaner does an excellent job removing all sorts of files which you do not need….and the best part is CCleaner is free!
Also, ensure at least 10% of your hard drive space is free. A portion of the hard drive is used for virtual memory, and that virtual memory cannot function if the hard drive is close to capacity or full.
De-gunk your registry
Every time you add or remove a program from your computer, the registry (which is the file which stores your computer settings) becomes gunked up, split up, and can cause quite a slowdown. On the other hand, if you incorrectly clean your registry, you will end up reinstalling Windows, so manually cleaning the registry is not something that is suggested.
Two reliable registry cleaners are jv16 Power Tools and CCleaner. In CCleaner, click on the “Issues” button to access the built-in registry cleaner. Both of these programs allow you to back up your registry, which is something experts suggest you do before making any changes to the registry. If something goes wrong, restore the registry to the backed up copy. After you clean the registry, it is important to restart your computer.
Upgrade your memory
Maybe your computing needs have changed (you’re running more programs at once, for example), so it’s maybe time to put more RAM into your computer. Upgrading RAM is very easy to do and not terribly expensive (David’s note: try Newegg for all computer purchases—awesome prices, fast service). If you do not feel comfortable upgrading the RAM yourself, call your local “geek” or computer store for help.
Chase those viruses and spyware programs away!
Last, but definitely not least, run your antivirus program and anti-spyware program. If both of those come up clean, double-check your antivirus/anti-spyware program with a free web-based program, such as:
- Trend Micro House Call
- Kapersky SOS
- Panda ActiveScan
- Eset Online Scanner
- AVG Antispyware free online scan
- Previx CSI
Or, you can download a free antispyware program, such as:
Following the above steps will help cure the computer blues and make your computer run like new. You won’t regret taking the time out to do this today!
What’s your go-to method for getting your computer speedy again?
Liked the post? Share it with somebody!
-
AndrewNoNumbers
-
Candis Bradshaw
-
DJ Tukancheez
-
David Pierce
-
DJ Tukancheez
-
David Pierce
