Let’s face it; anyone who owns a computer ends up becoming annoyed and frustrated at times, especially when the computer slows down to a snail’s pace. While this can sometimes be painfully obvious whenever you try to load a program, it can also mean that your computer takes forever to boot up.
Irrespective of what’s causing it, slow computers are something which millions of users have to deal with daily. Even though there is no guaranteed cure for a slow computer, there are however four things you can do to speed it up.
#1. Reboot Computer
You’d be surprised at just how many people never bother rebooting their computers, and this in itself is a major cause for computers being slow. With so many people having 24 hour Internet connection, and their computers being an integral part of their lifestyle, many people tend to overlook the fact that all computers need to be rebooted frequently.
You need to bear in mind that there are several programs which don’t shut down completely even when you close them. Furthermore, many software programs tend to have memory leakage, and over a period of time this can have an adverse effect on your computer’s available memory. Obviously, when your computer is short on available memory it inevitably begins slowing down until it reaches a snail’s pace. By rebooting your computer you’ll be allowing it to reset its memory and you’d be surprised how this alone can result in your computer speeding up.
#2. Memory Upgrade
The amount of available memory has a direct impact on the speed of your computer. At the very least you should have 512 MB RAM, and that if you’re running one of the earlier versions of Microsoft Windows such as XP. On the other hand if you’re using the new Windows 7 operating platform then you’ll need at least 1GB of RAM. In fact, even though Windows Vista is an earlier system, it requires a whopping 1.5GB. Ideally you should have at least 2GB of available memory on your computer if you have a 64-bit system, or if you enjoy playing games.
#3. System Defrag
As you may well already know, if your hard drive is fragmented it results in your machine becoming inefficient. You can bet your bottom dollar that if you’ve not been using the built in defragment tool, you’ll be forfeiting a substantial amount of your computer’s potential with regards to accessing files and etc.
Bear in mind that Microsoft has included a defragmenting tool with all the operating systems for a very good reason, in that it should be used at least once every 30 days in order to ensure that your hard drive does not become overly fragmented. If you have not used in the tool for an extended period of time, you’ll notice to a substantial difference in speed once you do.
#4. Registry Cleaner
Just as a defragmenting tool helps to organize your hard drive, a registry cleaner helps to remove unnecessary clutter from the windows registry, bearing in mind that the registry can be compared to being a computer’s brain. Whenever you choose to install new programs, or remove old programs or drivers, a significant amount of data is either added or removed from your computer’s registry.
Unfortunately however, the vast majority of programs fail to uninstall properly, and this often results in a certain amount of data remaining in the registry which shouldn’t in fact been removed. Of course, these pockets of data do nothing other than clutter up your registry and cause conflicts between programs and drivers. This in turn results in your system becoming increasingly slow, not to mention the fact that you’ll also begin experiencing frequent error messages. By running an effective registry cleaning tool regularly, you’ll be doing much in terms of improving the overall speed of your computer.
