How to Speed Up a Windows PC

How to Speed Up a Windows PC

How to Speed Up a Windows PC

Anyone faced with a Windows Vista PC over a year old knows how slow computers can get. Waiting ten minutes for your PC to start up while you make breakfast and coffee is a normal day for even those who haven't burdened their PC with excess bloat. A slow PC can reduce productivity and lead to intense frustration as it takes longer and longer to complete ordinary tasks. If you'd like to speed up your PC, I have a few easy tips that can help.

1. Regular maintenance. Make sure you're defragmenting your hard drive on a monthly basis. If you stop using a program, remove it and all its files from your system; make sure it doesn't run automatically even after you've uninstalled it. Regularly go through and empty your recycle bin. Clear unnecessary shortcuts from your desktop. These are all easy tasks that every PC owner should engage in on a regular basis.

2. Stop unnecessary processes from running. If you're having a very slow day with your PC, try and figure out what's slowing it down. Open up your task manager and have a look at the processes running. You won't recognise most of them; that's okay. Just Google them and you'll quickly find enough information for you to determine what can safely be turned off. If you make a mistake, a quick restart will solve the problem without any lasting damage to your PC.

To find out which processes are taking up the most memory, simply click on memory and it will place the most resource-hogging processes at the top. Many of these are probably important programs that you're using right now, like your browser, email program, or office software. Don't get rid of dwm.exe, either, as this is what runs the entire desktop. A bit lower down, though, you might find such insidious invaders as the iTunes helper module, which simply exists to start up iTunes when you plug in your iPhone or iPod. This doesn't need to run most of the time. To eliminate a process, simply right click on it and choose end process.

This is only a temporary measure; all of these programs will return when you restart your computer. To make the changes permanent, you need to move on to the next step.

3. Clear out your startup folder. This is what makes your computer take ten minutes to get going every morning and as such is essential to speed up that sloth. On Vista and 7, type msconfig into the search box. On XP, type it into the run box. Then choose startup from the menu that appears. You'll see a whole list of the programs that start up with your PC. Chances are, if you've had your computer for a while a number of these will be unnecessary. Do you need your instant messaging programs to start with your computer, or can you start them yourself when you need them?

Be a bit more careful with these choices. Restarting your computer will not fix any problems you cause for yourself; you could too easily eliminate starting up the Windows operating system, for example, and then you won't even be able to launch it in safe mode to restore your destroyed settings. Make sure you do your research before you prevent an unknown program from starting up with your system.

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