subject: 3 Ways to Speed Up Your Computer Without Spending a Fortune [print this page] 3 Ways to Speed Up Your Computer Without Spending a Fortune
Looking for ways to speed up your computer without delving out the cash? Not only is it possible to do but it actually a good thing to do as well. No one wants a slow computer that freezes, crashes, and pops up errors all the time. When you take the time to speed up your PC, you are helping it clear out out-of-date stuff and preventing damage to the registry. Want to know how? Here are three things to get you started
1. Turn off your computer - As simple as this sounds, few people actually do it. Every night you need to turn your computer off. This often-overlooked step can help your computer out a lot.
In just one Internet surfing session, your computer does a lot. It has to load and process hundreds and maybe even thousands of images, text documents, and sounds just to load up a few pages.
Not every program you load up in the day shuts down when you close out the session. But when you shut off your computer, everything turns off. You may have noticed this phenomena when your computer was running dreadfully slow only to speed back up after a system restart.
Think about it. You need rest and so does your computer. Those eight hours each day can really add up. It gives your computer a chance to shut down, cool off, and allows all the circuits to quit running for a while. Your computer fan (and circuits) will thank you.
2. Clear out temporary files - Have you ever noticed that when you go to a website the second time it loads faster than it does the first time? This is because your computer stores the images, files and sounds in a temporary folder. Over the course of a day, your computer can store hundreds or thousands of files.
While this can speed up your web browsing in the short term, over the long run it slows your computer down. All those extra files mean a slower computer. However, you can do some stuff to help your computer out.
FireFox users - Click Tools- Click Privacy - Set the browsing history to 7 days or less
Internet Explorer - Click Tools - Internet Options - Under Browsing History click Settings - Under Days to keep pages in history change it to 7 days or less
All Users - Click Start - My computer of Computer - Right click C: - Select Properties - Click Disk Clean Up - Click Ok (this should be done periodically. It could take several minutes to load)
You can also clean out all temporary files with a good registry cleaner.
3. Clean the registry - You will need to get a registry cleaner to do this. The Windows registry is prone to errors and fixing them on a regular basis is the only way to keep your computer running like new. A good registry cleaner will cost a few dollars after the initial trial--but it's better than going through a computer crash!
