subject: How to Improve Your Computer's Performance [print this page] How to Improve Your Computer's Performance
Making your computer run faster involves a series of steps and tweaks that would require patience and a bit of computer know-how. First, the basic maintenance requirements of your computer should be met. Included here is an updated antivirus and disk cleanup. To activate disk clean up, right-click your hard drive, choose Properties and push the Disk Cleanup button.
Startup
Once you're done with the basic necessities, pay attention to your PC's startup. It's possible that you have dozens of programs activated at startup, making it slower for the PC to get ready. It will be infinitely better if you just disable these programs at startup and open them only when necessary. This will save your computer time readying the program before you can use the system. This can be done by typing "msconfig" in the box after clicking Start and choosing Run. A new window will appear, click the Startup tab and uncheck all the boxes that you do not require at startup. However, don't uncheck the antivirus icon since this should always be running in your system.
Uninstalling Inactive Programs
One of the reasons why your computer is slowing down could be the amount of programs installed in the system that you don't really use. If you have idle software in your system, you might uninstall them and free important space from your hard drive. You can do this by clicking Start, Settings, Control Panel and Add or Remove Programs.
Disk Defragmentation
This particular step may take a few hours to perform but it's sure to improve your system' performance. Defragmentation will rearrange your files so that you will be able to access your computer faster. You can do this by right-clicking a hard drive, selecting Properties, clicking tool and choosing the Defragment Now button. It is advisable that you do not use your computer while the system is defragmenting.
Opting for a registry scan is another good way to refresh your registry database. There are also various tweaks and programs on the internet designed to speed up the booting process of your computer. However, be very weary when downloading such programs because these could seriously affect your system or may even carry viruses in your drive.
Make sure that you have a backup of all your files in the event that something gets out of plan. Hopefully, if you stick with the basic steps, then you won't be facing that problem anytime soon. The good news is that some systems come equipped with a few of these tools.
