How To Speed Up Your Computer In 10 Minutes
1—Old Programs Make Your Computer Slow
Technically, a program installed on your computer uses nothing but hard drive space until it’s activated. The problem is that many programs these days get
4—Taskbar Applets Slowing You Down
It’s not uncommon to see computers today with three or more taskbar applets all dealing with wireless network settings. That’s insane—every one of those applets takes up part of your computer’s memory and computer processing (CPU) power, denying that memory and CPU to other programs on your computer which could use them to run faster.
Take a good look at the taskbar applets in the bottom right corner of your screen and decide whether you need all of them. If you don’t, you have two options:
Uninstall them completely: go to the Add/Remove Programs wizard in the Control Panel and remove the applet’s associated program.
Disable them from starting up automatically: use a startup manager program (available on free download sites) to remove the applets from the list of programs which start automatically. Beware, some programs reinstall themselves into the automatic startup list each time you run them manually.
5—Seeking A Faster Computer Through Defragmentation
Seeking is the word computer scientists use to describe what your computer does when it tries to find a file on your hard drive. Files can be stored on your hard drive in two different ways:
Fragmented: this is like a giant pile of old mail on your desk. When you go looking for your phone bill, you have to dig through piles of other junk to find it. I sometimes let mail pile up this way because it’s faster than sorting mail when it arrives; Windows saves files in big piles like this because it’s faster.
Defragmented: this is like keeping everything in a nice alphabetically-sorted file cabinet. When you need to find something, it’s really quick—but when you need to save something, it’s rather slow. Because it’s slow, Windows doesn’t defragment files on its own.
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1—Old Programs Make Your Computer Slow
Technically, a program installed on your computer uses nothing but hard drive space until it’s activated. The problem is that many programs these days get
started when your computer boots.
2—Old Registry, Slow Computer
The Windows Registry has come a long way from the Windows 95 and Windows 98 days when a bad registry entry could crash your computer and your only solution was to reinstall Windows. But problems in the Windows Registry can still slow down your computer.
3—Anti-Virus, Anti-Speed
You should always run a Windows computer with anti-virus enabled (although sometimes I will suggest that you take a chance and turn it off to get the maximum amount of speed out of your computer). But you don’t have to use the anti-virus’s default settings.
One thing most anti-virus software does which slows down your computer is scan your hard drive periodically for infected files.
Check your anti-virus settings to see what kind of control you have over hard disk scans. For maximum speed, you can turn them off and then run them manually once a week—just don’t forget them!
2—Old Registry, Slow Computer
The Windows Registry has come a long way from the Windows 95 and Windows 98 days when a bad registry entry could crash your computer and your only solution was to reinstall Windows. But problems in the Windows Registry can still slow down your computer.
3—Anti-Virus, Anti-Speed
You should always run a Windows computer with anti-virus enabled (although sometimes I will suggest that you take a chance and turn it off to get the maximum amount of speed out of your computer). But you don’t have to use the anti-virus’s default settings.
One thing most anti-virus software does which slows down your computer is scan your hard drive periodically for infected files.
Check your anti-virus settings to see what kind of control you have over hard disk scans. For maximum speed, you can turn them off and then run them manually once a week—just don’t forget them!
4—Taskbar Applets Slowing You Down
It’s not uncommon to see computers today with three or more taskbar applets all dealing with wireless network settings. That’s insane—every one of those applets takes up part of your computer’s memory and computer processing (CPU) power, denying that memory and CPU to other programs on your computer which could use them to run faster.
Take a good look at the taskbar applets in the bottom right corner of your screen and decide whether you need all of them. If you don’t, you have two options:
Uninstall them completely: go to the Add/Remove Programs wizard in the Control Panel and remove the applet’s associated program.
Disable them from starting up automatically: use a startup manager program (available on free download sites) to remove the applets from the list of programs which start automatically. Beware, some programs reinstall themselves into the automatic startup list each time you run them manually.
5—Seeking A Faster Computer Through Defragmentation
Seeking is the word computer scientists use to describe what your computer does when it tries to find a file on your hard drive. Files can be stored on your hard drive in two different ways:
Fragmented: this is like a giant pile of old mail on your desk. When you go looking for your phone bill, you have to dig through piles of other junk to find it. I sometimes let mail pile up this way because it’s faster than sorting mail when it arrives; Windows saves files in big piles like this because it’s faster.
Defragmented: this is like keeping everything in a nice alphabetically-sorted file cabinet. When you need to find something, it’s really quick—but when you need to save something, it’s rather slow. Because it’s slow, Windows doesn’t defragment files on its own.
!! We Love Techno !!
