Has your computer been running a little sluggish lately? Over a period of time Windows gets bogged down, lets look go over some tips to help your computer run faster and more smoothly. If you are running XP you should have at least 512mb ram, Vista users should have a least 1gb of memory. Upgrading the ram will give you the most dramatic improvement in speed. But there are other things you can do to optimize performance and make the computer run faster:
Defrag your hard drive
Data gets scattered all over the hard drive, use Disk Defragmenter to put the pieces together resulting in faster access to files and programs. To defrag drive go:
- Click Start
- Go to All Programs
- Go to Accessories
- Go to System Tools
- Now click Disk Defragmenter
Clean up Disk space
- Go to Start >All Programs >Accessories >System Tools, now click Disk Cleanup
- Delete temporary Internet files
- Delete downloaded program files
- Empty out the Recycle Bin
- Delete Windows temporary files
Check and repair Disk Errors
This tool checks the health of the hard drive and checks for bad sectors which can hurt the performance and create errors in saving files. Go to:
- Click Start
- Click My Computer
- Right click on the drive you want to check, the go to “Properties”
- Click “Tools
- Click “Check Now”
- A dialog box apears, put a check mark on “Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors”
- If it does find any bad sectors choose to fix them
Scan for Spyware and Viruses
Spyware is probably main culprit for sudden loss in computer speed, do regular spyware and virus scans. Make sure your firewall is turned on, and you are getting the all the latest updates from Microsoft.
All the tools mentioned above can be found in Windows Vista as well. The quickest way to access the tools is to go to the Start menu which is now a Windows logo and in the “Start Search” field begin typing the tool you want to use such as “Disk Defragmenter” or “Disk Cleanup” and the program will appear on top. This is a great feature in Vista so use it.