Seven Ways to Speed Up Your Computer

If your computer is not running as smoothly as you would like, there are a number of things that you can do to speed up your computer.· Using a combination of manual changes combined with using a professional performance tuner (particularly on the registry) should get and keep your PC running as smoothly as possible.· A great all in one performance tuner is Performance Optimizer from Miracle Technologies.

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Here are seven ways to speed up your computer:

  1. Cleaning up your hard disk.· Cleaning and freeing up disk space can speed up your computer.· To do this, you need to determine which files you can be removed safely, which you can then chose to remove.· They files that you should be looking to remove are:
    • Temporary Internet files
    • Empty the recycle bin
    • Temporary Windows files
    • Downloaded files that are no longer used e.g. Browser plug-ins, ActiveX components

    2. A tool that manages to do this very well is ErrorFix. Go to http://www.errorfix.com/ for more details or click on the link to download a copy.

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  2. Defragment your hard disk.· When hard disks fill up, they split up files over different parts of the disk.· When a disk becomes very fragmented it affects the overall speed of your computer as it retrieves a file from lots of different places. By defragmenting your drive you can put these pieces back together again and improve the overall performance of your drive and consequently speed up your computer.· It a good idea to defragment your disk regularly (every month or so), when your disk drive is 80% full or if you’ve added lots of new applications and files.

    3. Again I’d recommend ErrorFix for doign this. Although the built in Windows tool is good enough it doesn’t have the other goodies that this tools provides.· For more details, go to http://www.errorfix.com/

  3. Check for disk errors.· If your hard drive has errors this may be caused by ‘bad sectors’.· These are areas on the disk that become damaged over time and cannot be read by Windows.· Scanning the system for errors and uncover bad sectors. Windows provides a error checking utility to scan the disk for these kinds of errors

    4. Again ErrorFix is the tool of choice…

  4. Scan for spyware or malware.· Unfortunately we live in a world where people try to take advantage of us when using our computers and in particular when you’re surfing the web.· Spyware or malware is software that collects personal information from you without asking your permission and this practice is everywhere.· There are a number of products on the market that can scan your machine and remove spyware from your machine.· Please note that this is not the same as a virus which actively seeks to cause damage to your or another computer.· Any software running in the background can seriously affect computer performance and should be removed to speed up your computer.

    5. A great anti-spyware product that I recommend is NoAdware.

    Click the image to download straight away or go to http://www.noadware.net/ for more details

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  5. Update drivers.· In order for devices plugged into your machine (including your hard disk, memory and screen) requires a piece of software called a device driver.· A device driver knows how to talk to your computer and the device that it ‘drives’.· Often companies update these drivers to be more efficient which can cause a speed up in the use of that device therefore speeding up your computer.

    6. Getting hold of software that can scan your computer and determine which drivers are out of date and update them is a great way to keep your hardware running smoothly.· I recommend using Driver Robot.· You can go to http://www.driverrobot.com for more details or click on the image to download straight away.

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  6. Remove and unwanted programs.· Often when new software gets loaded on to your machine is starts services when your machine loads up.· This means that if you aren’t using this software it is needlessly using your CPU and slowing your machine.· Removing any unwanted applications can significantly speed up your computer.· To do this, go to the control panel and click on add/remove programs.· You should be able to see which applications your aren’t using and remove them from there.A great all round tool that manages your programs and applications far better tahn the standard Windows add/remove programs administrator is Registry Easy.· This contains a great tool for managing your applications. Go to http://www.registryeasy.com for more details or click on the image below to download straight away.
  7. Set the virtual memory to the correct size.· When Windows has information it accesses regularly, but doesn’t have enough memory to store it all in RAM, it uses a thing called a page file which temporarily stores this information while it’s not being used, this is known as virtual memory.· Typically Windows manages this automatically, but can get it badly wrong.· As a rule, to speed up your computer you should ensure that the paging file is one and a half times the size of your RAM.· To do this, right click My Computer, select Properties and click the advanced tab.· From there you select performance settings, click advanced tab and modify the virtual memory file size.· Alternatively Perfect Optimizer at http://www.perfectoptimizer5.com/ has a built in memory manager that monitors system activity and modifies page file size requirements on the fly!· Click below to download and try it out…
  8. Use ReadyBoost (Vista users only).· If you are running Windows Vista, Microsoft have provided a new tool called ReadyBoost.· This tool allows you to use USB flash drives or memory card to speed up your computer instead of having to buy additional RAM.