You bought a top of the line system with the best parts, however after a few months you end up find it running at snail’s pace wondering whatever happened to your “best” computer. Well, here you must remember, a computer is unlike a television that once you buy, it works the same way it used to for years and years. A computer is not a static device. It is highly dynamic – in the sense that you do lot of stuff with it. You process and save documents, spreadsheets, run a number of applications, play games, save loads and loads of music and video files, etc. To do all this job, with the same speed of a newly bought one, it requires a lot of tuning up.
Here are some simple methods to tune up your system.
Remove unwanted programs
Your computer’s hard disk is like your file cabinet. You don’t want to clutter it with the brochure you got when shopping for something, outdated magazines, rough drafts, etc. Sometimes you might have downloaded an application that was required to visit that particular site, which may still be sitting in your hard disk eating the space. Needless to say the countless trial software that you don’t even need, live in your system even after their trial period ended. Over a period of time, these programs and get piled up and you may not be aware this is slowing down your system.
Removing these programs not only will improve your computer performance but will also leave more space for the important data you need. You can periodically check out your start up menu for unwanted applications. Also, you can check for duplicate data and remove those. For example, when you download a WinZip file after extracting it, you can delete the compressed file.
Clean up the Registry
Your operating system’s Registry is a bank of information about everything that is happening in your computer. It s very much like our brain, that keeps track of everything in our human system. When you delete a program, or move a file location or any of those routine tasks that you perform, a residue of that is left behind in the Registry. What you can do is you can clean up your Registry from time to time. There are many free programs available in the Internet, you can safely download them and clean up your computer.
Hard Disk fragmentation
To understand Hard Disk fragmentation, first let’s see how data is stored in a Hard Disk. Hard disk stores data in portions called sectors. Imagine the surface of the Hard Disk divided into rings like the many rings on a circular race track, then imagine dividing each ring into small pie-slices. A sector is one such slice on the ring. Each sector holds a fixed amount of data.
So when you install a new program to your empty hard disk, your computer can store the files of the program in a sequential manner, on the rings. This is the best way to store the data on a hard disk – for the reason that it can be quickly retrieved when needed. However, in due course of time, when you keep installing and uninstalling many applications, this sequential storing of data becomes harder for your hard disk. When a single program’s files are dispersed in your hard disk like a jigsaw puzzle pieces, it only increases the time taken for the disk’s arm to access them, resulting in slowing down.
When you defragment your disk, all the files are stored on sequential sectors on sequential rings of the disk. The point here is to minimize the arm movement when a program loads. This also helps to increase the speed of file loading.
Virus Removal
A virus, with creating other harmful problems, may decrease the performance of your PC too. To protect and improve your PC performance, you can install anti-virus software in your system and run virus scans regularly. There are several free anti-virus programs and Internet Service Providers too offer free anti virus software.
If your system is severely affected by virus, it’s advisable to seek a technician’s help to get rid of them. There are many online technical support providers that offer virus, malware removal services at affordable rates. You can just call them or opt for remote support where a technician will have access to your computer and clean up your system.
Thendral
http://www.articlesbase.com/computers-articles/how-to-optimize-your-pc-performance-744100.html
How do you maintain your computer performance?
How often do you defragment your HD in order to optimize your computer performance? When last you have ran Disk Clean up in order to remove unnecessary cookies, aches, etc?
When you attempt to download a program off the Internet, do you appreciate the time to read the software License Agreement? Also, do you always use caution when downloading stuffs from the Internet?
Do you have spyware, virus, firewall and other Internet security protections installed on your computer? If yes, what brand do you use?
What are some common practices to prevent Internet Viruses? In what condition do you protect your computer/notebook overall?
Which Internet Browser would you recommend to others without hesitating?
What are the easiest ways to become infected by viruses?
This message was asked by Ms. Dell.
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You all have a great day now.
Firefox, without a doubt. (I have mentioned which security programs to use below).
Following these steps will increase the "speed" of your computer dramatically.
1) Clean up the disk. Uninstall unneeded programs (especially those that run at startup and/or put something in the system tray), run Disk Cleanup, and defragment the drive. This is a good first step that will almost always take a few seconds off boot time and application loads for any computer.
2) Stomp auto-starting programs. Click Start > Run and type "msconfig" at the prompt. Click the Startup tab and look at all that junk that loads when you launch your PC. Do you really need "Adobe Reader Speed Launch"? Probably not. Turn off anything else that looks useless, but be careful not to disable your anti-virus and important system components.
3) Run a full anti-virus and anti-spyware scan. I would recommend using AVG Free Anti-virus, Spybot – Search and Destroy spyware remover and Ad-aware spyware remover. These programs are all free.
4) Clean up the registry. CCleaner, available at http://www.ccleaner.com is free and worth running. It will also remove unused files from your system – allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space.
Those are the easy and free things you can do. If your computer is still slow you need to move on to the bigger guns.
1) Upgrade RAM. This is the one killer trick that will make almost any computer run faster. With an older PC, you will rarely have enough RAM to run today’s memory-hogging operating systems and applications, and adding a high-capacity stick or two of quality RAM will give you a quick speed boost. Adding RAM is fairly simple, even for a novice, and you should be able to do the job in 5 or 10 minutes.You can run a free test at http://www.crucial.com and find out what kind of RAM (memory) your computer needs.
2) Reinstall Windows. If the above tricks haven’t helped, it may be time to wipe the slate clean and start again, reformatting your hard drive, reinstalling your applications, and restoring your data files from a backup. You’d be surprised how much more responsive a freshly reinstalled Windows system can be, as you’ve wiped out years of temp files, garbled registry entries, old versions of software programs that have been upgraded repeatedly, and all sorts of other electronic junk. Reinstalling is easy if you have the "recovery disk" that came with your PC, and only a bit more involved if you’re using a retail copy of Windows XP. Just be sure you back up everything you want to take with you before you pull the trigger!
3) Upgrade your hard drive. This is a more complicated solution, but if you’re reinstalling Windows (per the prior tip) you might consider upgrading to a bigger and possibly faster hard drive, too. Hard disk storage is a performance bottleneck on every machine, and magnetic disks degrade over time. Some performance issues could be caused by a failing hard drive, even, and upgrading to a new model could really put some zip back in your system. As a bonus, you can use the original hard drive for backups or occasional storage, if you put it in an enclosure.
References :
Defragment – never. I don’t need to read the license agreements. Only have a firewall, Shorewall. I recommend Firefox. Easiest way for a Windows user to be infected by virii is to connect to the Internet.
For Windows users: Don’t open anything sent to you by someone you don’t know. Get a decent anti-virus, -spyware, -adware, rootkit checker and firewall.
I use Linux.
References :
http://distrowatch.com/
http://free.grisoft.com/
http://www.zonealarm.com/ – firewall