Wheather or not people want to admit it yet, computers are a fundamental tool that this era uses, be it business or studying. Whatever it is, you want a fast computer to get the job done quickly and here are a few things that anyone can do to their computer and speed it up to run like the day they bought it.
If you would like, you can add this to your favorites and view it every time you tune up your computer.
There are 2 pieces of software you should download to help you, one is called ccleaner, the other one is called defraggler and they are both free. Both are linked right below to download.
Defraggler can be found here the download should start automatically: http://www.filehippo.com/download_defraggler/download/88c79feaaeaa00592175a9b0dce8f49c/
ccleaner can be found here and should also start automatically: http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/download/73616df80eeafb43d186e32eeaa6ea41/
1) Fragmentation:
De fragment your PC at least once a week. When you save stuff on your computer, your computer breaks all your files into many pieces and scatters them on your hard drive. Fragmentation helps in collecting those scattered pieces, organizes them in a neatly manner and gives you a little more space. It allows storage to be used more conveniently and helps in reducing data access time, making programs and files open faster. Some operating systems automatically do the de fragment process while some of them require special software for this purpose. Windows comes with a utility called Disk de Fragment. Go to Start>>All Programs>>Accessories>>System Tools>>Disk Fragment and then a dialogue box will open. There you can see a button name "De fragment". Click on it and the defragment process will begin. It will take time. When the process completes, you will get some extra free space and may notice a speed increase when running programs or opening files. Although this is one way of defragging your computer, I would suggest using a program called defraggler, it's free and easy to use and does a far better job at defragging your computer than the built-in version of windows. The link to defraggler is located at the top of this page. To use defraggler you just got to click on analyze and then defrag afterwards. 99% of the time it will select the disk drive you use automatically if it doesn't just select drive c: or the drive you want to defrag and then hit analyze and so forth.
2) Registry Cleaning:
One of the most essential parts of the windows operating system is the registry which contains all the details about your computer, like where the programs are stored and a list of all Start menu shortcuts. Basically, everything you do on your computer is recorded somewhere in the registry.It acts like a database which contains all the information about your PC. Now to clean it I would reccomend ccleaner, it's a piece of software that's free and very easy to use. It also has a lot of other tools that comes with ccleaner and I will talk about them later down below. I do not reccomend novices to manually enter the registry and start deleting items as this could cause your computer to stop working properly and why you should only use a program like ccleaner or something similar to do this. The link to ccleaner is at the top of this page also.
3) Good Anti-virus:
If you want to run your PC smoothly, then you have to install a good Anti-virus which will help you to get rid of all the viruses and Trojans. Viruses are a piece of code or an executable program which will delete your files on hard disk and sometimes can even crash your system. When your system gets infected by viruses,it acts different, like you get an unusual screen display,error messages,slows down your system,system will lock up eventually, windows will work incorrectly etc. They say that "Prevention is better than cure". Preventing your PC from getting viruses by using an anti-virus program is better than dealing with an infected PC. Some of the best anti-virus software available in the market are Kaspersky, ESET NOD32, norton, avg etc. These antivirus programs will not only help you in dealing with viruses but also with other threats like adware, spyware and Trojans.
4) Getting rid of unwanted start up programs:
Start up programs are programs which are automatically started by Windows every time you turn on the computer. The Start up programs will be running in the background causing your computer to run slower by eating your system resources. Some of the start up programs are very critical for your Operating System. You don't have to disable them unless you know they are unnecessary.
Here is where ccleaner also comes in handy again as it only shows the start up programs that won't harm your computer by disabling them and is easy to use. Therefore making it safe to disable startup programs for everyone. With this, your computer should start up a lot faster to instead of taking 20 minutes.
5) Uninstall all unused programs:
Any programs that aren't being used is just taking up space on your hard drive. Deleting a program folder doesn't mean that you uninstalled that program. You have to do it by uninstalling the program from Control panel.Go to Start Menu>>Control Panel>>Add or Remove Program.
It will open a dialogue box in which various installed programs are given, click on "Remove". Now, the program will be removed from your computer. Make sure you get all those pesky toolbars off.
Another way to remove programs is once again ccleaner, as it comes with a uninstall option, giving you a list of programs currently installed on your system.
6) Recycle bin:
If you delete any file, it will not be completely removed from your computer. It goes to the Recycle bin. Basically the Recycle bin is a temporary storage for all the files that have been deleted by the user. Sometimes, files get accidentally deleted. You can recover those files from the Recycle bin. But they still take up space on your computer while they sit in there. So unwanted stuff should be emptied from the recycle bin.Its always good to empty the recycle bin to free up space on your computer so you can do more things. Youd should empty your Recycle bin on a weekly or monthly basis.
7) Delete Temporary Internet Files:
Every time you visit a website or open a file in it, a temporary copy is made and kept in your hard drive. Basically, these are the files stored in your computer and helps to speed up web surfing. When you visit any website, your browser will take particular files from that website and store them in the hard drive of your computer. Now the page should load faster because you have the information stored in the hard drive of your computer as Temporary Internet Files. Now they do speed up your broswer, but as time goes by they slow it down, I could go on a whole class of why this happens but lets keep this simple. You can go to start>>control panel>> network and Internet>> Internet options, then on browsing history you hit delete and a little menu will pop up and you check what you want to delete, another option is ccleaner, which does it just as well as the operating systems utility, I know I mention ccleaner a lot but it is a very powerful and easy to use utility for speeding up computers. This should also be done ever so often.
A basic summary of why temporary internet files begin to slow down the web browser for those that want a reason why they should go the extra mile and delete them!!!
The slowdown begins to happen when you have lots of temporary Internet files stored on your computer which are redundant. This happens as web pages you visit have been changed or updated, and then your temp Internet files store grows and grows to such an extent that you could literally have thousands of files in the directory.The size of the temp files is not really a problem as Internet temp files are tiny, but the sheer volume of the files means a real chore for your browser as it has to shift through thousands of files to find the temp files it needs, hence the slow down.
8) Updates:
There is nothing more important than updating your computer, The best way to do that is to go to start>>all programs>> windows update. On the left site of windows update hit "check for updates".
The computer will now check for updates and this can take a few moments. Once it's done, hit "install updates". After it's done installing all the updates it may ask your to restart your computer so it can configure the updates. Installing updates does a number of things including speeding up your system, updating your windows security, and a whole lot of other things. That is pretty much all there is to updating a windows pc.
9) Conclusion:
This will keep your computer running sercure,fast, and reliable. It's a basic guide to keeping your computer's speed in prime condition so your no longer waiting 10 or 20 seconds between each webpage to load and sometimes minutes. I hope this is a great read for everyone and I hope that you have no trouble following this guide. For the people that are having a hard time figuring out how to use ccleaner, I will give a short tutorial below.
How to use ccleaner
