Slow Computer?
4 tips to speed up and clean up your computer
One of the most common computer question I am asked is - ‘Why is my computer so slow?’. The funny part is, there could be hundreds of different reasons why your computer is slow. However 95% of the time after these 4, your computer will be running like it did when you first purchased it.
1 - Defrag your computer
This *can* take a couple hours.
Depending on a few things like the size of your hard drive, how fragmented your drive is, how full your drive is, will determine just how long it will take to defrag your computer. On a side note, heavy computer users should do this at least once per week. . .light computer users should do this once per month.
Click the version of windows you have for detailed instructions on how to defrag your computer.
Windows 95 - Windows 98 - Windows NT - Windows 2000 - Windows ME - Windows XP - Windows Vista
2 - Scan for adware
You will be surprised what you find.
It’s always fun to browse all those websites, but unless you browse highly trusted sites, your computer will be filled with software used in advertisement purposes. This builds up and can quickly slow down any top-notch computer on the market.
For this we will use ‘open source’ software, aka free, that will scan your computer and speed things up a little. This software is called Ad-Aware, click the name to download their software. If you need help on installing it, I recommend reading this or this.
3 - Scan for spyware
What’s with this ‘ware’ stuff anyway?
Another type of ‘malware’ as they call it, is known as ‘Spyware’. This is the software, secretly installed into your computers from other software, websites, etc. The purpose of this is to log your activities and send the information back to their authors for statistical needs.
For this we will use another ‘open source’ software called ‘Spybot: Search and Destroy’. It will scan your computer, much like Ad-Aware did, but this time search for spyware. You can download this program here. Also, if you need help installing and scanning check out here, or here.
4 - Scan for a Virus
Don’t let your computer fall victim.
You should have an anti-virus installed. This should be turned on at all times, and you should scan about once a month. If you do not have a program that does this, I recommend doing an ‘online scan’, which is free from the bigger anti-virus companies. Click a link below to begin an online scan on your computer right now.
Trend Micro - Symantec - Panda - BitDefender
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Nice article, if a computer is adequately protected from Malware, half the battle is won. The other half, in terms of optimum system speed, i personally feel, comes from regular system maintenance including DiskCleanup and making sure the drives are not fragmented. CCLeaner is a good utility for cleanups.Most pple ignore the defragmenting part, but heavy fragmentation can actually result in instability and other problems like freezes. I think though drives are larger nowadays, so is the average size of a file!
And with audio and video files loaded onto a computer, then ‘dumped’ into an ipod, and removed from your hard drive will cause fragmentation.
Omonia is correct, just like having a car, you have to do ‘up keep’ with computers.