7 Ways to Help Speed up Your Computer
7 Ways to Help Speed up Your Computer
One of the biggest annoyances, besides viruses and things not working properly on a computer can be the speed. It can be downright frustrating, and some might even want to heave it through the picture window in the living room (but who can afford to do that!)
Trust me, I can appreciate how you feel, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Although slapping your monitor, or using magical abracadabra motions on your computer may feel like it is helping the issue, unfortunately it doesn’t.
Here are seven ways you can help speed up your computer:
1. Uninstall unneeded programs
Computers usually are pre-loaded with many third-party applications which are hardly ever used, or people have no idea what they are for. If you aren’t using it, remove it. It helps free up space on your hard-drive, and if any of these programs happen to run in the background of your computer (even though you don’t use it), uninstalling it will help you have more memory resources for more important tasks such as: gaming, Facebooking, emails, banking, PowerPoint presentations and more.
To uninstall programs –
Open your computers control panel
Open programs and features (or add remove programs on previous Windows version)
Review what is in the lists for programs.
Highlight the program by left clicking on it
Click the uninstall button
2. Delete Temporary Files
When programs open, you download programs to install, everyday tasks, they fill up your temporary file folder. This can become problematic when the folder begins to fill up. Emptying the temporary file folder, will help free up hard-drive space, which helps speed up performance.
To delete Temporary Files– There are a few different spots where temporary files are stored.
Open either My Computer, Computer, or File Explorer (Depends on which version of Windows you are using),
Open C:\
Open the Windows folder
Open the Temp folder (if you get a message about having to be an administrator, click ok)
Click organize (or edit if in older versions of windows)
Click Select all
Press delete on your keyboard
If you get a message that says an item cannot be deleted, click skip
Another Temp location:
Click Start
Click Run (or press and hold the windows key on your keyboard, and press R)
This will open the Run command
Type %temp%
Press enter or click ok
This will open the temp file
Click organize (or edit if in older versions of windows)
Click Select all
Press delete on your keyboard
If you get a message that says an item cannot be deleted, click skip
3. Clear out temporary internet files and cookies
This can be different depending on which browser you are using. By removing cookies and temporary internet files it will help speed up your browsing experience. Note, while removing these, you could remove saved passwords and have to re-enter them.
4. Add more RAM (Memory)
Adding more RAM (Random Access Memory) is a great cost effective way to boost your computer speed. RAM is used when you open up programs, playing games and more. The more memory you have, the better performance you will experience.
This is something you should take to a local computer shop (like LM Computers), and they can quote a price for the upgrade and install the hardware properly.
5. Larger hard drive (or emptying data from the one you have)
Having a larger hard-drive or a clean hard drive free of a lot of data will help your performance. When a hard-drive is around 85% or higher used capacity, it starts to really bog down your speed.
If you have a thumb drive or external hard-drive, moving movies, pictures, music and more to these devices will allow your main hard-drive to stay healthy. Once your data is moved over to either of these devices, you can plug it in and access at any time.
6. Disabling unneeded start-up items
When your computer boots up, there are many programs which turn on with the computer, and run in the background. These programs are usually unnecessary to run Windows.
To stop programs from booting, you can use the MSCONFIG utility to disable these items. Although, it’s not in the best interest to leave your computer running in a selective start-up, you can take it into us and we can remove these items from the registry in a proper manner to keep your computer running in a normal start-up.
To use the MSCONFIG utility:
Click Start
Click Run (or press and hold the windows key on your keyboard, and press R)
Type msconfig
Press enter or click ok
Click on the start-up tab
Uncheck items that you do not want to start-up with the computer from this list
Click Apply
Click Ok
Click Restart
7. Dusting out your computer
Keeping the inside of the computer clean will help with air-flow and heat dispersion. When a computer gets dusty, and the cobwebs start building up the fans don’t work as great as they should. This can lead to your motherboard, hard-drive and other components taking on more heat than they should, which can result in hardware failure.
Having your computer dusted regularly will help with this.
We hope that you enjoyed this helpful list to speeding up your computer. If you would like to take your computer in for a speed tune-up, or install more memory stop by the shop, we’d be happy to help!
