Recapturing Speed

When you first purchased you computer everything ran fast. Now you've had your computer for a while and it seems like it just keeps getting slower and slower. You want fix your speed issue, here's how.

One sure-fire way is to do a reformat and re-install (NOT an exercise for beginners). If you've been running your system for awhile and have not done this, it may be something to look into. We ran a 3 part series on this topic awhile back. Here are the links to those pages:

Part 1 - Reformat and Reinstall

Part 2 -Reformat and Reinstall 2

Part 3 - Reformat and Reinstall 3

However, reformatting is probably a bit on the extreme side for most speed problems.

The most likely reason you are experiencing slowdowns (and possibly more lockups) is that there is too much "junk" running in your System Tray. It seems like just about every other program I install wants to put an icon there.

Each one of those little icons is actuality a program running in the background Some take up a lot of resources, some don't, but the overall effect is a hit in the performance dept. So, disabling all the nonessential programs in the system tray is usually a good place to start. See today's Tip of the Day for more details.

Another source for slowdowns is hard drive fragmentation. If it's been awhile since you've run a Defrag, now's the time. You can get to the Windows Disk Defragmentor program via the Start button, Programs, Accessories, System Tools. If you have problems running it, you may want to try running it under Safe Mode.

If you've shut down all the excess programs and done a defrag on your hard drive, you may want to consider getting some extra RAM. You can usually get 128 meg for under $30.00 - and adding more RAM is the best way I know of to boost your computer's performance.

Anyhow, there's a few suggestions for ya. Of course, the list above doesn't cover everything, but it's a good start.

Posted in: System Maintenance