What to Do if Your PC Begins to Run Slow

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If your once smooth-running, fast-paced laptop or desktop PC is noticeably slowing down, you’d most likely be worried. A slow PC means a drag on productivity: booting and shut-down can become very time-consuming, opening documents can take a lifetime and even switching between open windows turns into a waiting process. Most programs run slowing, meaning you can't deliver at peak performance level.

When your computer slows down, you suffer those painful seconds’ and minutes’ delays over operations that previously got executed in a split moment. You accomplish less over the same time and that is quite a problem.

Now, before you run off to buy a new laptop or upgrade your RAM or take some other action that could cost some reasonable chunk of money, there are a few steps that can really free up your system and get it running well again. You should exhaust them before considering some investment in fresh asset acquisition.

Clogging Factors

To understand the speeding-up processes the we want to explore, let’s briefly examine factors that can clog your PC and cripple it. Here:

Viruses:
Systems get easily infected, especially when you work online unprotected or not adequately protected. Sharing resources or using storage media from one PC to another can also spread viruses. A build-up of worms can grind your system down, increasingly.

Spyware:
Related to viruses are spyware. Though less dangerous for your PC (most are tracking scripts by advertisers that want to track, analyse and understand your online activities for their marketing strategies), they similarly choke it your PC and slow it down.

System Registry:
When the Windows registry of your PC has developed some errors or is no longer intact, your system performance is likely to be affected.

Program Overload:
Many programs are heavy in size and as you continue to install more and more on your PC, you build an overload that could slow performance. Interestingly, some many not be in significant use.

Low RAM Capacity or Processor Clockrate:
If the RAM of your PC is low or the processor is not fast enough, you, ab initio, have taken a slow system. A few more things installed, or other factors as listed above, will almost grind it to a halt.

What to do to Speed Up Your PC

Basically, deal with the possible causes of slow-down. You can just take the steps, one after another, since several of the factors can be at work, together.

Clean Up Viruses and Spyware
Firstly, clean up the PC of viruses and spyware. You don’t have a good anti-virus program? Buy one because it’s just unsafe to run without any, especially as internet access becomes a dominant way to use your PC. If you don’t desire to invest in a solid commercial anti-virus, there are free anti-virus products that have been noted to perform well. AVG, for instance (free version).

Similarly, you need to install a spyware/adware-cleaning program. There again, you have the option to use a free program, Ad-Aware, for instance, is credited with good performance and yet free.

Clean-up is like de-worming, which you probably do to yourself. You remove the clogs that might have been suffocating your PC. That means you have to run full scans after installing those programs and remove any identified harmful items.

Sponsored:

Delete Unrequired Files
Each file on your system takes some storage space, but many are not so useful or required. Find and delete them. The first set are temporary internet files not even created by you. Internet Explorer creates some, especially during downloads. Even files you ordinarily delete are most times still in your recycle bin and they need system space to be there. Your browser caches many files, especially if your settings demand so. As you can see, there are many files on your system that you didn’t deliberately leave there and which you don’t need. There are also files you created, which you’ll never need anymore. Removing them all is a way of freeing your PC to perform better. Spend some time on this cleanup.

Remove Redundant Programs
Those programs you don’t really use, especially some space-hungry ones, should be evaluated for removal. It is better the programs you need do really run well than you have an overloaded PC that fails to function. From the Control Panel, use the Add or Remove Programs utility to uninstall programs you don’t justifiably need to keep on your system.

Also, Disable Any Unneeded Startup Program
These are programs set to run at startup. More startup programs mean more work at startup, yet you probably don’t use some. How do you know what runs at startup? Check your system:
Click Start > Click Run >Type ‘msconfig’ (without quotes) and hit OK, System Configuration Utility will show up, > Click Startup tab. Once you click the Startup tab in System Configuration, you will see the startup programs your system runs. Any that is not really required should be deselected. OK to activate.

Registry Repair
Well, just in case the Windows registry has errors, you can run a check and effect any required fix. You can do this with a registry-fixing program. One of such is registry mechanic, here: www.pctools.com/registry-mechanic

Defragment Your Hard Drive
This process helps organize your system resources to be more efficiently managed and handled, making your system perform more efficiently and get faster. How do you defragment? Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Fragmenter.

More RAM or New PC?
If all these fail to achieve the desired speed-up, you probably need to go for a new RAM. Consider upgrading, especially if what you have now is really low. Your investment here is likely to pay off in your ability to do more, working at better speed.

If you don’t want to sweat about with RAM upgrade, especially of you can afford something new, get power-drive laptop or desktop that will run as you want. Here again, the investment will possibly pay back as you get more done, faster.