5 tips for speeding up Windows PCs

After a while, PCs slow down. The more software you load, the more files you store, etc. Even with blazing fast hardware, things can happen that slow down your computer’s performance. Fortunately, there’s a lot you can do about this. Some of these little fixes are really simple, even for those of you who aren’t too confident with computers. Others may be a little more advanced, so just use the tips you feel comfortable with.

Please note: when your computer is slow, it could be Windows, or it could be an individual program that’s running slowly. If it boots slowly or shuts down slowly, that’s Windows. If it takes a while for “My Computer” to load up, or Window File Explorer to do its thing, that’s Windows. But if you’re always noticing the slowdowns while, say, you’re on the internet, it could be your browser. Or any other program you run. The following tips are for speeding up Windows. If it’s another program, do a search for “how to speed up Firefox” or whatever program is running slowly.

1. Cleaning up your disk

The first step in speeding up your computer should be cleaning unecessary files from your disk – mainly, the temp files. As you use your computer, it stores temp files that speed things up for the moment, but unfortunately it doesn’t clean them out intelligently. After a while, you have tons of temp files, and it’s sorting through all of them repeatedly while you work, which is a waste of CPU resources. You can repeat this step as often as you like – when you notice a slowdown, or daily, or anything in between. You cannot screw anything up by doing this!  NOTE: It’s best to do this when you first boot up the computer, before doing anything else. I’ll explain why in step 7.

1. Click “Start.” (bottom left corner of your screen)
2. Click “All Programs.”
3. Choose “Accessories” from the first pop-up menu, then “System Tools” from the next one, then “Disk Cleanup.”
4. A popup window asks you to choose the drive you want to clean up. The correct drive is probably C, and it’s probably pre-selected, so just click “Okay”.
5. Another box will pop up to let you know it’s “calculating how much space you will be able to free.” Thanks for sharing, Windows! Go get another cup of coffee while it does this.
6. Now you get a window with a list of items, some of which are checked. By default, the program only checks items that are really, really safe for deleting, so just click “okay”, then “yes” and wait for it to do its thing. It’ll shut down by itself when it’s finished.

2. Disable Indexing Services

How often do you search your computer for something via Windows Explorer? Most users do this very rarely. And yet a program designed to speed up that one little process can actually slow all your other processes down considerably. Not a good tradeoff. You can disable that program with the following steps. The only possible side effect of this is that searches will take a little longer.

1. Click “Start.”
2. Click “Settings.”
3. Click “Control Panel.”
4. Double-click “Add/Remove Programs.”
5. Click “Add/Remove Window Components” in the lefthand sidebar of that window.
6. Uncheck “Indexing services.”
7. Click “Next.”
8. Wait for the next window, and in it, click “Finish.”

3. Dump Unnecessary Start-Up Items

This is a slightly more advanced option. Many programs like to stick files in your “start-up” section so they partially launch when you boot up the computer. This means they’ll launch more quickly when and if you decide to open them, but it slows down your start up. Another bad tradeoff – you may not even use all of these programs every time you run your PC.

1. Go into your Start Menu and click “run”.
2. In the box type “msconfig” and click okay.
3. You get a box with some tabs along the top.  Click the “Start-up” tab, which should be the last one.
4. Here’s where it gets slightly tricky. Most of the checked boxes here can be unchecked without disabling anything.  Exceptions include things like virus protection and Microsoft files.  If you’re not sure what a file is, leave it. But programs you recognize (like iTunes or Adobe Reader) can be unchecked safely. For some reason, disabling “iTunes helper” always speeds my PCs up considerably. If you have it, uncheck it. Supposedly, iTunes may start up more slowly, but I’ve never noticed a difference.
5. Next time you reboot, the computer will pop up a message telling you that you changed the start up options. Click the box that says “Don’t show me this warning again” and click okay. Otherwise, it’ll pop that up every time you boot, and it’s completely unnecessary.
6. If you’re nervous, just uncheck one file at a time, and reboot. If everything seems fine, uncheck another. If anything funky happens, you know to go re-check the last file you unchecked.

4. Get rid of programs you don’t use

Every program on your computer could potentially be slowing it down. If you have a lot of programs you no longer use – old games, multiple word processors, etc. – it’s a good idea to uninstall them.

1. Click “Start.”
2. Click “Settings.”
3. Click “Control Panel.”
4. Double-click “Add/Remove Programs.”
5. Give it time to put up a list of programs in the main window. Depending how much stuff you have, this can take up to a minute or so.
6. See a program you no longer need? Click it. It will expand to show you a “Change/Remove” button. Click that button.
7. It’ll ask you if you’re sure you want to remove that program. If you are, click “yes.”
8. When it pops up a message telling you the program was removed, click “okay.”
9. Close the “Add or Remove Programs” window.

5. Defragment your hard drive

Note: this tip is more helpful for OLDER PCs. You may not notice much of a difference with a newer one. However, this is still a good practice for new machines: the less fragmented the files are, the less heat the PC generates trying to find stuff, and the better chance you have of recovering data in a hard drive failure.

Windows stores files randomly, in bits and pieces, all over your hard drive. The more times you open and save files or run programs, the more fragmented the files get. Eventually, every time you do even a simple task, Windows has to search the whole hard drive to find everything you need, and that takes time. To fix this, Windows has a built-in application for defragmenting the hard drive, and it’s easy to use. The first time you run this, it may take hours, depending how fragmented your files are and how much data is stored on your hard drive. But if you do it once a month, it’ll be much faster. This is another fix you can do as often as you like, but it does take a while and it’ll slow you down while it’s actually defragmenting part of the drive you’re trying to access to play WoW, so once a month is more than adequate for most users.

1. Click “Start.”
2. Select “All Programs.”
3. Choose “Accessories” from the first menu, then “System Tools” from the next one, then “Disk Defragmenter.”
4. Select your hard drive (usually C) in the Disk Defragmenter screen.
5. Click “Defragment.”
6. When it’s done, you can click “View Report” or just shut the program down. If it’s taking forever and you need to stop it for some reason, there is a Pause button and a Stop button. Using them won’t hurt anything.

If none of this helps…

It could be you need to upgrade some hardware. If so, guess what’s the cheapest and most effective thing you can upgrade? Memory. Increased memory makes a seriously dramatic difference to speed on PCs, and it usually doesn’t cost much.

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Posted in Technology on September 4, 2009