SIMPLE STEPS TO SPEED UP YOUR WINDOWS PC!

I believe that there are many people out there who bought computers just about 1 year ago and now it is running at a much slower rate than it used to be. Opening up a document used to take less than 3 seconds. It may take up to 10 seconds after 1 or 2 years. Waiting for windows to boot up used to be as quick as just a min or two. Now it you might have to wait for more than 5 minutes. Just spend one afternoon following my dummy’s guide to speeding up your PC and all your woes would disappear!

1) Run Anti-virus and Spybot Scans.
Ensure that your anti-virus definitions are updated. Besides commercially available anti-virus softwares which you can purchase, there is another free alternative which you may want to consider. You can download this from www.grisoft.com. Always allow your anti-virus software to download updates from the internet automatically. Always allow the auto-protect function. Although it is true that switching this on does affect the performance of your system as it requires system resources to keep it active, I would think that the benefits of the auto-protect function far outweighs its cons

Ensure that you run your spybot scans regularly. It is strongly recommended that the test is run every other day or the bare minimum weekly. This is because each time you open up an attachment from an innocent email or visit a website, there is always likelihood that malicious programs would install itself without your knowledge onto your computer.
Run a manual virus scan for all your drives in your PC at least once every month. This should weed out any viruses and malware not detected by the auto-protect mechanism.
These spywares would then steal confidential information such as your Internet-banking password or personal information which would be very valuable for hackers. These information would then be sold to illegal syndicates which have interest in counterfeit passports etc.
So by clearly these programs which are running in your system and slowing it down, you would be safe from all these threats and have a much faster PC !


2) Perform Disk-Fragmentation
Defragment your hard disk at least once a month. But that doesn’t mean you should defragment your hard disk everyday. That would have been overkill. Excessive defragmentation of your hard disk is not desirable because it accelerates the natural wear and tear rate of hard disks.
To defragment your harddisk
1) Go to My Computer
2) Select the hard disk you wish to defragment eg “ C Drive “
3) Right Click on the disk drive
4) Select “Properties:
5) Select the “Tools” Tab
6) Click “Defragment” now.

The whole defragmentation process would take up to 1 hour approximately or more depending on your hard disk usage rate and system specifications. It is strongly recommended you do not use your system when the process is being executed for effective and fast defragmentation.

Files that have been deleted or modified by the users would be fragmented in the hard disk. This makes the hard disk very “cluttered” (think of a desk that is cluttered with all sorts of documents). The defragmentation process basically rearranges and consolidates these fragments so that your system would be able to function more efficiently.

3) Remove unnecessary programs


You realize that the number of programs running next to your clock (right bottom corner aka system tray) increases as you install more and more programs. Most of these programs are not important and are just slowing your computer.


To uninstall unnecessary programs in your system tray
1) Go to “Start”
2) “Control Panel”, which can be found in “ Settings” for XP users
3) Select “ Add or Remove Programs”
4) A dropdown list would appear and select the programs which you are not using.


Most programs that are on your system tray are preconfigured by default to start automatically when windows is started up. If you do wish to allow these programs to run when you start up your windows, it is necessary to disable the function. You would have to explore the options of each individual program to stop it from running during startup or the option “Show in System Tray”.


4. Last Resort – Reformat

If all else fails to speed up your PC, then there is simply too much junk and clutter in your hard disk. Reformatting your hard disk is a process where everything in the hard disk is erased. You would lose all your data and saved files after this process, therefore it is important that you get a storage media such as a thumb drive or to burn your personal files into a CD before you start to reformat your computer.
If the disc drive does not have any windows system file in it. You can simply right click on the disc drive in “My computer” and select “Format”. Select quick format for a fast format.
If the disc drive contains windows system files, you would need to obtain a Windows Installation or Back-up CD which was bundled with your system. This is because re-installation of windows would be necessary after the formatting of the disc drive which contains your windows system files.

1) Insert your windows installation CD into the CD-Rom drive
2) Restart your system
3) If the system does not boot from the CD, you would need to adjust the boot order to allow the system to boot from the optical drive first.
4) Press F10 to enter CMOS as soon as your system powers up.
5) Go to “Advanced Setup”
6) Look for something similar to “ Boot Order Preference”
7) You should be able to adjust the boot preference and set your CD/DVD Rom drive as first priority.
8) After this is done select “ Save and Exit” CMOS
9) The system would automatically restart and it should be booting from the windows CD in your optical drive.
10) Just follow the instructions in the windows set-up CD.

By Toh Jun Yong