I was about to conquer the world but then I got distracted by something shiny.
Post by charliegirl on Jan 5, 2007 22:24:36 GMT -5
Speed Up a Slow Computer
« Thread Started on Jun 21, 2006, 4:25pm »
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Simple Things You Can Do To Speed Up a Slow Computer
From Marcy Zitz,
Your Guide to Family Internet.
FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!
Simple Computer Maintanence Tips
The other day, I realized that my two year old computer was crawling at a snail's speed. The kids have been playing a lot of games lately and it is getting old, so I assumed it was because of that. With no money to buy a new one, I set out to get it running a bit faster. I was amazed with just doing a little cleaning how much better it is doing now. I have the following list of things to do once a month to keep my computer running like new. You can do these things too with just a little bit of time that will save you time in the long run and the frustration of waiting for things to load.
Defrag To Speed Up Your Computer
One of maintenance things that I did was to defrag my hard drive even though Windows said I didn't need to. First, let me explain what fragmented files mean to your computer.
When your computer stores a document, it starts to put the document in the first area of free space on your hard drive and then when it runs out of room there, it stores another part of the file on the next space available and so on, until the entire document is stored. One simple Word document may be stored in many different spots. When you access the fragmented document again, it has to go to all the spots on your hard drive, gather the information, put it together and then display it. If you have a lot of fragmented files it takes time for the computer to find the data. I was at 8% fragmentation which was below Windows threshold for a recommendation to defragment but after I ran the program the performance increase was very visible. The reason that I saw such an increase may be that the files that I use regularly may have been one of the few files that were fragmented. It will take a while to run defrag so you might want to leave this task for last (like before bed) and you should free up as much space as possible before defraging, but I list it first because it is so important.
To defrag your hard drive with Windows XP, go to:
* Start
* Programs
* Accessories
* System Tools
* Disk Defragmenter
Other Windows operating systems has the disk defragementer tool in a similar location. If you can't find it, go to Windows help and search for "defrag" to find out how to run it.
Clean Temporary Files To Speed Up Your Computer
Windows loves to write files all the time to your hard drive and until you run out of room on your hard drive or ask it to clean it up, it will leave old temporary files there. Windows XP comes with a handy program that cleans them up.
To clean up temporary files on your hard drive with Windows XP, go to:
* Start
* Programs
* Accessories
* System Tools
* Disk Cleanup
For other Windows operating systems you may have manually remove temporary files. To find out how, go to Windows help and search for "temporary files".
Clean Out Email Inbox To Speed Up Your Computer
I was constantly getting messages that I had ran out of virtual memory. I only had two programs open and I figured out why. My friend, that I always have open - Outlook Express was the culprit. It wasn't the program that was having a problem - it was my pack-rat way of life of keeping spam messages for the past two years and not deleting them. I was loading my inbox folder when I opened the program that had 15,000 messages! When I switched between folders, I could see how long it took to load all those message headers into memory - memory that could be used for something much more important. Click delete or create a folder to store them in, but clean out that inbox!
Clean Up Your Desktop To Speed Up Your Computer
My desktop on my computer was like my desk - cluttered! Having a clean desktop is important enough that Windows XP now asks you to clean up unused desktop icons. If you have always ignored the prompt like I used to, you can either clean them up manually by right clicking your mouse on them and selecting delete or you can access the Windows XP program.
* Start
* Control Panel
* Double-click "Display".
* Click the "Desktop" tab.
* Click the "Customize Desktop" button at the bottom.
* Click the "General" tab.
* Click the "Clean Desktop Now" button at the bottom.
Kill the Spyware To Speed Up Your Computer
Spyware seems to be almost unavoidable if you are online. I have always been very careful with keeping my virus protection up to date but I had a few spyware problems myself that was probably slowing down my computer. The basic version of AdAware is a free program that it will get rid of this annoyance.
Of course you may be having more serious problems than I was experiencing but these simple tips should speed up your slow computer.
The site said you can share thier info with friends...so I did!
« Thread Started on Jun 21, 2006, 4:25pm »
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simple Things You Can Do To Speed Up a Slow Computer
From Marcy Zitz,
Your Guide to Family Internet.
FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!
Simple Computer Maintanence Tips
The other day, I realized that my two year old computer was crawling at a snail's speed. The kids have been playing a lot of games lately and it is getting old, so I assumed it was because of that. With no money to buy a new one, I set out to get it running a bit faster. I was amazed with just doing a little cleaning how much better it is doing now. I have the following list of things to do once a month to keep my computer running like new. You can do these things too with just a little bit of time that will save you time in the long run and the frustration of waiting for things to load.
Defrag To Speed Up Your Computer
One of maintenance things that I did was to defrag my hard drive even though Windows said I didn't need to. First, let me explain what fragmented files mean to your computer.
When your computer stores a document, it starts to put the document in the first area of free space on your hard drive and then when it runs out of room there, it stores another part of the file on the next space available and so on, until the entire document is stored. One simple Word document may be stored in many different spots. When you access the fragmented document again, it has to go to all the spots on your hard drive, gather the information, put it together and then display it. If you have a lot of fragmented files it takes time for the computer to find the data. I was at 8% fragmentation which was below Windows threshold for a recommendation to defragment but after I ran the program the performance increase was very visible. The reason that I saw such an increase may be that the files that I use regularly may have been one of the few files that were fragmented. It will take a while to run defrag so you might want to leave this task for last (like before bed) and you should free up as much space as possible before defraging, but I list it first because it is so important.
To defrag your hard drive with Windows XP, go to:
* Start
* Programs
* Accessories
* System Tools
* Disk Defragmenter
Other Windows operating systems has the disk defragementer tool in a similar location. If you can't find it, go to Windows help and search for "defrag" to find out how to run it.
Clean Temporary Files To Speed Up Your Computer
Windows loves to write files all the time to your hard drive and until you run out of room on your hard drive or ask it to clean it up, it will leave old temporary files there. Windows XP comes with a handy program that cleans them up.
To clean up temporary files on your hard drive with Windows XP, go to:
* Start
* Programs
* Accessories
* System Tools
* Disk Cleanup
For other Windows operating systems you may have manually remove temporary files. To find out how, go to Windows help and search for "temporary files".
Clean Out Email Inbox To Speed Up Your Computer
I was constantly getting messages that I had ran out of virtual memory. I only had two programs open and I figured out why. My friend, that I always have open - Outlook Express was the culprit. It wasn't the program that was having a problem - it was my pack-rat way of life of keeping spam messages for the past two years and not deleting them. I was loading my inbox folder when I opened the program that had 15,000 messages! When I switched between folders, I could see how long it took to load all those message headers into memory - memory that could be used for something much more important. Click delete or create a folder to store them in, but clean out that inbox!
Clean Up Your Desktop To Speed Up Your Computer
My desktop on my computer was like my desk - cluttered! Having a clean desktop is important enough that Windows XP now asks you to clean up unused desktop icons. If you have always ignored the prompt like I used to, you can either clean them up manually by right clicking your mouse on them and selecting delete or you can access the Windows XP program.
* Start
* Control Panel
* Double-click "Display".
* Click the "Desktop" tab.
* Click the "Customize Desktop" button at the bottom.
* Click the "General" tab.
* Click the "Clean Desktop Now" button at the bottom.
Kill the Spyware To Speed Up Your Computer
Spyware seems to be almost unavoidable if you are online. I have always been very careful with keeping my virus protection up to date but I had a few spyware problems myself that was probably slowing down my computer. The basic version of AdAware is a free program that it will get rid of this annoyance.
Of course you may be having more serious problems than I was experiencing but these simple tips should speed up your slow computer.
The site said you can share thier info with friends...so I did!
