Windows Tips - Fix My Slow PC!:
Isn’t it annoying to be surfing the web and all of a sudden, your computer drags to a crawl and you sit impatiently waiting for a page to load or a download to start? There are several common causes of the slowing down effect on your PC. I will discuss the following three things you can do to speed things up a little bit:
- First, download a recommended registry cleaner
- Clean and defrag the hard drive
- Optimize Memory
- Eliminate unnecessary programs from Loading into memory
Clan and Defrag the Hard Drive
A computer’s hard drive is the primary area on your computer used to store the operating system, applications and all the files you create. The hard drive is divided up into areas called sectors. Each sector can hold a certain amount of data. Each sector is further broken up into address spaces. Each address is unique so the operating system can find the data stored on the hard drive. Windows uses a master file table to store the address locations of every file on the hard drive.
Please notice that I said locations. Most files need more than one address location to store the whole thing. Windows will write each piece of the file in locations next to each other (called contiguous space) if possible. If that is not possible, the operating system finds an empty location and writes the data there. As a result, over time, as you edit different files the pieces of a file can be located all over the hard drive.
For example, this disjoint storage is like you putting your shoes in the garage, your pants in the kitchen, your socks in the bedroom, you shirt in the bathroom and you coat in the attic. Obviously if you did that, if would take a lot longer to get dressed in the morning. The same thing happens with files. When they are spread all over the place, it takes longer for windows to find the individual pieces and load them into memory.
This is why you need to both clean up and defrag your hard drive. The clean up process deletes temporary files, file fragments (pieces left over after being deleted), orphans (data whose owner can’t be determined) and data marked for deletion.
Defragging your hard drive is the process of moving all of the pieces of a file into contiguous space so it can be retrieved faster. The operating system will move data around until it gets all the correct pieces together. To defrag:
- Turn the screen save off by right clicking anywhere on the desktop
- Select Properties then click on the Screen Saver tab and select None.
- Next, select My Computer then right click on the hard drive Select Properties then click on Tools.
- Select Check Now as shown below to let windows check the hard drive for errors and fix them if necessary. This could take a while so you might want go do something else.
- When that is finished, select Defragment Now.
This can take a really long time depending on the size of the hard disk. You might as well go do something else because you
CANNOT use the computer while it is defragging.
WARNING: DO NOT TURN THE MACHINE OFF UNTIL DEFRAGGING IS COMPLETE OR IT MAY DAMAGE THE HARD DRIVE Optimize Memory
There is an old saying in the computer field. “You can never have too much memory.” When I say memory I am talking about random access memory or RAM. RAM is the temporary storage area the operating system uses to store data that is being used currently and to load itself in so all of the commands are immediately available for use.
Otherwise, you would have to wait for the data to be retrieved from the hard drive and then be loaded into memory before you could use it. It would be similar to when you are waiting for a web page to download although not as long a wait.
When the system runs out of physical RAM it uses the hard drive as
Virtual Memory and does have to retrieve and load data every time you need it. Virtual memory is also called a swap file. Optimizing reduces the need to swap data into and out of the swap file. You want to put as much memory as you can afford or the machine can hold to significantly speed up your machine.
Eliminate Unnecessary Programs from Loading into Memory
When your computer boots up, it loads all kinds of applications into memory. Most of these programs are called terminate and stay resident programs or TSRs. Closing these programs will free up memory and speed up your computer. In fact, it is even better if you don’t load the ones you really don’t need.
To prevent TSRs from loading go to:
- Start -> Run and type msconfig into the dialog box
- The System Configuration Utility will open.
- Select the Startup Tab as shown below.
- Uncheck any that you don’t use very often.
- Click OK to exit.
- Then reboot the computer.
If you don’t know what a file or what a service does, don’t uncheck it.
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