Top Tips to Speed Up Your Computer

When your PC starts to slow down, it can be a real bind. We have come to depend on our computers so much that having a badly performing PC can seriously impact on our daily lives.

But it doesn't need to be like that. You will be surprised at the variety of things you can do to improve your computer's performance, that involve either no or very little money. You don't need to simply accept that your PC is slow and that there is nothing you can do about it.

Yes, it's true that some solutions may involve purchasing new components, but there's an awful lot of things you can carry out that will either cost you nothing or next to nothing to improve your PC's performance.

Also they're pretty easy fixes, so you don't have to be an expert to give them a try.

Before you spend loads on money on a new PC, read on. So what can you try?

Defragmenting your disk

Windows 7 has improved greatly since Windows XP, but it can still suffer from disk fragmentation over time. New programs get installed and old ones get removed, with the result that a single program can reside on disparate sections of the disk, causing inefficient read and write times. Carrying out a defrag organizes all the applications together again on the disk, so the disk head has less distance to travel.

You can run it quite simply:

Just type 'defrag' into the command line after clicking on the Start menu, or access via Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools. Click on the 'disk defragmenter' icon. In the utility window, check the % fragmentation of the C: drive is (it's only the c: drive that's important, you can ignore the other drives). If it's greater than 10% then you need to defragment. Don't forget to close all your applications first, and preferably start it last thing at night as it can take some time to complete.

You should only need to do this once or twice a year.

More Memory

Boosting your memory can have a really dramatic effect of your computer's speed, particularly if it is short on memory to begin with. If you're running with 2Gb or less, then you are likely to see a big improvement by upping it to 3 or 4 Gb. The main benefits are faster start-up times, and programs will start quicker!

Memory or RAM is very cheap today. Around $20 should buy you 1Gb of RAM.

You can check your memory in Control Panel, under the System icon.

De-clutter your hard drive

This is especially important if you're running low on hard disk space. Clearing out unused files and programs is a fast and effective way to speed up your PC.

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