How to Speed Up Your Computer? 5 Tricks to Make your PC Faster

Everyone wonders why their PC is crawling instead of running like a rabbit despite of the new or upgraded hardware but nothing seems to help. So many times, we end up reinstalling operating system to make it faster and lighter, don’t we? Even after reinstalling operating system, PC works fine for just few days before it starts getting slower again.

Many times the problem is not in hardware or operating system but we are the problem! Hard to believe, isn’t it? Well, this is the truth and here are few tricks or rather we’d call them tips to increase the speed and overall performance of your PC.

There are various built-in tools for operating systems like Windows XP, Vista and 7, using which you can increase the response rate of your computer. While some third party tools can also be used, not all tools are safe as they might contain virus or other exploits.

1. Get rid of spyware, virus and adwares:

Spywares are programs which collect personal information entered by you in any website without letting you know. These are hidden snippets of code which generally have coded in other legitimate programs. All the information like usernames, passwords, can be stolen by these snippets right from under your nose. In addition to this thievery, they slow down PC to some extent.

Viruses are the program designed to cause havoc in PC by deleting files or folders. Such programs can be very dangerous and can cause you to reinstall whole operating system if not removed on time.

Many anti-virus programs are available, which can be used for cleaning up the PC. Let it be any anti-virus utility, keep it updated and run system scan after fixed time. Never go for any free anti-virus program, if it is coming from untrusted source as the program itself may contain hidden code.

Here are two tools from Microsoft which can help you in combating such malwares.

• Microsoft Security Essentials
• Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool

If you don’t believe viruses can create havoc, you would be surprised to hear that recently more than 45,000 Facebook accounts were compromised due to one malware introduced in this social networking website.

 2. Keep Your Desktop Clean:

Do you often place everything on desktop, which is of your daily use? Many of you will say, yes! Cluttered desktop might make you feel busy and more productive but in turn it eats PC speed. Though this does not affect performance much, it do impose its own toll on speed. So always remember to move all the files and folders to their original place on hard drives after using them.

3. Free-up memory space:

Several disk clean-up tools are available, which can help you in cleaning up your disk space. Windows users have no need of any external tools as all the Windows versions carry their own disk clean-up tools.

Why should we clean-up our disk? Typically all internet browsers store temporary internet files on PC to make the browsing experience as fast as it can. So each page you visit is cached by browser for faster access.

Therefore it is necessary to run the disk clean-up after every week or so. Using disk clean-up utilities, you can delete following files:

• Downloadable Program Files
• Temporary Internet Files
• Files From Recycle Bin
• Temporary Files
• Thumbnails
• Error Reports

You can use disk clean-up tool in Windows based operating system by going to Start –> All Programs –> Accessories –> System Tools.

4. Check hard disk for errors:

Sometimes it may happen that some bad sectors are the reason behind your HDD’s slow performance. Bad sector affect hard performance to great extent and even can make data writing on HDD impossible. The built-in error check utility, check all drives for bad sectors and try to fix them if any.

• Close all open files.
• Go to My Computer and right-click on the drive you want to scan for bad sectors and go to Properties.
• In the Properties, open the Tools tab.
• Click the Check Now button.
• In the Check Disk box (Error-checking in Windows 7), select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box and then click on Start button.

5. Disk Defragmentation:

This is another built-in yet great utility that can help you in increasing performance of your hard disk. When we write any file on hard disk, the file is stored in fragmented format and thus after some time the hard disk tends slow down all thanks to this fragmentation. This defragmentation tool is located in same path as disk clean-up tool.

The disk defragmenter is a system tool designed by Microsoft consolidates all the files and folders if they are fragmented. As all your files are piled up continuously on hard disk after defragmentation, reading and writing task of HDD becomes faster.

Therefore it is strongly recommended that, you should carry out disk defragmentation after fix time period.

So these were some tips which should help you in increasing your computer’s speed. You can also try uninstalling unused programs as they eat your memory space and thus should be removed when not in use. Moreover you can even disable unrequired startup programs, so they do not slow down startup time.

There are many third party tools available on internet, though I didn’t have experience of all of them. I have used just the one, “Tuneup utilities” and believe me, it’s great one!

Let us know if you have any doubts or concerns related to your PC or regarding any of the ways described here through comments. You can even suggest us more ways, if you know!