Top 10 ways to speed up your computer
The list below describes the top ten ways you can speed up your computer through either general maintenance or hardware upgrades. I tried to list some things other than just the obvious ones most places always list. Now there are of course many more. 10. Check your initial hardware for possible memory, CPU, or hard drive upgrades. 9. Insure your paging files is set to one and a half times the size of the amount of ram installed. If you are using 2 gig or more of ram memory simply turn off the paging file. (To review your paging file right click my computer and choose properties -then choose the advanced tab - Then select the performance settings-slect the advanced tab and modify the virtual memory file size) 8. Run monthly system maintenance such as disk cleanup, disk check, or disk defrag. 7. Clean out your temporary internet files and cookies. (To do this open Internet Explorer and choose the tools menu- Select options- on the main page you can emty the temp files and delete the cookies.) 6. Empty the c:\windows\prefetch folder. 5. Scan your system weekly for spyware. 4. Delete any unused programs by using the add/remove programs utility. 3. Groom your Windows start up file by using the msconfig utility. (This can be done by going to start\Run and typing msconfig then select ok and choose the start up tab) 2. Update your device drivers. If you are using an OEM computer simply visit the manufacturers website for updated software and drivers. If using a custom built computer you will need to visit the hardware manufacturers support site one device at a time to obtain the latest software. 1. Turn off unnecessary services in the services manager.(To access this control panel go to control panel\administrative tools\services) This little tid bit should allow you to boost your PC performance somewhat. The major improvements will come with hardware upgrades especially increases in system memory (RAM). We have an entire free video set dedicated to speeding up your computer. You can watch these absolutely free right here. Feel free to leave me some of your ideas below in the comments section. Patrick |
March 6th, 2007 at 8:58 am
This was extremely helpful. My system is faster than it was. I will be looking into possible hardware upgrades as well.
March 6th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
I upgraded my pc with 1 gigabyte more of memory and it really helped alot.
March 6th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Cleaning the Prefetch folder is a Myth and will REDUCE performance:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html
March 7th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Hi Andrew
That is a great resource you have made there. I have heard debates on both sides of the prefetch debate and will certainly investigate it more now.
Thanks a lot!
April 22nd, 2007 at 5:57 am
Thanks for the article. It really helped me improve my pc’s performance to some extent. Keep it up.
May 25th, 2008 at 2:39 am
As to the prefetch debate http://blogs.msdn.com/ryanmy/archive/2005/05/25/421882.aspx this is the opinion of a Microsoft Developer.
To paraphrase:
“XP systems have a Prefetch directory underneath the windows root directory, full of .pf files — these are lists of pages to load. The file names are generated from hashing the EXE to load — whenever you load the EXE, we hash, see if there’s a matching (exename)-(hash).pf file in the prefetch directory, and if so we load those pages. (If it doesn’t exist, we track what pages it loads, create that file, and pick a handful of them to save to it.) So, first off, it is a bad idea to periodically clean out that folder as some tech sites suggest. For one thing, XP will just re-create that data anyways; secondly, it trims the files anyways if there’s ever more than 128 of them so that it doesn’t needlessly consume space. So not only is deleting the directory totally unnecessary, but you’re also putting a temporary dent in your PC’s performance.”
June 11th, 2008 at 3:33 am
THANYOU VERY MUCH. THIS ARTICLE HAAS REALLY ASSISTED ME.IA NOWBEING CALLED A GREAT TECTNITIAN.
July 1st, 2008 at 12:34 am
it helps me to speed up my computer.it is unbelievable.now i start a business in my area .i get money by doing this.
July 7th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Which came first? I’ve got a feeling this PC911 blog entry:
http://www.mattasoft.com.au/Brochure.pdf