Tips

The following tips can save you a lot of headaches in the long run.

Turn off what you don’t need

Much of what slows down a computer are unnecessary programs running in the background. You can have a Quad-Core CPU and still have a slow computer. Next time your computer seems slow, go to Start > Run… , type “MSCONFIG” and press Enter. This will bring up a handy screen that allows you to disable some of those programs that start up, yet you don’t need. Click the Startup tab, and start unchecking things you don’t need. Same goes for the service tab, but be careful…only disable things you know for sure you don’t need.

Save often.

Ever get an hour into a document, only to have the dreaded box that says the program had an error and needs to close, realizing you hadn’t saved? You rush to the File menu to see if you can get a last-minute save in, only to discover the program is frozen…suddenly you realize you must start over. To prevent this, activate the automatic save on the program if it has one. Otherwise, remember to save often!

Defragment your hard drive

This keeps your files all in one place, literally, on the hard drive. When the computer encounters another file on the hard drive, it has to split the file into another piece to finish saving it. The more pieces your files are in, the slower they, and consequently your computer, will perform.

Don’t save ANYTHING in C:\ if you can help it

Save things in a folder but NEVER in the C:\ root as too many items here can bog down the computer. Some things, however, might be unavoidable, but keep your documents in My Documents or on your desktop.

Always keep more than 2 GB free on your system drive.

Windows manages what’s called a paging file. When you run out of RAM, the computer extends the RAM onto the hard drive. This essentially uses hard drive space to simulate more RAM. When you leave a program running but don’t use it for a while, Windows will “dump” the memory used for the program onto the hard drive for later use, so you can use the memory for something else. The more free space you have, the easier it is for Windows to manage the memory that’s been written to the hard drive.

Keep an eye on TEMP files

Watch the contents of C:\Windows\Temp\ and C:\Windows\Prefetch and empty them out every once in a while. These are basically cache directories aimed at storing quick shortcuts to files and programs you access often, but once they get too big they can slow your computer down. To prevent this, delete the contents of these folders every few months.