Avoid The Clutter In The First Place!

4

If there is anything on this planet that’s more frustrating than a slow PC, I have not found it yet. It once took my mother’s computer 22 minutes to fully boot up. Of course, I mention that it’s my mother’s computer because I know (from personal experience) that it doesn’t have to be that way. Don’t you remember the day you brought your new PC home? How everything was buttery smooth, and clickety fast. Yet, as time goes by, it gets slower and slower until you’re able to go take a snack waiting for Firefox to open.

Well, like your home or your car, a PC needs some tidying now and then. And believe me, a book could be written about the myriad ways Windows can be sped up. These range from arcane registry tweaks, to disabling obscure functions and services. In this article, I’ll focus on a couple of big ones, since they’ve been the most effective for me.

1. Avoid The Clutter In The First Place!

I know this can sound rather stupid. But it’s not. The best way to keep your PC performing like it did on the day you bought it is to stop installing useless stuff on it. Really. Every time you install something, you’re likely slowing it down. Most programs will set themselves up to boot at startup. What this does is increase your startup time, plus use up tons of RAM as they run in the background for the relatively unlikely possibility that you’ll need them in your session. So, what you should do is ask yourself what programs are completely essential to you, and install only those. In my case, this is what I need:

- One browser (I like Firefox).
- One antivirus and spyware protection.
- An Office suite.
- One IM program.
- Skype

Of course, everyone will have different needs, and this smal list may not be enough. But still, avoid installing anything unless you’re absolutely sure you need the program.

2. Disable Start-Up Programs

Now, if you’re reading this article, chances are your PC is already slow. In that case, try disabling the programs that run at startup that you don’t need. Go to Start -> Run -> Type “msconfig” -> Press “Enter”. In the window that pops up, go to the “Startup” pane. You’ll see a laundry list of programs that run when you turn your PC on. Chances are though, you won’t know what’s what. That’s what Google is for. Looking under the “Command” column, you’ll see a filepath, ending with a .exe filename. If you don’t know the filename, Google it. The results will tell you what program that is, and you can decide whether you want this running at startup or not.

Again, ask yourself if it is essential for you to have this running in the first place. In this case, less is more.

3. Defragment

When you erase something from your drive, you haven’t really removed the info. You’ve just told Windows it’s free to write over that area. Over time, as you delete disparate items, you end up with separate areas of your drive ready for overwriting. So, when you copy something new to memory, Windows may place different parts of it in different physical locations of the drive. This is called disk fragmentation, and it slows down your performance somewhat because it takes time to retrieve all the parts before displaying them to you or to the program you’re using.

Luckily, you can defragment your drive now and then. Go to Start -> All programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter.

4. Buy More RAM

I call this the brute-force approach. RAM is really cheap these days. Your PC is slow? Just buy some RAM and forget about it. Sure, there are limits to this solution, and if you don’t stop your cluttery ways, sooner or later you’ll still have to clean stuff up.