Overview
Since
the late 90s and during the 2000s, "Speed Up Your Computer" fads have
exploded and in many occasions, these fads are really cons. They boast
to speed up your computer through many different methods (sometimes
magical ones). Sometimes they boast to do it by making registry fixes,
windows fixes, "speed up software", etc. In many occasions, these don't
help what so ever. I will help you tell real from fake and more
importantly, explain what they are trying to do and how you can do it
for free and how to really increase the speed of your computer.
The PC Problems That Need Fixed
I'll
give you some general problems that plague computers and sometimes will
reduce speed. One and maybe the most common is your PC is old, it has
(relatively) low amounts of RAM (2GB or less), lower end CPU (dual cores
or less) and slow Hard Drives (5400RPM Hard Drives would be slower).
Now, before any judgements are made, if your OS is XP or before, these
pieces of hardware will be fine as those operating systems don't require
a lot to run. This is more in regards to Windows 7 and up. The second
issue is in regards to Windows corruption. This can be registry issues,
bad sectors on your OS, full hard drives or severely fragmented hard
drives. The last and more severe are virus related problems. All these
problems can debilitate your machines and make them worthless to you. It
can be hard to determine which one of these issues is the problem, so I
will give you some basic troubleshooting tips too.
Hardware Fixes
These
fixes are pretty straight forward. In most occasions, if you want a
faster PC and it is slow because of how old it is, get a better PC or
better parts. To determine if your computer is slow because it is old,
think about how long it has been slow. If it just started happening, you
haven't made any changes to the computer recently, installed any new
software, etc... the odd are, you might need an upgrade. These aren't
finite troubleshooting techniques but more rules of thumb as it is easy
to overlook something. Another tip would be smell your computer, does it
smell like something is burning? That is obviously a good indication of
a bad part. Is your computer not booting any longer? Open the side and
look at the capacitors (cylinder parts hanging off the board). Are the
capacitors bulging out (the sliver part) or are the popped? That is bad
and your computer has a limited time to live.
Operating System Fixes
These
fixes are where people get scammed most of the time. Your operating
system can get extremely worn, to say it plainly. This can lead to hard
drive fragmentation, OS corruption, registry issues and much more. These
are relatively easy to fix. However, severe OS corruption might lead to
you needing to reformat your machine and reinstall Windows. General fix
software that can help you with this, that is safe is CCleaner. There
are free and paid for versions but the paid for version will work
better. CCleaner is mostly a cleaner but it also has registry cleaner on
it that works very well too. Another step would be to do a check disk
on your computer. In very rare occasions, this can cause issues on the
computer but since the release of Windows Vista, it has been a lot
safer. Your PC will sometimes automatically run one of these scans when
the computer boots if it thinks something is wrong. If that be the case,
let it run through as it is likely correct. If you would like to run
one of these, you'll need to open a command prompt and type "chkdsk" (if
you don't know what the command prompt is, you might want to do some
more research). Lastly, hard drive fragmentation is kind of an old idea,
but still can cause issues. Windows provides you with free defrag
software. I would suggest running it, but it can take a while to
complete. If you want to take the extra step, I use JKDefrag, which is a
nice piece of software too.
Virus Fixes
My
least favorite subject to talk about, but my favorite to fix. Virus,
malware, spyware, etc... can cause serious problems to one's computer as
many of you might have already seen. As Windows has been out, these
problems have gotten a lot better as the OSs have gotten a lot better.
However, if you'd like some help with fixing viruses and what not, I can
do so. I'll first say, if you are severely infected to the point you
can't do much or anything on your computer, you will want to seek the
advice of a professional. If you know you are infected but you can still
do things, your first move is to run a couple different cleaners.
First, I would suggest running an anti virus scan if you have an anti
virus. If you can do a boot time scan (like Avast has), do so as running
a scan against your OS, outside your OS is better then if you ran one
inside the OS itself. Second, a malware scanner would be good. If you
need some suggestions, I would look into Super Anti Spyware and
Malwarebytes. Third, if you are still having issues, try out Combofix.
Lastly, if you think you've gotten rid of them all, run CCleaner to
clean up and maybe a check disk if you are out of options. If that still
doesn't fix your issues and you don't have money to spend on a
technician, you can always reinstall windows on your PC (back up your
info).
Thank you for visiting!