Do you remember when you bought your new PC? When you switched it on everything was fast and smooth. A huge improvement over the old machine.
A year later and the machine has slowed down considerably. Starting-up has gone from a few seconds to several minutes. Shutting-down takes forever. Loading programs and saving documents has become very slow.
Why has this happened? No, it is not your imagination. There are a range of reasons.
Continued...The first is data fragmentation. As files are added and deleted on your machine, file fragmentation takes place. Think of a brand new pack of cards. All of the hearts are together and in sequence. If you need to access the 8, 9, 10 and Ace of hearts, it is a very quick process to find them. But once the cards have been shuffled, the process becomes much longer.
The second reason is spyware. If you machine does not have anti-spyware software installed, there is a 99% probability that your computer is infested. It can happen within a few seconds of connecting an unprotected machine to the Internet.
Then there are Trojan Horses. These operate just like Trojan horses in Troy. They get inside and start working their evil. Most anti-virus and anti-spyware software does not deal effectively with these.
Other issues that could have a major impact include:
The start menu too many programs are being loaded up at start-up
Windows Registry Windows maintains a registry of programs that are added and removed. It does this badly, so that the registry often does not reflect reality.
The pre-load every time windows loads a new file or program, it adds the details into a prefetch file. This is loaded into windows every time it starts. Windows tries to find all the files. It takes longer if they are not there.
Viruses do more than just slow down your machine. They could render it unusable!
Temporary files Windows may try to load these into memory at start-up
Missing networks Windows searches for every network defined in the system at strat-up.
A variety of solutions can be tried to speed up your machine.
Before you get taken in by some of the offerings on the Web, remember that many of these are bogus. Products are advertised as free solutions. After downloading and running the software you are presented with a massive report of over 300 problems. If you then buy the free product, you will get a key that unlocks the code to fix your machine. It is unlikely to make any difference!
If you fall for these solutions you will usually be wasting your money.
A variety of programs masquerade as anti-spyware packages. After downloading, it reports that your machine has 1281 spyware threats. You have to pay to remove’ these threats. Many of these packages are Spyware or Trojan installers. Apart from trying to get you to part with your money they can cause considerable damage to your system. Before downloading investigate. A Google search will normally tell you what you need to know.
The packages mentioned below have all been tried and tested.
Run Windows defrag. Select this from the control panel and select each hard drive separately. If your drive was very fragmented this may be all that is required to speed-up your machine.
Run a Registry cleaner. Registry Mechanic works well. A 30 day evaluation version is available try it. Once the registry is clean your machine should be faster.
Advanced Windows Care is a freebie from IOBit.com. It examines your system for a variety of problems and fixes them. This may help to improve performance. IOBit also have a free defragmenter that runs on your machine and constantly monitors file fragmentation.
Download and install Windows Defender from the MSN download page. Windows defender is a free spyware remover from Microsoft. In addition use Spybot - it is good and will get rid of most spyware problems.
Trojan Remover will eliminate Trojans. I used the fully-functional evaluation version to save a machine that could not be used. The problem was solved.
Edit the start menu. Advanced Windows Care has a start menu editor included. Many programs load at start-up and remain resident in memory constantly. They can become a major drain on machine resources, and it is usually better to remove all but the essential ones. Don’t try to remove anything that you are not sure of.
Check your free disk space. Windows prefers at least 25% of the hard drive to be free space. Sounds ridiculous, but its true. Ideally, purchase an external USB Hard drive to store your videos and music and to back up your machine. The more free space on your machine, the faster it will run.
Clear the Windows prefetch file. Get detailed instructions for this from the Web. It will speed-up your start-up.
Install a good anti-virus program. Grisoft have an excellent free program called AVG free for home users. It works better than some of the premium anti-virus packages!
Uninstall any unwanted programs. All those programs that you have installed and never use should be removed. They use up space and resources.
Remove any unused network references. Go to COntrol Panel, Network connections, and remove any networks that you no longer use.
You have spent the last five hours trying to tune your machine. If it is up to speed, congratulations! You can skip the next section.
If you still have problems, then it is time to reinstall Windows! When all else fails, this is usually the best route to go. To be safe, back-up your machine first! Re-install Windows using the Operating System CD that came with the machine. On some machines the installation files may be on a separate partition of the hard drive. Reinstalling Windows will take about 90 minutes.
Once the installation is complete, you can download and install all of the updates that have been applied since the last installation (or when you bought your machine). Windows can take care of that automatically.
If your machine is still slow after all of this then buy additional memory and get a larger hard drive. Perhaps it is time for a new machine!
As a last resort (many will argue that this is a better option altogether), replace windows with Linux! I am very happy with Windows XP, but one thing lacking is efficiency. Windows inevitably begins a path of slowing down from the moment you begin. Linux is somewhat more stable and efficient. A variety of Linux options are available the most popular being Ubuntu. Remember that your Windows programs will not run on this platform! There are Linux alternatives available for most applications and most of these are free. For example, openoffice.org is a good office suite available totally free