It’s all fine and dandy when you have a brand new PC nested on your desktop that runs as smooth as a smoldering broadsword through a carton of butter, but if your PC’s as slow as a government employee, you know it’s time to do something about it. If you’re one of the rich folk who has money flowing out of every orifice in the body, by all means - buy a new PC (and write me a hefty cheque if you’re feeling extra generous); but if you’re like the majority of us and wish to juice your PC till its hair goes gray, we’ve got a couple of tips to keep your work-horse running as speedy as it possibly can
Tip 1: Clean Your PC
We can understand if someone might not wish to bathe for a while, but unlike humans, PCs need to be cleaned in order to run efficiently. This doesn’t mean that you should give it a bath of course. You should clean your PC’s innards every few months, to keep it dust free and unclogged. When dust accumulates on your processor and other fans, they start running sluggishly, cooling your PC less, causing all sorts of slowdowns and even crashes.
Just as a surgeon wouldn’t mess around or juggle with the organs of a sliced up patient, you need to take care while handling the insides of your PC. Make sure to touch any metallic part on the inner frame of your PC before you touch your motherboard or any delicate hardware, since the static discharge from your hand can fry your PC’s circuitry. Touching a metallic object on the inside helps get rid of any static charge your hand might have.
Once that’s done, you’re all set to clean your PC. To rid your graphic card and other easily removable components of dust, just plug them out of your mother board and gently blow into the fan. Don’t blow too hard though, else you’ll have dust in your eyes. You can use a piece of clean cotton cloth to rid your PC’s components off the dust that might have settled on the surface.
Just ensure that you’re gentle. If you’re lucky enough to find caned air at your local hardware store (it’s quite rare in India unfortunately), you can use this to blow air out of the hard to reach corners in your PC. Alternately, you can use the special attachments you get with modern-day vacuum cleaners that are meant for cleaning those hard-to-reach places inside your PC.
Tip 2: Keep your PC Light on Apps
It may sound trivia to some of you, but it’s a good habit to uninstall any applications you don’t use on your PC. If you let your PC clutter up with all the world’s apps, there are bound to be more than few that start a particular service or two that you wouldn’t normally require on your PC, or they might run some apps in the background, hogging system resources. Such resource leeches are a major reason for slow-downs, making it critical to keep your PC light on applications. If you’re the kind who likes installing loads of little programs on your rig, make it a habit to check your Add/Remove programs every week or so for any applications you think you’re not going to need in the near future.
Settings
If the Best Performance settings make your OS look too bland for you, you might want to play around with the custom settings, to enable some of the basic visual tweaks to satisfy the shallow PC user within, that needs them shiny features to stay interested. If you mess up your settings, you can always move back to the Best Performance preset.
Tip 5: Update!
Update
I know that most of you hate that little message that pops up every now and then, stating that Windows needs to be updated (provided windows auto-update is activated, that is). Let’s face it though, both Windows Vista and XP are far from perfect and Microsoft knows that pretty well. To address that, they keep releasing updates that fix everything from security loop holes to application compatibility issues.
It’s a good idea to keep your OS, as well as other applications up-to-date since many such updates improve memory usage, and you won’t know which ones do unless you either read each and every patch note or update everything installed.
Tip 6: Disk Defragmentation
Imagine looking for a something in a house full of scattered crap. Now imagine looking for the same thing in a room full of neatly arranged stuff. That’s pretty much what disk defragmentation does with the data on your hard-drive; it takes all the little bits of data that take up and entire clusters, organizes them and stacks them together, making finding, reading and writing them easier and faster. This feature helps increase the amount of usable free space on your hard-drive, as well as speeds your PC to quite an extent.
Defragment
It’s a good habit to defragment your PC from time to time. Bare in mind that it takes a while for the entire process to complete itself, so you might want to start it before you sleep or if you’re heading out for a few hours, while leaving your PC on.
Tip 7: Clean Start-up
System Config
A slow start-up usually means that you have a crap load of applications running in the background, which are sure to slow down almost anything intensive you’ve got going on your PC. To help cure this ailment, you can disable applications from starting up along with your PC, by using MSCONFIG (Click on the Start Menu -> Run -> Type in ‘MSCONFIG’ -> Press OK -> Click on the Startup Tab).
Beware though — disabling the wrong service/start-up item could handicap many programs on your PC, so you might want to refer to a guide to show you what processes are ok to disable on startup. It has details on over 18000 processes. It’s best to check which applications are not required, in order to disable them from your startup.
Tip 8: End Background Processes
End Process
In spite of knocking many processes/applications off your PC’s startup, you might have a ton running in the background that you may not need, that may kick in when you launch different programs. That said, it’s a good idea to be vigilant and keep a constant check on what goes on on your PC. To monitor your system processes, press CTRL+Alt+Delete to bring up your Task Manager, and click on the Processes tab. End any process that you don’t need, but be informed of what it does before you do so. The more you know about what’s going on on your PC, the better you can optimize it.
Tip 9: Optimal Virtual Memory
If your system slows down often due to RAM limitations, you can always increase the amount of Virtual Memory (or System Paging File). Virtual Memory’s a part of the hard-drive assigned to be used as part of the Random Access Memory. Here are how you can reach them:
In Vista:
Control Panel -> System and Maintenance System ->
Advanced System Properties (on the right hand side) ->
Advanced Tab -> Performance Settings Button ->
Advanced Tab -> See Virtual Memory for Change ->
Uncheck Automatically manage ->
Set your Custom Size (in Megabytes) ->
Click on Set and restart your computer.
Memory
In XP (Category View):
Control Panel -> Performance and Maintenance System ->
Administrative Tools -> Computer Management ->
In the Window that opens, right click on “Computer Management” (not the one on the window’s header) -> Select Properties ->
Click on the Advanced Tab -> Performance Options ->
Click on the “Change button” Under ‘Virtual Memory’ ->
Set an initial and Maximum Size according to your requirements.
If you don’t know how much memory to assign, the recommended amount is twice to size of your RAM. Make sure that you don’t use up most of the free space available though, and keep enough space for your daily use, and for saving other files/downloads you might have planned, should you be strapped for space.
Tip 10: Indexing
Indexing is Windows’ equivalent of a book’s index, where the location of each chapter (files in this case) have been registered. While this feature helps boost the time it takes to look for files tremendously, it can slow down older PCs quite a bit since it keeps track of files and folders constantly. It’s completely optional to switch off Indexing, since its effect on your PC’s speed may vary depending on how many small files you have on your hard-drive, how big your hard-drive is, how many folders you access actively, and many such variables. The best thing to do is to turn this feature off and judge whether it effects performance in anyway. If it doesn’t, you can always turn it back on. Bare in mind that if you use your PC’s search feature quite often, you might not want to turn Indexing off.
Index
Here’s how you can turn it off:
Start Menu -> Run -> Type in Services.msc and press Enter
Look for “Indexing Service” in the list that follows ->
Right click on it and click on properties ->
Change the Startup type to Disabled
Tip 11: Power Plan
If your PC takes an ass-load of time to get out of sleep or hibernation, and your Power Plan puts it into hibernation every time you stay away for a while, it can become incredibly frustrating to move in and out of it. To ensure that your PC’s set to keep performance to the max, you can change your power plan to inch towards that goal. You should know though, that doing this will negate all Power Saving features that you might have on. If you wish to do so anyway, here’s how you can do it:
In Vista:
Start Menu -> Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound ->
Power Options -> Set it to High Peformance.
If you wish to customize the plan futher you can always click on “Change Plan Settings” to switch off or on any feature.
Power
In XP (Category View):
Start Menu -> Control Panel -> Performance
and Maintainence -> Power Options ->
Set the Power Scheme to Minimal Power management.
Follow this step only if your PC’s really sluggish. If you can avoid it altogether, it would be nice since while in this mode, your PC will conserve no electricity.
Tip 12: ReadyBoost (For Windows Vista)
ReadyBoost is Vista’s feature to help you boost your system’s Virtual Memory using a Pen Drive. You can find the ReadyBoost settings by right clicking on your pendrive in Windows Explorer and clicking on Properties. In properties, all the ReadyBoost settings will be under the ReadyBoost tab.
Ready Boost
While using ReadyBoost isn’t as great as adding extra RAM, it can cause a massive performance jump if your PC’s low on RAM. To see a difference, we recommend a higher capacity pendrive, such as 2 or 4 GB; anything lower won’t be noticeable. Note: You can even add an SD card or an external Hard-drive with ReadyBoost. Just ensure that they all use USB 2.0.
Tip 13: CCleaner
CCleaner
CCleaner is an awesome freeware program that allows you to keep your system registry clean, helping you rid your PC of any registry errors/inconsistencies, and any registries left behind from crappy uninstallation. The program’s designed for the end-user, meaning its really easy to use and built for safety
Tip 14: Disconnect any External Memory
If you’re one who keeps external memory constantly connected to your rig, as a hub for music or movies, or just out of habit, you should know that this can slow your start-up time significantly. This is especially true if your external drives slow or damaged.
HDD
While on the subject, let me inform you that having an old hard-drive connected to your system (one that has many bad sectors) can really slow down your PC’s performance too. It’s a good idea to replace such a drive, or format it if you’re hell-bent of using it.
Tip 15: Last resort
And now for the most obvious and painful tip. You know, the tip you don’t wanna hear: UPGRADE YOUR RIG!
If your PC’s running painfully slow in spite of all of this, you might want to format your hard-drive, reinstall all you need and see if that helps. If it doesn’t, I’m afraid it’s time for the inevitable upgrade! So stop being cheap and spend some dough on your beloved PC.
