N Ideologics

Here are several things you can do to make sure you computer is working as efficiently as it can. The more efficient your computer works, the less time it’ll spend working, and the quicker tasks will be completed.

Note that to speed up your computer, you may have to mix any number of the solutions. I’m starting with the most innocent causes of a slow computer, read over them all to see which you think you should try first. Some of these solutions costs, but are a wise investment over all.

1. How much RAM do you have?

Is your computer slow like a turtle?

Click Start, and you see the ‘My Computer’ link? Right click it, and click on Properties. Give it a few seconds to load, and then look for the heading Memory / RAM. How much RAM you have directly affects how much your computer can handle simultaneously. Note down how much you have.

Next, right click your taskbar and click Task Manager. When the Task Manager appears, select the ‘Performance’ tab. Under the ‘Memory’ graph, you’ll see a figure that tells you how much memory is currently being used.

The memory will be measured as MB or GB. 1GB is 1024MB. If you’re using more RAM than you have, or you have less than 100MB of RAM left, then you’d definitely benefit from a RAM upgrade. Check out this article which explains why RAM is important and what it does for your computer.

2. How much hard disk space left do you have left?

This is something many people just don’t consider, or over consider. You need a couple of GB of disk space left for your computer to run optimally. A full disk becomes fragmented too easily, and fragmentation drastically reduces to speed at which your computer can access files.

Click start and click My Computer. Look for the Local Disk drive or the C: drive, right click it and click Properties. Look for the Free Space heading to find out how much space is available on the drive. If there is less than 2GB of space available, you may need to consider uninstalling some applications, deleting some files, or upgrading your hard disk. But before that you can try the Disk Cleanup Wizard to see if it has any temporary files it can clear – you might be surprised how much space this can save you.

3. Is your computer clean of infections?

If your computer doesn’t have anti-virus and anti-spyware protection installed, you’re at risk – and you’re putting others at risk. If your computer had an application running in the background that watched everything you do, and could ultimately send anything you type to someone you don’t know, would you trust your computer? The majority would answer no. Anti-virus and anti-spyware, despite actually slowing your computer down some because of the overheads created by scanning files, keeps your computer running as efficiently as possible whilst not sacrificing the importance of security.

If you constantly get pop-ups involving gambling, removing spyware or pornography, consider installing anti-virus and anti-spyware protection. AVG provide free security software to home users, you can read our step by step guide for installing AVG by clicking here.

4. Have you backed up your documents?

Although backing up your documents won’t speed up your computer, it’s something people often forget to do. Spyware, hard disk failure, faulty RAM – there are many reasons a computer can fail, and you can bet that if you haven’t backed up your documents, you’ll be kicking yourself for a long time. Backing up is easy, click here to find out how.

That’s all for now. If you liked these tips, you may want to bookmark this page as I plan to expand them in the future.