Yes, You Can Improve Your Computer’s Speed and Performance
Friday, February 6th, 2009It is possible for a computer to slow down over time simply because it gets older but the amount aging slows a computer is generally speaking, negligible. Still, computers becoming slow make up a large part of my computer repair workload.
This article will attempt to take the mystery out of what computer slow downs are all about and then we’ll discuss how to fix the computer that has become slow and prevent it from acting up in the future.
A Computer’s Resources
When we talk about a computer’s resources, we are talking about the types and the ratings of the parts that comprise the computer. Those things that most influence the speed of the computer would be the motherboard, the CPU and the RAM. Still, even though we may install more RAM in our computer to give it a speed boast, most times this is done to accommodate new software or hardware we installed on the computer. However, if a computer has suddenly become inordinately slow, increasing the amount of RAM will not cure the problem.
What Has Slowed Our Computer Down?
When a computer becomes slow, either over a short period of time or a long one, there are usually very familiar unauthorized villains that are stealing the computer’s resources and causing its performance to suffer.
The culprit usually causing this type of computer slowdown is malware. The word malware is a contraction of the words malicious and software. Malware can be any type of computer virus or spyware. These things have the ability to steal a computer’s resources and slow it down to the point it can be difficult to use.
For the purposes of this article, we do not need to differentiate between the different types of parasites. What is important is we realize we must scan our computers frequently for all types of spyware and all types of malware and viruses. This is the first step in computer maintenance because it will keep our PC’s free of these things that destroy our computer’s performance, not to mention the fact scanning for spyware can also save our identity from being stolen.
About the Computer Registry
Corruption will build up in a computer’s registry from regular every day use. The only way to avoid this is to not use the computer. This, of course, is not a viable option. So, what this means is not only do we need to keep viruses and spyware out of our computers, but we must also keep the registry free of corruption. Just like viruses and spyware will slow down our computers, so will registry corruption. In fact, some of the slowest and most unstable computers I’ve ever seen have become so because of registry corruption.
There are other things a PC owner can check when he or she is dealing with a slow computer. Here’s one: look in the system tray. This area of the computer screen is located in the lower right hand corner. If you find any icons there, right click them and look for the option to close the programs these icons represent. If doing so gets some of your computer’s speed back, you’ll know one of these corresponding programs was stealing resources from the PC.
Still, above and beyond anything else that could be slowing down your computer is the major problems of spyware, viruses or any other kind of malware and registry corruption. These are the things most often responsible for a PC losing its zip and possible freezing up. Clean out the malware and keep the registry free of corruption and chances are your computer will perform excellently for a long time to come!