Our Top 12 ways to speed up your Computer PC or Laptop and Internet browsing experience. If you don’t feel confident in doing any of this yourself, bring it to us or we can come to you. You can contact us on 08 6365 5603 1) Reduce the number of programs that “run-on-startup” When installing new programs there is often a little tick box that is selected by default which says “Run on startup“. Before you know it, you have 10 programs trying to start when you switch your computer on or reboot and all greedily trying to load first by using the computers memory or CPU. This can slow your computer down considerably. Some of the worst offenders of this are Skype and Chat clients such as Yahoo Messanger, Sharepoint, Google Drive, Lync, AOL chat etc etc By stopping these programs from loading on startup (In Skype goto Tools – Options – General Settings and “un-tick”, “Start Skype when I start Windows”) your computer will start much quicker. Assuming you have done this for Skype and your various chat clients but your computer is still taking an age to start, then you need to look a little deeper into what is happening. When your computer is starting up hit “Ctrl-Alt-Delete” buttons all at the same time and then select “Start Task Manager” The Task Manager shows you all the applications and processes being run by your computer at that very moment. You will see the amount of CPU Usage going up and down …on startup this can be very high but once settled down should be running at less than 50%. This will vary depending on how much memory or RAM your computer has. Computers with 1GB of RAM will have a higher work rate than those with 4 or 8GB of RAM. Make sure you have the tick box selected show processes from all users then click on the CPU and Memory column descriptors to reorder the list in terms of CPU usage and Memory Usage. If you notice a program running that you do not recognise, does not appear to be associated with Microsoft, your computer’s manufacturer, anti-virus products etc… then take a note of the item and google-it as I did with the image name igfxsrvc.exe which I was not familiar with so I google it. From the results I am confident it is harmless. If you find a process you suspect of beig a virus or malware…simply highlight that process and click on “End Process” if this appears to fix your problems you now need to figure out what is causing that process to run as the next time you restart your computer the process will again be activated automatically. Check and Cleanup your Startup processes A simple tool for removing unwanted start-up processes can be found in the FREE CCleaner utility. Use this utility to identify start up processes, disable them and then uninstall them using the tools-> uninstall feature. 2) Add more Memory (RAM) The quickest and easiest way to increase the speed of your computers start-up and performance generally is to increase the amount of RAM memory it has. There are still many PC’s and Laptops out there with only 1GB of RAM. This was fine for Windows XP but if you are Running Windows Vista, 7 or 8 then you need a minimum 2GB memory and ideally 4GB or 8GB (but you may not have enough memory slots or your computer to accommodate this extra RAM) … check the specification of your computer online before buying or installing the extra memory.   3) Add a bigger and faster disk drive When your existing Hard Disk storage is 90% or more full, your computer slows down because it often uses a portion of your disk drive to increase its RAM. The increase in manufacturing and Hard Drive technology also means that conventional drives are becoming faster each year. As each year goes by the chances of your disk drive failing increase, especially after 6 years (see “how often should I replace my Hard Disk Drive”) and as they are relatively inexpensive, upgrading your HDD annually is a good way to clean up your data and speed up your PC. To super-charge the speed of your PC or Laptop consider buying a solid-state hard drive (SDD). These have no moving parts and are completely electronic. Although smaller in capacity they are extremely fast, especially if a program does a lot of disk access (such as a database)   4) Clean your Computer A PC, Computer or Laptop uses power and as a result generates heat. Every PC has 1,2 or 3 fans in the case designed to keep the components cool and working optimally. Like a car….. if the radiator blows…. so does the engine, but before it blows it can simply slow down the computer. Checking the outlets or opening up the box could reveal a dust-infected-horror-story. See our article about giving your computer a spring clean 5) Scan your computer for Viruses If your computer or laptop has suddenly become slow, unresponsive, cannot access the internet etc… then the chances are you have become infected with a Computer Virus, Malware or Spyware. We specialise in removing these nasties but if you wish to try and do so yourself, see our article called “How to remove 99% of computer viruses, malware and adware for FREE” 7) Remove unnecessary browser “Add-Ons” Too many “toolbars” or “add-ons” as well as spoiling your browsing experiences will also slow down your internet browsing and may flood you with unwanted advertising etc. See the following articles about removing unwanted browsers toolbars, add-ons and resetting your search engine defaults.   How to remove unwanted “Add-ons” and Toolbars from Google Chrome How to remove unwanted “Add-ons” and Toolbars from Mozilla Firefox How to remove unwanted “Add-ons” and Toolbars from Internet Explorer How to reset your search engine back to Google or Bing   8) Reinstall or Repair your Operating System (OS) […]