Speed up your s-l-o-w PC

Most personal computers perform great right out of the box but after a year or two they often seem to start slowing down. This is pretty common and does not necessarily mean that you need to buy a replacement right away. If your PC is 2-3 years old but not quite ready for the recycle bin there are several things you can do to ensure that you are getting the best performance from it. The videos below offer some great tips on getting the best performance from your PC and if you're looking for even more ideas about improving PC performance, check out my e-book on Amazon. Thanks for watching. 


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Antivirus

In these days of rampant online hacker attacks it is always a good idea to have anti-virus software installed on any computer that will be used to access the internet. While an unprotected PC is almost guaranteed to get a virus sooner rather than later, even with the right software installed it is still possible for a virus program to sneak by. A virus can slow down your PC in a number of ways but even if it isn't slowing your machine down it is still a good idea to check from time to time just to be sure your machine is clean. Watch this video to learn about free antivirus software from Microsoft.

Using CCleaner to remove junk files

Installed programs as well as Windows itself have a habit of leaving a trail of junk files and registry settings behind as they go about their business. Part of this is due to poor programming practices and part of it has to do with how Windows was designed. Whatever the reason, these junk files, as they are called, need to be deleted so they don't interfere with normal operation of your PC. Microsoft provides a tool for cleaning up these junk files but there is a better tool called CCleaner. It is available as both a free version and a paid version, with the paid version offering a few more options. I'll let you do the research and decide which version is right for you. In this video we will look at how CCleaner can help speed up your PC by cleaning out those junk files and also streamlining the Windows registry file, which can also become cluttered by leftover junk.

Defrag your hard disk

Although Windows 7 does a good job of keeping your hard disk defragmented if you have added and delete a lot of small files, for example many MP3 music files, in a short amount of time then Windows might not be keeping up with your activity. Watch this video to see how you can check for fragmentation of the data files on your hard disk. If the tool reports more than 10% fragmentation then it is a good idea to go ahead and defrag your hard disk. This video shows you how.

Using MS Config to prevent loading certain programs

PC speed or performance is usually evaluated both during the startup period (or how long it takes from the time you turn on the power switch until you see the Windows desktop) and also during normal usage after the startup routines have completed. Programmers don't always tell you when they configure their programs to run at startup. This can delay the startup process a lot, causing the user to think there might actually be something wrong with their system. A typical startup time is between 30 seconds to a minute. If your PC is taking longer than this to get to the Windows desktop or login screen then you might want to watch this video to learn how to check the MSConfig program for unwanted startup programs.

Windows graphics settings

Windows Vista and Windows 7 both use the new Aero interface and while it looks nice it takes a lot of CPU power to render those graphics properly. If you have an older PC or one with a budget video system chances are that your PC isn't quite up to the job of rendering the Aero graphics quickly. Try this tip and see if you can speed up your PC by choosing a lower-power graphics setting.

Windows Startup Folder

In this video take a look at the Windows startup folder to see what programs are running automatically when you first turn on your PC. If you don't need to have those programs running when you first start Windows you can often speed up the startup process quite a bit by removing the shortcuts from the Startup folder.