How to Speed Up a Slow Computer (Part 2)
In Part 1 I discussed checking to see if your computer has enough physical memory (RAM) and looked at how much is being used. If you’re using 100% of the RAM in your computer then your computer is going to run very slow. So, today lets talk about how to free up some RAM and speed up your computer.
Every program that’s running on your computer uses RAM. Unfortunately some of the new computers come loaded with unnecessary programs that run every time you boot your computer. This past weekend I worked on a new laptop with 1GB of RAM and Windows Vista. As I often hear, the computer starts up slow and runs slow. First of all, 1GB is the minimum running Vista, I highly recommend 2GB of RAM with that memory hungry Operating System. What threw this computer over the edge though was a ton of programs that were unnecessarily running in memory.
Your first clue that you have unnecessary programs running is if you have a bunch of icons next to the time display on your taskbar like in the picture below.
If you see a small arrow, click it to expand this area so you can see them all. If you have more than 4 or 5 icons before you’ve started any programs then some of them are, most likely, just slowing you down.
There are several ways to shut off unnecessary programs. Someone who’s worked with computers for a while might use MSCONFIG to turn them off. I’m not going to go into any details about MSCONFIG though, because there are easier ways for the average computer user to do it.
A person could also hover over those icons to see what they are and just go into each program, find the options, and stop them from starting up when the computer starts. Keep in mind though that there are some programs that run at startup that don’t display an icon so this option may be helpful just not as effective as the next one.
There are also applications, like Windows Defender (which is on Vista computers by default), that make it pretty easy to turn off applications that start when you turn on your computer. I like to go this route because you see all the programs and you can easily turn them off and on in one place.
Here are the rules for turning off programs. If you don’t know what it is, you should probably leave it alone. Some of these programs are necessary and make your PC run better. If you know what the program is though and know that you don’t use that program every time you start your computer, it’s fair game to turn off.
That new laptop I mentioned at the beginning of this article was using nearly all of its 1 GB of RAM before I did this. When I got done, it was using just a little over half of that and was much faster! Hopefully you’ll see some amazing results as well.
If you’d like to see a 25 minute video where I walk you step-by-step through what I do to speed up and optimize a computer click here .
Regards,
-Bert
