6 Steps You Can Take To Speed Up Your Computer’s Performance

We are living in a fast-paced world and we’re consistently looking for the quickest way to get things done. We hardly have time to wait for our burger at the local fast-food cafe, our coffee to brew, our microwave popcorn to pop, so who has time to wait around for a lagging computer?

Barring adding more additional RAM to your computer, there are 6 steps you can take to boost up your computer’s performance. Most of these steps will let you speed up your computer, free of cost since they are applications that are already installed on your computer.

One of the first steps that you should take is to empty the Recycle Bin. It’s easy to do. Just use your pointing device to point your cursor to the Recycle Bin icon on your desktop, right-click on it, and select “Empty Recycle Bin.”

Subsequent, open up your Internet Explorer, proceed to Tools, Internet Options. Click on “Delete Cookies,” then select “Delete Files.” In the window that pops, check “Delete all offline content” and click OK. Once that’s accomplished, click OK to close the Internet Options window, and close your Internet Explorer.

Those two are steps that are the fastest, and easiest ones so that’s why we got them out of the way first. Next, we’ll be executing a Disk Cleanup. To do this you have to click on Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup. The disk cleanup function will now start calculating how much space you will be able to free up. Once it completes, it’ll give you an index of files to delete. It should already have some files checked for you, but you can go through the index and check off all the files you like to delete, then click OK.

With that done, it’s time to do a disk defragmentation. This can be a time taking process so you should likely set this up during a time when you’ve got additional things going on. For example, set it up, then go trim the lawn, or go watch your favorite TV show, or go exercise. You get the picture. To begin you have to go to Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter. Click Analyze. If you’re blessed, you’ll get the “You do not need to defragment this volume” call-out, but more than possible, you’ll have to click on “Defragment.” If so, click on it, forget it for a while, go accomplish something else and come around in an hour or two.

Once that’s done, you are good to run a spyware scan. Most people don’t admit how easy it is to get infected with spyware, so executing periodic scans is highly advised. You can use any anti-spyware program you prefer. Just be aware that there is no one program that gets rid of everything. To play it safe, you should run at least three separate programs. You might be amazed by what they find. You may have had spyware executing on your computer and not even know it. Once the scans are finished, and all that spyware is handled, it’s time for the final step.

This last step is to execute an anti-virus scan. I Hope an anti-virus program is installed on your computer. If not, I positively recommend you install one as soon as possible. Once the anti-virus program is set to your computer, go forward and execute it. This could take anywhere from 20 minutes to a couple of hours relying on how many files you have on your hard drive so once again, set it, and then go accomplish something else. Come back in around an hour.

Once all the steps are finished. Restart your computer and you’ll be surprised at how entirely elegant it now feels. It’s a good concept to follow these 6 steps at least one time per week (some steps you can even set up to be accomplished automatically). By doing this, you will maintain your computer performing nearly like it did when you first purchased it.