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Tips You Can Use to Speed Up Your Computer

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Has your computer slowed down compared to when it was new? Does it take a whole lot longer to start your computer? Do programs seem to take a much longer time to load up and run now? Here are some quick and easy tips designed to speed up your computer.

We have here are five things that when you do them you will find make a big difference in the speed of your computer. The best news is that the cost for most of them is free or minimal. What makes them even better is that if you were to take your computer to your local neighborhood geek and ask him to speed up your computer these are the things that he would do but charge you $100 or more simply for his time and labor. You can do them for free.

One of the most important things that you can do to speed up your computer is to run the defragmentation program that is already in your computer. Microsoft put it there to help you keep your computer running quickly. Whenever you store a new program or file on your computer the hard drive allocates space for that program or file one and itself. As the hard drive begins to fill up however your computer starts to break up the file or program into pieces and it stores them in scattered places around your hard drive. This slows down your computer for fairly obvious reasons. Running the defrag program that comes with your computer will consolidate many of these nooks and crannies so that your computer runs a whole lot faster.

After you defrag your hard drive, which is as easy as running any other program on your computer, the next thing you want to do is run your disk cleanup utility. This utility also comes along with the Windows operating system and is extremely easy to use. It simply examines your hard drive closely looking for bad sectors that your computer is tripping over and slowing it down. Repairing these bad sectors will make your computer a lot faster.

Surely you have heard of spyware programs and how they can slow your computer down to a crawl. Perhaps you have already suffered through this kind of computer agony. If not, you have been either very lucky or you are running one of the three or commercial anti-spyware programs available to us. You can use Microsoft's free Internet defender program or you can step up your protection another level or two and by one of the online commercial programs which seem to work much more effectively. While these programs may cost you an additional $30 or $40 or even more if you have ever spoken with anyone who has suffered a from spyware programs or their computer they would tell you that if they had the money they would have spent hundreds or $1000 or more to get their computer back. Whatever you do just make sure that you do something to protect yourself against spyware programs.

you probably need to spend some time removing some of the thousands of files or in your computer that are doing nothing now other than slowing down your hard drive which is another way of saying that they are slowing down your computer. It will definitely be to your advantage to locate and remove programs that you have installed in the past but never seem to use as well as the temporary files that your Internet browser and the Windows operating system store or in your computer. The very existence of these files or near a hard drive slows it down.

This last tip may cost you $50-$100 to implement but it will probably do more then all of the other tips combined in terms of speeding up your computer. Check your instruction book that came along with your computer and see if it is operating with the full complement of random access memory. When you go to your local store to buy some more random access memory just tell them that you need a stick of memory for your computer and they will know what you are talking about. Take your instruction manual with you and they can look up the exact type of memory that you need. When you get home find a screwdriver to remove the case on your computer and in less than 10 minutes that you will find that even the most incompetent of us are shocked by how easy it is to install memory into our computers. If you can plug in a toaster in the morning then you can install additional memory in your computer.

These tips listed above are just a view of the many things that can be done to remove much of the frustration that comes along with using a slowed down computer. You really do not have to suffer through this slowdown. You also do not have to spend hundreds of dollars at your neighborhood computer repair shop in order to speed up your computer. Simply strengthen your resolve take a deep breath and make these few changes and you will be surprised at how computer competent you really are.

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Some additional methods to make your computer faster are available here. An excellent commercial anti-spyware program is a smart purchase.

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