How-To: Clean and Speed Up Your Computer
by Omni on Mar.19, 2009, under How-To Guides, Useful Programs
Often times, computers get slowed down and bulky if you don’t take proper care of them. Just like anything else, computers too need the occasional maintanance. However, rather than a bath or grooming, they need things like file deletion, hard drive defragmentation, etc. No idea what that means? Luckily, you can learn how to speed up your computer in a few simple steps. Keep reading for the step-by-step guide on how to use different utility programs and how to tweak some of your computers settings to keep your baby running smoothly.
- First, download and install CCleaner from here. Run it and go to the Cleaner tab.
- Here, select whatever you want to check. I suggest all of Internet Explorer and System. Hit Analyze.
- It will begin looking through everything to see what it can fix. Give it some time, and once it completes, hit Run Cleaner.
- You can also go to the Tools tab and uninstall any programs you don’t need, as they just take up space.
- Once you finish with CCleaner, go to your taskbar (bottom right of screen) and right-click and exit out of any program that isn’t absolutely NEEDED.
- Go to Start->Run and type “msconfig”.
- In the Startup tab, uncheck any program that you see and can easily identify as something that you know what it is and you don’t need it running on startup, or even running all the time. Just be sure not to disable any programs that you don’t know what they do, because you may break something.
- Press OK and it should save your changes.
- Now go to Start->Accessories->System Tools->Disk Defragmenter. Hit Analyze for the drive your wish to defrag.
- Once it finishes analyzing, if you have a lot of red in the analysis, hit Defragment. You should probably let this go overnight because it’s better not to touch it while it is defragmenting. It can also take hours to complete, depending on how badly fragmented your drive is and how fast your computer is.
After following all of these steps and suggestions, you should notice a considerable increase in speed, especially if you are using an older computer. Running CCleaner and Disk Defragmenter occasionally will also help maintain your computer’s speed.
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