How To Speed Up Your PC Today... Without Buying New Hardware!

Is your PC slower now than when you first got it?

You're not alone in that, but don't worry - I will show you how you can eliminate most of the problems without spending money for upgrades.

Spy-Ware and Ad-Ware

Spy-Ware often accounts for most of the speed loss in the average PC. SpyBot, a good spy-ware removal tool, defines spy-ware this way:
"Spyware is a relatively new kind of threat that common anti-virus applications do not yet cover. If you see new toolbars in your Internet Explorer that you didn't intentionally install, if your browser crashes, or if you browser start page has changed without your knowing, you most probably have spyware. But even if you don't see anything, you may be infected, because more and more spyware is emerging that is silently tracking your surfing behaviour to create a marketing profile of you that will be sold to advertisement companies." [courtsey: SpyBot]

So make removal of spy-ware and ad-ware your first priority. There are various software tools that you can get for very little or for free...

AdAware is a privacy tool, that scans your memory, registry, hard, removable and optical drives for known data-mining, aggressive advertising, and tracking ...

Spybot - Search & Destroy 1.2 ~ Free application to scan for spyware, adware, hijackers and other malicious software.

Cleaning Up the Registry

One of the reasons for a slow-moving PC is a cluttered registry. Remember how fast your PC was when your first got it? Since then your registry has become filled with unwanted 'values'. Most software adds custom settings to your registry but won't delete them even when you uninstall the program. These settings accumulate over time ~ and that slows down the speed of your CPU.

So, clean it out every few months, or more often if you have a lot of software going in and out, or multiple users on one PC. I use a program I bought with a 'bundle' but you can get a good free one here - JV 16 PowerTools - I haven't used it but it's highly recommended.

Temporary System Files

You would be surprised how much junk your hard drive accumulates when you use your PC. Temporary system files and cookies fill a large portion of your disk space. Getting rid of it will help your PC to perform better... I use the Windows 'Disk Cleanup' utility that came with the PC about once a week.

Firewalls

"An Ounce of Prevention is worth a pound of cure" - you've heard this before... so you want to prevent unauthorized access to your computer while you're online. A computer connected to internet is sometimes vulnerable to hackers, who may install unwanted programs on your PC or download files from your hard drive. Stop that simply by installing a firewall, which will prevent unauthorized access to your PC.
The one I use came with the McAfee program I bought but there is very good free firewall available at the ZoneAlarm Website

De-Fragment Your Hard Drive

Every time you install a program, make a new word document, uninstall something on your PC it places little bits of data in any unused 'zone' it finds - without regard to what is already 'next door' on the disk. Over a period of time these little fragments get scattered pretty badly... de-fragmenting pulls all these little bits together and makes it easier on the hardware of your PC and saves time when you run a program.
Run your De-Fragment program at least once a month. This will make sure that your programs run faster, because your PC won't be searching all over for the bits-n-pieces.

Follow all these steps and I am sure that you will see a good improvement in the performance of your PC.